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San Francisco Landlords may lose everything [video]

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Re: San Francisco Landlords may lose everything [video]

#101

Post by AnimalMuppet »

breakyerself wrote: post #89
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason supply used to meet demand is that the government didn't just pray to the almighty free hand, it acted with policy to ensure there was housing for everyone. The free market used to work better before it got handcuffed by zoning laws everywhere. If you prohibit the free market from working, don't then mock the free market because it's not working. > A large portion of the supply is being held by investors…

Landlords restrict the supply of houses available for purchase.

Landlords restrict home ownership, yes. That's different than restricting housing. And we were mostly talking about housing.

Re: San Francisco Landlords may lose everything [video]

#102

Post by mikewarot »

siliconc0w wrote: post #19

I'm totally in favor of a vacancy tax, every city should have them. Dude is like, "People are just leaving to live cheaper elsewhere, we can't fill these units!". Have you tried lowering the rent? Of course not.

If they lowered the rent... That would be a permanent loss because of the punitive restrictions on raising it.

That would be effectively writing off part of the property value forever. I'd wait for as long as possible to avoid that kind of loss.

Re: San Francisco Landlords may lose everything [video]

#103

Post by blitz_skull »

breakyerself wrote: post #87
blitz_skull wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say I’m getting wealthier like that’s inherently a bad thing? But beyond that, I still don’t think banning owning a rental (however that would be enforced anyway) is the solution there. It’s not a realistic suggestion.

It's not inherently a bad thing to get wealthier, but buying a necessity so you can rent it back to people isn't a great way to do it.

But I bought a necessity, ended up moving, and didn’t want to sell in the market conditions I was in. So I rented my house out.

You see how the intent is different? I personally know dozens, maybe hundreds of landlords from various geographical regions in my state, and most of their stories are the same.

But even barring that, I don’t understand where the thinking comes from that those with wealth can’t use it to secure more wealth. I’m not advocating for infinite gains here, but I’ve noticed a non-trivial portion of Hacker News seems to believe that gain is inherently immoral. Like wanting a better life or more for your family is inherently an evil thing. Some folks have more, some folks have less. Those with more should strive to help those with less; but I reject the notion that simply having more than someone else is bad.

Re: San Francisco Landlords may lose everything [video]

#104

Post by th0ma5 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #99
th0ma5 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does no one want to increase the housing supply then unless they can get federal money to do so?

Plenty of people do, but zoning rules make it expensive. Suppose you want to build a 20 story condo. The most efficient thing to do is to find an empty plot of land or a single family home and build it there, but that's prohibited by zoning. 20 story buildings aren't allowed there. Now what you have to do is find an existing 10 story condo and knock that down, because it's in a place zoned for tall buildings. But tha…

You're trying to make some kind of libertarian point, I'm talking about what real people are saying is really actually happening and what is needed. https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/3499112-solving-th... ... You're saying that demand isn't high enough for them to justify spending the money? That's exactly my point but you're saying they are beholden to do nothing and blame the government when by your own logic they just want more money.

Re: San Francisco Landlords may lose everything [video]

#105

Post by tapoxi »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #98
nvrmnd wrote: post #50

Free market principles do not apply well for apartments because of the limits on supplies and services and other externalities so I (like most here) am pretty supportive of legislation managing this. However, the legislative ideas and overall process for coming up with good, fair, and efficient laws in SF is absolutely abysmal. The lawmakers listen to the voters and the voters insist on laws that are just, well, bad.…

> In addition to it effectively destroying the community aspect of schools where your kids go to school with the neighbors which facilitates neighboring families meeting each other and becoming friends, walking to school together, and so on. This is the reason I'm hardcore opposed to bussing. It disrupts the ability of your stereotypical battle axe mothers from riding the schools ass. I'm sure school district goldbri…

Teachers hate it. A kid with a one hour commute got less sleep, and is typically exhausted. This means poor educational performance and behavior problems.

Re: San Francisco Landlords may lose everything [video]

#106

Post by eganist »

evilos wrote: post #27
eganist wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but probably that "fulfilling basic human needs shouldn't be for profit" I'm a colossal fan of co-ops and credit unions for this reason.

Maybe a more workable and less authoritarian tack would be that the government plays in the market as a limited profit entity, thereby ensuring that a cartel cannot fully capture the market and endlessly drive prices upwards. Limited profit (capped at some percentage over revenue) is allowed in order to let the entity invest in expansions so that they don't simply end up being 1% of the market that can be ignored by…

A public option, then? In the current climate, I'd prefer public options be not-for-profit (well, I'd prefer they exist at all, but of course it was sniped dead during negotiations for the ACA in the case of healthcare), but fair enough.

Honestly I'd be fine with the government profiting if it could be tied back to a mechanism that directly reduces a taxpayer's burden, basically "your tax share is reduced by x because total profit from government-run institutions was y"

It might even work to incentivize lawmakers to legislate in favor of the profit of such institutions in that they could then tell their constituents that they were responsible for their lower tax burden in a given year.

Re: San Francisco Landlords may lose everything [video]

#107

Post by KolenCh »

nvrmnd wrote: post #50

Free market principles do not apply well for apartments because of the limits on supplies and services and other externalities so I (like most here) am pretty supportive of legislation managing this. However, the legislative ideas and overall process for coming up with good, fair, and efficient laws in SF is absolutely abysmal. The lawmakers listen to the voters and the voters insist on laws that are just, well, bad.…

For a moment I thought you are saying that insisting on laws that are just is bad.

Re: San Francisco Landlords may lose everything [video]

#108

Post by IronWolve »

siliconc0w wrote: post #19

I'm totally in favor of a vacancy tax, every city should have them. Dude is like, "People are just leaving to live cheaper elsewhere, we can't fill these units!". Have you tried lowering the rent? Of course not.

Same with retail space, they wont lower the rent so units remain empty for years...

To make it fair for the small mom/pop owned units, maybe if they have to lower the rent, they should be able to lower the property value (and thus property tax), since its based off rent.

I've seen older units being sold as condos, because the owner just wanted out of the situation.

Re: San Francisco Landlords may lose everything [video]

#109

Post by nick-of-time »

alwa wrote: post #54

Today I learned The Epoch Times has a YouTube channel! Summary and background: the Epoch Times host interviews a landlord who’s concerned about the impact of SF’s Proposition M, which imposes a vacancy tax on residential units in multi-family dwellings with three or more units. The landlord manages a 25-unit building, which his uncle and father acquired decades ago. He blames the WFH phenomenon and crime for people l…

I'm not at all surprised that the propaganda arm of a fascist cult [1] has a Youtube channel. It's one of the best places for propaganda these days.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times

Re: San Francisco Landlords may lose everything [video]

#110

Post by pandaman »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #61
th0ma5 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to challenge your assumptions more, why couldn't you just make single family dwellings illegal in high demand areas? And have the state in charge of housing? Unless you mean to argue about current laws and situations, the main point of these discussions and this post is that they are not working.

The existing problem is that multi-family dwellings are illegal in many high demand areas. Otherwise it would be highly profitable to build them there. If you fix that you don't need to do anything else. Putting the state in charge of housing is the cause of the existing problem. They become captured by landlords, or favor higher property values because they increase property tax revenues. What you need is some const…

>The existing problem is that multi-family dwellings are illegal in many high demand areas

This is technically correct but the areas mentioned are the size of a block or a subdivision so it's hardly the limiting factor. You can build high rise apartments in any big city and multi-family anywhere. The reason prices on housing go up is that it costs a lot to build housing and it's pretty hard to secure financing for a housing project which you plan to sell/rent below cost. It's combined code compliance, materials, labor, and financing. If it costs $300 to build a square foot just in the labor and materials then it comes up at $150K for a tiny 500 sqf 1br and you'd need to rent that for more than $2000 per month to break even on the commercial loan you took. Throw in maintenance, lapses in occupancy and some profit and you are looking at close to $3K for a 500 sqf 1br. Unless it's on Manhattan or on an ocean beach somewhere, it's going to be very hard to find tenants.

It appears that America had ran up its credit card to the limit. Mass produced goods from China are still cheap but the hoses are just expensive, can't ship those in containers from Shenzhen. Playing with zoning is rearranging chairs on the deck of Titanic, it's not going to lower the cost of construction. And yes, adding more housing would lower the price but the problem is that adding housing is held up by the cost mostly and the developers only want to build in very limited prestigious areas where they hope to get tenants/buyers willing to pay their cost. It's not sustainable.

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