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Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

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Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#91

Post by FirmwareBurner »

zabzonk wrote: post #14
Sakos wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing is a fixed cost that everyone is required to pay. I can stop buying chicken. I can't stop paying for housing. There are peculiarities about housing as a "product" that make it nonsensical to compare to other products or markets. The housing market can easily increase prices as much as it wants without losing out on revenue or potential gains, and in many markets it has done so to the degree that millions of p…

many homeless people would disagree - food is more important

We're not talking about some poor African country suffering form famine. Food affordability is not as big of an issue in the west compared to the cost of housing.

We have mastered agriculture, supply chain and economies of scale to have cheap mas produced food that can keep even the poor from starving(and even affording them enough calories to get fat if they wish), but we did the exact opposite for housing so we can monetize it.

By design, western housing doesn't have the same political and market dynamics that drive cheap food to also drive cheap houses.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#92

Post by Ekaros »

wildrhythms wrote: post #85
Ekaros wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What really is difference between owning a stock and property? Or a bond... If we ban renting, why not ban other type of capitalism as well?

>What really is difference between owning a stock and property Well one of those things is needed for human survival.

So we should ban owning farm land? Or maybe electricity/fossil fuel production? Those are also needed for human survival.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#93

Post by wildrhythms »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #86
wildrhythms wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that and no mention of rent control...

If you have enough realestate, there's no need for rent control, because landlords will have to lower prices to get anyone to stay in their apartments, and empty apartments are still a huge cost to the owner. High costs of rent and (buying) houses is because there's not enough supply in the first place.

That policy has been tried for 50 years and all we've seen (and the topic of this thread) is prices gone higher and higher, and properties become more and more consolidated under megacorporations.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#94

Post by ajsnigrutin »

wildrhythms wrote: post #93
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have enough realestate, there's no need for rent control, because landlords will have to lower prices to get anyone to stay in their apartments, and empty apartments are still a huge cost to the owner. High costs of rent and (buying) houses is because there's not enough supply in the first place.

That policy has been tried for 50 years and all we've seen (and the topic of this thread) is prices gone higher and higher, and properties become more and more consolidated under megacorporations.

50 years ago, this place where I live was a socialist country and we built HUGE apartment building neighbourhoods (literally thousands of apartments) + all the infrastructure needed (schools, kindergardens, stores, parks,...).

After 1991 all of this has stoped.

I don't know where you are from, but when was the last time you guys built a new neighbourhood for 10, 20 thousand people to live in? Because i've been all over both always-capitalist and former-socialist countries (mostly europe), and most of them are old with just a few newer buildings, mostly replacing the demolished old ones. It really doesn't matter, slovenia (my home), or germany... you see a bunch of large apartment blocks built in the same style, for many many people to live in, and you just know it was built somewhere between 1960s and late 1980s, and not after.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#95

Post by herbstein »

pjc50 wrote: post #42
giantg2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That won't fix anything. Many rentals are apartment buildings and are built/owned by large companies. You would effectively make the situation worse because individuals wouldn't be able to build high density housing if they're only allowed one unit. Edit: why disagree?

Controversial opinion, but corporate landlords tend to be better than individual landlords because it's impersonal and it's harder to hide. They also have different tax treatment. > individuals wouldn't be able to build high density housing Who exactly has (a) enough money to build an apartment block and (b) not enough to put it in a corporate wrapper? (Admittedly the wrapper problem is a serious issue for any kind o…

> Controversial opinion, but corporate landlords tend to be better than individual landlords because it's impersonal and it's harder to hide

Best of both worlds: cooperative rental companies. Renters control everything collectively as a non-profit. They employ the custodian(s) and vote on what to invest any excess capital into. With this it means you're only paying as much as needed to maintain the buildings, your utilities, and saving up for larger renovations.

I've lived in multiple apartments organized like that, and frankly it beats every corporate/individual landlord I've been attached to.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#96

Post by rft »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #84
rft wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Germany and other countries could bring life back to rural areas if it mandated employers allow 100% WFH whoever possible as that would get a lot of people moving back to their hometown closer to their family especially if their family could help out with raising kids. tl;dr: Germany needs to heavily improve its rural/suburbs/general internet connectivity to encourage WFH. It can be insanely frustrating getting any…

>It turned out 1) did not connect the fiber connection they could get (quite literally "I don't understand this and never needed it." Older German rural people just don't care about anything resembling fast internet so the ISPs exploit that by gouging you. Especially since they do a lot of stuff by cash and snail-mail anyway. Rural Switzerland or Scandinavia is way better digitized.

I get the sentiment "I don't need it", but I do not understand the lack of consideration when you are landlord. The whole Corona WFH rush has demonstrated that digital infrastructure is an asset. If you have decent internet, you can either WFH yourself or attract people in roles allowing for WFH to your rental property. While tech workers (higher chance of WFH) in Germany are paid nowhere close to US salaries, they tend to be above average earners. Not sure why landlords do not see this simple (to me at least) connection between future rent opportunities and digital infrastructure.

Also, it does not even need to be something the individual landlord needs to figure out. As GP stated, rural areas can benefit of WFH. So a clever local official can figure out they need to build out infrastructure and(!) convince local landlords and developers to take part in this transformation.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#97

Post by etrautmann »

theonlybutlet wrote: post #87
andyferris wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the issue is the supply of rental (i.e. investment) properties is too low, do we want to encourage or discourage investment homes?

I think in the case of property, multiple supply/demand equilibriums are possible. Land is a finite resource and rents way exceed mortgage repayments. I think there is a way to encourage the supply of rental in a scenario where they hold less quantities of land.

Is that true in us cities? Mortgage payments seem to be much higher than rents on equivalent places right now.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#98

Post by FirmwareBurner »

rft wrote: post #96
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It turned out 1) did not connect the fiber connection they could get (quite literally "I don't understand this and never needed it." Older German rural people just don't care about anything resembling fast internet so the ISPs exploit that by gouging you. Especially since they do a lot of stuff by cash and snail-mail anyway. Rural Switzerland or Scandinavia is way better digitized.

I get the sentiment "I don't need it", but I do not understand the lack of consideration when you are landlord. The whole Corona WFH rush has demonstrated that digital infrastructure is an asset. If you have decent internet, you can either WFH yourself or attract people in roles allowing for WFH to your rental property. While tech workers (higher chance of WFH) in Germany are paid nowhere close to US salaries, they t…

>but I do not understand the lack of consideration when you are landlord.

Because the landlord only thinks in RoI. He most likely thinks the cost and hassle of adding faster internet on his property will not reflect in an increased rent price he could charge, so why bother?

>attract people in roles allowing for WFH to your rental property

The pool of workers in Germany with 100% remote work allowance is much smaller than you think. Most companie went back to 100% in office or at best hybrid meaning you still need to live close to work anyway, and those few workers that do have 100% WFH are a rare pool of mostly SW devs that use remote work to travel or visit family, not live in some boring German village.

Until 100% WFH becomes normalized for all office workers, your landlord has nothing to worry about.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#99

Post by xscott »

xdennis wrote: post #9

The problem isn't land owners it's landlords. Renting should be illegal and anyone caught accepting rent should lose his property to the renter. Owning a lot of land/houses isn't really the problem. It's when you're not using them that's the problem. You should just sell and not leech on society by renting.

> Renting should be illegal

Are you going to make hotels illegal too?

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#100

Post by dagw »

jppittma wrote: post #59
cpursley wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate more about what you mean and how this would work? Where do young adults live? Where do new residents in a city live?

There could be a government mortage program like the student loan program.

If I'm moving to a new city/country for a job (or university), I don't want to buy a place on day 1. I want to rent for a year or so to see if this is a place I actually want to live. This is even more true if I'm moving there on a shorter term contract.
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