Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 764 posts

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#581

Post by polio »

sershe wrote: post #415

There's no basic human right to have a roof over your head, for the simple reason that someone has to make the roof. Saying "I have a right to have it [without building it yourself]" is saying "I have a right to force someone to build it for me". I dunno about you, I'm uneasy about forced labor. Even beyond that, there's certainly no right to have the roof over your head wherever you want - there is simply not enough…

This characterization of rights seems somewhat melodramatic. A government is capable of providing its citizens with rights without forcing individuals at gunpoint to provide them. The way this happens is that the government creates an organization that is dedicated to the provision of these rights, and then individuals can voluntarily join it. The government can set the wage, or produce summery marketing material, or issue medals to encourage participation in civic practices.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#582

Post by carom »

badpun wrote: post #490
thepasswordis wrote: post #132

>a basic human right You do not have a basic human right to the labor of the people who build and maintain these houses. This is where this entire discussion collapses for me. Yes, I agree there needs to be more access to housing. And it’s frustrating to me that our government is too inept to simply provide it. For instance: we have committed to about 45 Billion to Ukraine. At a cost of $100k/unit (achievable at scal…

> This entire discussion is absurd to me. You’ve got politicians burning money, some people talking about housing as if they have a “right” to a house (that is: a right to force people like me to build them a house at gunpoint), and still surging homelessness. Isn't US homelessness mostly an issue of drug addiction and lack of mental health care? What percentage of US homeless do not fall into one of those categories…

For the visible homeless the percentage is high, but there are a lot of people living in their cars or on a friend's couch who just can't afford housing.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#583

Post by carom »

cesarvarela wrote: post #279
thepasswordis wrote: post #132

>a basic human right You do not have a basic human right to the labor of the people who build and maintain these houses. This is where this entire discussion collapses for me. Yes, I agree there needs to be more access to housing. And it’s frustrating to me that our government is too inept to simply provide it. For instance: we have committed to about 45 Billion to Ukraine. At a cost of $100k/unit (achievable at scal…

Do you think humans have a right to own a peace of land on planet earth? (Not the labor just the land) I find it very unjust being forced to buy land from someone else that the only thing they did was being born before.

How do you feel about rent control? That gives someone who was there earlier a market distorting deal just because they were there first.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#584

Post by dennis_jeeves1 »

Land rights as a basic right is an unsolved issue in _all_ parts of the world. Without this root issue being solved every thing else ends up being a band-aid/patch work. Georgism, I think come closes philosophically to solving the issue.

Side note: Land rights are even more important than things like free speech. Also I'm not saying that land rights as a basic right is easy to solve, it is actually very difficult, but for me it a per-requisite to every other 'right'.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#585

Post by scatters »

foogazi wrote: post #439
snidane wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, what instead? You want to build more housing in NYC? Great, that should work. But you have to make it cheap. > because that's the only way a developer can recoup their enormous land acquisition, There you go - in order to make it cheap you need a land tax, nothing else will work (alternatives have been rehashed over and over decades by georgists). Without land tax the property market is stalled without market c…

> There you go - in order to make it cheap you need a land tax How would land-taxing make it cheap ?

Because you're buying the tax liability as well as the benefit of the potential rent. Under a perfect land tax those are equal, so the price of all land is zero.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#586

Post by horsawlarway »

Blackstone4 wrote: post #198
horsawlarway wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about regulation, it's about replace-ability. Food prices stay low because corn is corn, regardless of who grew it - it fills the same need. In many cases, even food that's not a direct match is still a perfectly valid replacement (ex: I need to eat 2000 calories, but it doesn't matter all too much what food is providing them). This is utterly untrue for real estate, which is about as non-fungible as you can…

You raise an interesting point regarding fungibility…I wonder that with growing insitutional involvement, whether housing may move down the spectrum and may become more fungible… probably not by much tho

Yeah, I think that's an interesting point - if the goal is just to have a roof over your head close to where you work, institutional involvement may be able to help there (large apartment complexes and high rises are the old school methods of creating housing units that are mostly the same as each other).

I think the issue is that housing is intrinsically tied to real estate, and real estate (at large) likely won't become much more fungible. Land is just really complicated, and the uses for it aren't all that exchangeable.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#588

Post by the_only_law »

shakes_mcjunkie wrote: post #416
softwarebeware wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Vancouver BC actually is creating policies like taxing unoccupied housing at a higher rate, instituting a tax on the sale of homes to foreign buyers, and further regulations around real estate "commoditization" and these are effective tools. I don't know why people say it's a difficult problem. Cities are actually just looking the other way.

I find that a lot of the criticisms of taxation and better housing policy are boiled down to the bad faith, we can't try anything because it's too complicated, but really they mean this is going to cause me or my rich friends problems so don't do it.

Even better when an alternative proposed solutions is “give me and my rich friends more power”

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#589

Post by scatters »

KineticLensman wrote: post #430
dazc wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Showing my age, but back in 1976, where I lived, water was being brought in by tanker day and night during the hottest summer on record. I'm not saying privatisation has been a glowing success but supply issues were much worse in the days of nationalisation, especially when you factor in the population growth over the past few decades.

There have been precisely zero new reservoirs brought into service in England over the last 30 years while the population has as you say grown considerably. There has been relatively little infrastructure maintenance, leading to high-levels of leakage, and over-extraction from once healthy rivers. I'd agree that things weren't perfect in 1976 but privatization has failed to noticeably improve things either while tota…

Water leakage is not a problem. The water goes back into the aquifer, where it should be anyway. It's a minor waste of energy and treatment chemicals, since it's drinkable water, but the water itself is not lost.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#590

Post by x86x87 »

ItsMonkk wrote: post #424
nrmitchi wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Taxes have no effect on what the renter pays"; by this I assume you mean "market rate is market rate regardless of cost". Sure, to a point. The tax situation of my individual property does not impact the market rate. Just like how the market rate does not change if there is a mortgage on a property, or paid-in-full. If the entire market is faced by a new tax all at once, you will see rents rise. Costs across the boa…

No. Renters are paying for the value of the land and the improvements. If the rental price of the apartment is above that, they won't pay it and find another place. If there are no places they will go homeless. Since landlords are already charging for this value, an increase of taxes does not increase the rents. > every property owner isn't going to operate at a loss So they will then sell. But who would buy at curre…

> If the rental price of the apartment is above that, they won't pay it and find another place. If there are no places they will go homeless. Since landlords are already charging for this value, an increase of taxes does not increase the rents.

Nope. Sorry but that's not how it works.

If the landlord has to pay 4x tax they will pass some (all) of that increase to the renter. Also, a 4x increase in tax != 4x increase in rent.

So, say the property is worth 1mil$, and you pay 1% tax. That's 10k. You charge 3k rent. The taxman makes the tax 4%, now you have to pay 40k. You decide to pass 30k to the renter. So now they pay 36k+30k rent per year. 4x tax, 2x rent.

If a landlord does this, sure. Renters find a new place. No brainer. If all landlords do this, the renters arr fucked. Finding a new place will not save you. In effect you make it way worse on the renters.

The solution to the housing crisis is not some trick involving taxes, rent caps, adding more rules etc. The solution is simple: build more housing. That's the only thing that will work and will bring down the pressure.

We also need to stop conflating affordable housing with home ownership. If you are having trouble finding a place to rent you can afford there is no way you can buy a house. I feel like the HN bubble w/ our high sky salaries is somewhat disconnected from what the average person can actually do.

Post reply on HN