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It is critical that any housing solution incorporate equity, in my opinion. Taking away home ownership so we can all pay apartment owners for our entire lives is wrong.
You know people can rent single-family houses and buy apartments, right?
I kinda get it and kinda hate it. I am a pretty responsible dude but nothing has made me as invested in my community, surroundings, etc as owning a home. I always loved the US but once we bought the house I really understood it on the next level. Apartments are great for single people and retirees. Families should have a house with a back yard and a drive way. It's our dream.
With all due respect that’s _your_ dream. I hated growing up in a house with a back yard and a driveway. I’m not sure I would have wanted to grow up in downtown Manhattan, but an apartment in a small city would have been infinitely better.
What a problem to have. Wow.
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With all due respect that’s _your_ dream. I hated growing up in a house with a back yard and a driveway. I’m not sure I would have wanted to grow up in downtown Manhattan, but an apartment in a small city would have been infinitely better.
Well, you are an extreme outlier. There are all kinds of people on this world but this very uncommon. Most people in apartment complexes are trying to get into their own home or hole that they can.
I used to think that if average income cannot afford the average home, the market must necessarily correct. I’m wrong about this obviously but I still cannot understand why. I understand that wealthier people have vacation homes, but the only reason for a wealthy person to purchase an additional non-vacation home is to rent it out to someone less wealthy. Since the less wealthy person couldn’t cover the mortgage to b…
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You know people can rent single-family houses and buy apartments, right?
Of course he does. The point is that paying rent to landowners forever is also not a great condition, which should (somehow?) be addressed as well.
Feels like it will perpetuate the trend of young adults not being able to afford to purchase a home. Duplexes and more apartments mean more renters. No matter your view on home ownership, there’s a lot to be said of the ability to stabilize your budget’s largest line item via fixed rate mortgages. This helps but is just a band aid.
Why is home ownership important? It’s a serious question. It’s currently important within the context of houses as a form of appreciating wealth that can be passed on to future generations, but a big part of the reason we have a housing crisis is due to conflating housing and investment. We need to step back from the notion that houses should be significant stores of wealth and concentrate fully on creating enough ho…
Two is investment. Land prices in popular areas started rising because of demand. Housing turned into way to make money and build wealth. But it is really land speculation.
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Nope, just needs to be more building. New luxury apartments will make the old stock cheaper. The fight over the number of affordable units in every single new development slows things down and exacerbates the affordability problem. Remove as many of the barriers to development as possible, and the problem will be solved.
This ignores the possibility of housing stock consolidating, and price-fixing, which can keep rents artificially inflated by just keeping capacity off the markets. Example: https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...
If housing stock expanded a lot, landlords would lose the pricing power that YieldStar is taking advantage of. The lack of surplus housing in desirable areas is the root problem, and the difficulty of getting new high density housing projects approved and developed in those areas is at the core of that. The vacancy rate of rental housing nationwide has been dropping for years, and that includes a lot of places where people aren't clamoring to live.
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> I’m wrong about this obviously but I still cannot understand why. I have this theory (I wish I could think of a way to easily prove it right with some kind of cherry-picked statistics/data but I'm not confident I'd be able to) that we've finally reached a point (I'm sure it isn't the first time in history but I don't know a lot of history) in "late-stage capitalism" that the top 20% don't mind paying/can pay/will p…
Essentially, the power of money grows exponentially. A well-off tech person earning a few hundred thousand dollars per year has the financial power equivalent to dozens of minimum wage people. I agree that we’re now at the point where there is so much money at the top that the power imbalance is too influential to be ignored. A few decades ago, the number of wealthy people was so small and their reach so short that i…
Would you agree if I said the problem isn't really the billionaires when it comes to why middle class hard working people can't afford a single family house, but instead it's people making $200k/yr+?
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Nope, just needs to be more building. New luxury apartments will make the old stock cheaper. The fight over the number of affordable units in every single new development slows things down and exacerbates the affordability problem. Remove as many of the barriers to development as possible, and the problem will be solved.
> New How often are they new and how often are they "newly renovated"? As I got a downvote I'm going to edit this and say I used to pay a little over $800/month for a particular apartment. About 7 years later I looked back at the complex. It had been completely remodeled and the cheapest unit was over $1600/month. How often is this happening?
I used to think that if average income cannot afford the average home, the market must necessarily correct. I’m wrong about this obviously but I still cannot understand why. I understand that wealthier people have vacation homes, but the only reason for a wealthy person to purchase an additional non-vacation home is to rent it out to someone less wealthy. Since the less wealthy person couldn’t cover the mortgage to b…