Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake • Hacker News Board

Re: Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake

#911

Post by ipaddr » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 2:15 AM UTC

fxleach wrote: post #744

vjk800 wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. If your complaint is that you need to be a millionaire to get basic housing, it's because you live with other rich people. Since the overwhelming majority of humanity lives in houses with value far below 1M$, we can conclude that no-one really has to live in a place with only 1M$ houses, but you, for some reason, want to do so. Living in a posh neighbourhood is a luxury, like Ferrari (which, by the way, costs…

I don't think you are in touch with the reality of the housing market right now. That "posh" neighbourhood that you're referring to is most likely where people were born and raised and the first place you want to buy a home. I live in Etobicoke, Canada. My neighbour across the street growing up recalled a time they built the houses in the neighbourhood and it was previously farm fields. My parents bought their house,…

I believe a plan exists to welcome 3 million more people through immigration over the next 10 years. That's going to push up prices.

Re: Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake

#912

Post by int_19h » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 2:37 AM UTC

cronix wrote: post #803

narrator wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The reason that I think the Bay Area and other tech hubs are so expensive is that asians with PHDs who fly in for their $500k/year machine learning tech job want to live around other asians. They do not want to live in rural Utah where you can get a nice house for $200k and remote work, but there are no asians around and there's probably more discrimination. You can probably safely extrapolate that to all races who…

It really depends. In some countries, a desire to escape the "customs and social norms", or sometimes the current political trends, is one of the popular motivations to immigrate. I know quite a few Russian immigrants in US who consciously avoid areas with large proportion of compatriots and community events etc for this exact reason. More so since the war, of course, but it was already a thing when I moved here 12 years ago.

Re: Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake

#913

Post by int_19h » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 2:48 AM UTC

angarg12 wrote: post #551

photon12 wrote: post #6

> Meanwhile, renters are desperate. They’re begging for housing prices not just to slow, but to fall. I have a friend who is a head chef at a decently popular bar and restaurant on Broadway in Capitol Hill, Seattle (very trendy part of town if you aren't familiar, steep commercial rent). He lives in a 400 sq ft studio and is barely, barely making it from one paycheck to the next. I am sitting on a 2.6% interest rate…

I'm a new immigrant to the US, and housing is my single biggest worry together with my work visa. Our household income is north of 300k, but housing still seems unaffordable. It might sound like whining, but we only achieve this level of income recently, so our lifelong savings are in the low 6 figures. We got no assets or property abroad, and no family that can help us to get in the property ladder. Even old, basic…

You can get cheaper housing further east from Seattle, past Issaquah (Preston, Snoqualmie, North Bend, Fall City, Carnation etc) if 40-50 minute commute is acceptable. Snoqualmie in particular is seeing a lot of new development in the past few years because of this.

Re: Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake

#914

Post by matchbok » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 2:50 AM UTC

nacho2sweet wrote: post #208

davidw wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's hard to see evidence of much political will to solve these problems. Disagree. The YIMBY movement is picking up steam in a big way. Here in Oregon, we re-legalized 4-plexes in our cities and the woman responsible, Tina Kotek, is now our governor. She's pushing another big housing bill. Our mayor in the city I live in regularly attends our YIMBY group meetups. It's gotten bad enough in enough places that th…

I mean good luck but the YIMBY movement is a very pro investor movement. Decrepit old SFH selling for $1.6 million turned into a 4 plex here in Vancouver would see each unit in the 4 plex selling for $1.4+ million (maybe $1.1 for the basement suite). Friend bought in a converted old place 780 sqft attic suite $940k. It doesn't really make stuff affordable. It was sold here as "the missing middle" and they basically d…

Last time I checked 1.4 is less than 1.6 champ.

The balance between those "evil investors" and affordable housing needs is not zero sum, no matter what people on twitter tell you.

Re: Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake

#915

Post by fnordpiglet » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 2:54 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #882

fnordpiglet wrote: post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the economic research I’ve read says repealing zoning laws induced no meaningful decrease in home price. That makes sense - home builders build to maximize profit and aren’t in the business of devaluing property they buy to develop. They develop it in a way that appreciates prices to improve their margins. But like this piece there seems to be some view that market forces are shaped by immoral behavior on someone…

> They develop it in a way that appreciates prices to improve their margins What way would that be? All producers of goods and services maximize profit. That doesn't explain the unique housing sector price developments.

What’s unique? I see nothing unique about high prices in high demand markets.

Re: Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake

#916

Post by parineum » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 3:02 AM UTC

thequadehunter wrote: post #875

parineum wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One size fits all zoning regulations for rural Montana, Manhattan and the suburbs of Los Angeles.

What is substantively different about any of these places that require different zoning laws? Do you think someone is just going to build a mega skyscraper in rural Montana because they can?

I don't presume to know the needs of Montanans. My state is diverse enough that statewide zoning laws are obviously specifically crafted with a certain subset of the state in mind and are unworkable for different communities.

For instance, there are laws that prevent certain stores (alcohol sales, for example) from being within X miles of a school. There are cities where the central location where the central location of the town where all commerce happens and where the school is is less than a square mile.

Unless you're proposing legislating the removal or limiting of zoning on the federal level, it seems like an incredibly bad idea.

Re: Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake

#917

Post by Wesxdz » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 3:03 AM UTC

zachthewf wrote: post #161

nemothekid wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a technical solution to a political problem. The cost of building housing isn't the problem. As the article complains, the problem is housing is an investment and as other commenters have pointed out, our government has pretty much protected this asset class and all of America has the expectation that pricing will continue to go up. If you flood the market with competitive homes you will destroy housing at an…

In some sense I agree with you, and it would all be much simpler if the laws could be changed. But I think this is pretty unlikely at least in the next 30 years or so. But sufficiently cheap/fast technology is very difficult to block. Not sure if there's any actual way housing could get there (would have to be some sort of modular assembled-on-site sort of thing).

relative robotics will do it https://news.mit.edu/2019/robots-large-structures-little-pie...

Re: Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake

#918

Post by Wesxdz » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 3:05 AM UTC

zachthewf wrote: post #161

nemothekid wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a technical solution to a political problem. The cost of building housing isn't the problem. As the article complains, the problem is housing is an investment and as other commenters have pointed out, our government has pretty much protected this asset class and all of America has the expectation that pricing will continue to go up. If you flood the market with competitive homes you will destroy housing at an…

In some sense I agree with you, and it would all be much simpler if the laws could be changed. But I think this is pretty unlikely at least in the next 30 years or so. But sufficiently cheap/fast technology is very difficult to block. Not sure if there's any actual way housing could get there (would have to be some sort of modular assembled-on-site sort of thing).

also, seastead near san francisco

Re: Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake

#919

Post by lmm » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 3:08 AM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #841

krferriter wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of jobs are in high cost of living areas. The reason they're high cost of living is because there are jobs there, the demand to live there is high, and they haven't built nearly enough housing. Some bay area municipalities have essentially not added any housing in the last 50 years. They made it illegal, because incumbent property owners don't want more people to be allowed to live there. And it's not just the…

I would rather Google and Facebook and the other mega-hire companies would build up outside the bay area, rather than continuing to pack more people in.

The population keeps growing, everywhere needs to take their fair share of that increase. People who want to live in a more spread-out area have the whole country to choose from; there are only a handful of big cities, we should be letting those who want to build more homes in them.

Re: Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake

#920

Post by davidw » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 3:13 AM UTC

irq wrote: post #693

davidw wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just go somewhere else" is causing even the 'boring' places to have problems: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/20/business/economy/spokane-... We need some more fundamental reforms.

Check out upstate NY. I found a 40 acres, gigabit fiber internet, in ground pool, outbuildings, and a backup generator for well under $500k. Even with the higher taxes here vs the west coast, I'm ahead. Only caveats are you need to enjoy seclusion (check) and be good at remote employment (this year will be my 10 year anniversary of being 100% remote). Energy costs are a bit high, so I installed 20 kW of solar and wil…

That's nice if you can make it work, it's a quick solution to the housing problem. But for a lot of people being close to the economic powerhouse areas of the country is a win, and we should figure out how to make that work for them. And, long term, migrating further and further out is just going to delay the problem, because it'll arrive eventually unless they're in complete economic free fall.