The megabull case for Bitcoin is when hedge funds realize Bitcoin is the much better property than real estate. They dump their real estate and buy up Bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn't degrade and the effort to manage it scales by a constant factor compared to how much you own unlike real estate
Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
491–500 of 764 posts
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#492Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends on where they want to move. For national policies prices should drop nation wide, ergo people would still be able to move inside the same country (probably 99% of relocations). And if they don't sell, they wouldn't care much. Yeah, annoying, but as long as you pay the installments, not much changes in practice.
>For national policies prices should drop nation wide, ergo people would still be able to move inside the same country No. Suppose I buy a million dollar house at 20% down. I thus owe $800k in principal to the bank. I live in the house for a few years, and build up $100k in additional equity beyond my down payment. If housing prices stayed the same, I could sell the house for $1M, use $700k of that to pay off my rema…
Are there any financial products to help with this situation; ie allowing you to take out an $800k loan on the new house? Presumably this wouldn’t be any riskier for the bank than simply continuing to own the old underwater loan. Possibly less risky since the homeowner, living where they wanted to live, would have less incentive to simply walk away.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Tax everyone according to the value of the unimproved value of their land. Why ? How do you figure the unimproved value of land ? There is so much land in this country why do we have to fight over the coastal regions ? Why not incentivize building out other areas and creating population hubs ?
If I sent you a picture of a home, and I asked you what it was worth, you wouldn't be able to answer me until I first mentioned it was in the middle of SF or if it was in the middle of the Arizona desert. The majority of urban values are not the value of the improvements but the value of the land. The value of the unimproved value of land comes from your neighbors. It comes from your city. When roads and sewers and t…
If I sent you a picture of a vacant piece of land in the middle of New York City's best neighborhood and asked you what it was worth, could you answer me?
You wouldn't be able to until I told you what kind of home you are allowed to build. If I only allow you to build a shack or make it a park you won't be able to extract any money by renting it out and thus you wouldn't buy it at any price, even though the neighborhood should command a steep price. If on the other hand I allow you to build a sky scraper of n storeys high, you will now be able to given other information on rents in the area that people are willing to pay.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
housing is complicated My bullshit detector went off right here. Housing isn't complicated. It's only complicated by investment money being involved. Having a roof over ones head is a basic human right. In Australia, the market is so hot, very few young people can afford anything, if you're living in a nice place, you can easily be kicked out after your rent doubles. I know of good, professional people who migrated t…
> Having a roof over ones head is a basic human right. Prove it.
How does one 'prove' that other than by appealing to a list of 'human rights', upon which you and the other commenter surely disagree? There is no fundamental philosophical principle beneath human rights in which it will rigorously generate a list of rights. It's a null question, and I suspect you know that.
The stellman of 'housing is a human right' is 'everyone should have adequate shelter', and that's a far more productive starting point. The 'right' angle adds nothing.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest thing missed when proposals like that is that not everyone wants to (or does it make sense to) buy a property. Making it 4x more expensive to own a rental property means that rent will be 4x more expensive for those that have to rent. If I was moving to NYC for 6 months, or 2 years, there’s no way I want to spend tens of thousands of dollars buying-and-then-selling a property.
> If I was moving to NYC for 6 months, or 2 years, there’s no way I want to spend tens of thousands of dollars buying-and-then-selling a property. There's no fundamental reason real estate transaction costs should be what they are.
When it comes to realtor prices, you're absolutely correct. It's ludicrous that that effective monopoly has been able to persist.
There are other costs and risk though. Many places that have transfer taxes, plus inspection costs, appraisal costs, title insurance costs, and loan origination costs.
You also have to accomodate the risk or some major issue in the 1-2 years you're living there. "Saving some money over rent" doesn't necessarily justify the risk of having to cover costs for HVAC/electrical/plumbing work that has to be done.
If you have a bunch of properties with no stable ownership, where the buck will just be passed to the next person every couple of years, properties will fall into disrepair (moreso than they do now), and temporary bandaid fixes will be (more) or the norm.
Ie, I don't believe short-term property ownership is good for the property long-term.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#496Like another comment here mentioned, housing is complicated. People don't want to live in a random house in the middle of nowhere ('roof over your head'). Some people prefer to be homeless on the street versus getting to a roof over their head that they don't like. People want to live where they want to live (near family, jobs, culture etc) Take NYC for instance. Politicians try to address the NYC housing crisis from…
Everyone says there is a housing shortage, yet only the extremely poor live on the streets. So, there is no housing shortage: there are housing units available for almost everyone who has an income. Almost all the houses are just owned by landlords instead of by residents, where the owner uses the property as an investment rather than as a home.
The only shortage is in homes that are not investment properties
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#497Earlier quoted context omitted.
An organization saying X doesn't make X true. Perhaps OP meant to write "According to the UN, having a roof over ones head is a basic human right."
"We" as evolved social animals have pretty universally come to the agreement that humans should have a few basic necessities, such as food, water, shelter, (and less agreed but equally important) personal safety. I could ask if you continuing to live is your human right. I'm not sure there's any absolute decree that everyone can agree on that says you deserve to live. However, we evolved people tend to assume that ev…
OK, and here I was thinking that human rights were premised on a philosophical basis. Thank you for clarifying that they are merely a political matter.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#498Like another comment here mentioned, housing is complicated. People don't want to live in a random house in the middle of nowhere ('roof over your head'). Some people prefer to be homeless on the street versus getting to a roof over their head that they don't like. People want to live where they want to live (near family, jobs, culture etc) Take NYC for instance. Politicians try to address the NYC housing crisis from…
I would start by making property taxes substantially higher for non-owner-occupied property. If you are rent-seeking rather than residing on the property you should pay way more, maybe 4x or higher, in taxes. Housing prices would crash and that would be the point; but everyone who owns property would be against it because they don't want to see their assets drop in value. The counter-argument people make is "that wou…
So it will be more economical for me to convert my apartment building to a single family home? OK. Sounds like the ideal neolib hellscape, single family home suburbia as far as the eye can see.
It is already difficult to make money in real estate. Your proposal would reduce housing stock.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would start by making property taxes substantially higher for non-owner-occupied property. If you are rent-seeking rather than residing on the property you should pay way more, maybe 4x or higher, in taxes. Housing prices would crash and that would be the point; but everyone who owns property would be against it because they don't want to see their assets drop in value. The counter-argument people make is "that wou…
As others have said, this is an absolutely terrible idea and highly destructive to renters. There is simply no reason to boogeyman real estate investors so long as they are renting out the property. Renting is no less valid a form of housing than ownership and policies like you describe are already in place in many jurisdictions such as Ontario and it is already as we speak harming renters. For all the people saying…
Instead of supposedly basing rental figures on median home values, which is highly non-objective, just make the public tax data more transparent. When people can see the relationship between taxes and prices, they can ask the right questions and make their own decisions– through policy changes in their locale if necessary.
What works in small town USA won't necessarily make sense in a Big 6, unless it affects huge national investors like Blackrock but not your small landlords or medium multi-family dwelling manager/owners.
Also, "tax them? might as well kill them!" is the type of nefariously silly exaggeration that is used to shut down discussions. Yours doesn't go quite that far, and I get the point of your example but don't find that limits of infinity are generally helpful.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Deregulate construction, get rid of unions, prioritize developer rights over tenant or homeowner rights. These all assume that the cost of new development is the building/development itself. It isn't. It's the land. The correct solution to this is a land tax based on the assessed value of the land.
Don't many states/cities (if we're talking US) already do this?
I think there may be a disconnect here (and I apologize if there isn't; this is not my wheelhouse)...
1. Some people talk about "land tax" meaning a tax on the value of _only_ the land. So you pay a tax based on the land, but not anything built on it.
2. Some people talk about "land tax" meaning a tax on the value of the property if you were to sell it; including any construction on it. This is the common situation in the US, to the best of my knowledge.
The former, taxing _only_ the land, is what (I believe) a lot of people are talking about when they say it will promote more/better construction on the existing land. Because you're paying the same tax regardless of what is built on it, so build whatever it the most useful for you.