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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

#141

Post by fallingknife »

jppittma wrote: post #64
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.

I think this needs a bit more nuance. Renting because you can't afford to own is obviously a scam. Financially literate people don't tolerate this sort of thing with cars/furniture, but are put in a position with housing where we don't have a choice.

We don't tolerate it for cars and furniture because you can take them with you when you move. If I had to sell my car and buy a new one every time I moved, you can be damn sure I would rather rent one. And buying/selling cars is a lot easier than houses.

Another thing to consider is that houses come with a 6% commission to pay the agents. If I have to move a few years later, and can't sell the house for 6% more than I bought it, I have to take a capital loss.

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

#142

Post by bsder »

balderdash wrote: post #63
bsder wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It really is high time there is some serious regulation around home ownership, especially as an investment vehicle. Occupancy taxes would be a very good start--especially if applied aggressively to investment holders (resident owners aren't really the problem) who can't demonstrate that they live in a space. It's a lot harder calculation to hold a space unoccupied in the hope of getting better rent if you're starin…

I don’t get the impression that there are tons of residential housing units sitting empty in high demand areas (excluding seasonal vacation areas, trophy properties of the rich, and stuff caught in rebt control purgatory)

AirBnB "investment properties", for example, are still clogging up a lot of areas that have tourist flows.

Some of the residential apartment units, for example, are playing pricing games with rental prices vs occupancy because they can blame it on "pricing software" right now.

An occupancy tax would neutralize those.

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

#143

Post by balderdash »

bsder wrote: post #142
balderdash wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get the impression that there are tons of residential housing units sitting empty in high demand areas (excluding seasonal vacation areas, trophy properties of the rich, and stuff caught in rebt control purgatory)

AirBnB "investment properties", for example, are still clogging up a lot of areas that have tourist flows. Some of the residential apartment units, for example, are playing pricing games with rental prices vs occupancy because they can blame it on "pricing software" right now. An occupancy tax would neutralize those.

Ehh, take San Francisco there are like ~6,000 Airbnb listings (let’s assume they’re all dedicated spec properties) if you put those all on the market, that’d be like be like 1.5 months of inventory, you might make a dent that month, but you’re not moving the needle…

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

#144

Post by dee-bee »

fallingknife wrote: post #71
dee-bee wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who wants to rent? I imagine most would opt to own instead. Rent is certainly far higher than a mortgage would be, which makes little sense if you're trying to encourage ownership (as often is the story about the american dream)

Anybody who doesn't want to: - put up a ton of capital - take housing price risk - enter into a long term commitment - deal with maintenance and repairs - deal with selling my investment every time I move And that includes me. I want to rent. I want the landlord to take care of all that crap for me. And I'm tired of all these people complaining about it.

[dead]

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

#145

Post by fatfingerd »

fallingknife wrote: post #138
fatfingerd wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a nonprofit group running/developing a housing area and renting to its members is much nicer than having to own at least a condo and then dealing with a bunch of bank/lawyer/realtor nonsense every time you want to move.

I don't want to be a member of a non profit housing group. Sounds like an HOA but made worse by the sanctimony and lack of incentives of people who work for non profits. I just want to hand over my money to a landlord and not think about it. My only considerations are what I pay and what I get in return. How much the landlord is making isn't at all relevant to me.

You want to pay more for less reliable service and have it used against adequate housing to ensure the service continues to decline?

A renter from a co-op, etc doesn't have to do anything for lower rent, more rights, options, etc, than another renter in the same city.

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

#146

Post by candiodari »

badcppdev wrote: post #126
candiodari wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But does it matter? The way housing problems were always fixed was very simple and without any kind of tax: with the government building social housing, allocated according to social principles (you pay the same, but the size of the apartment is determined by the number of kids you have). A LOT of non-luxury housing. This has nearly stopped. These buildings were famously bad. First, they tended to be unfair and viola…

Sorry I don't understand, "they divide up existing properties". Also many Western cities have very high numbers of homes that are vacant. Seems like a tax on that behaviour would be hard to argue about?

I thought the vacant homes were in the "thousands", let's say 10k, for a city like New York. Most of these are uninhabitable. I mean, it's sad and public and horrible, but it certainly isn't going to solve homelessness. They're a drop on a hot plate.

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

#147

Post by etrautmann »

SauciestGNU wrote: post #106
etrautmann wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Small city resident checking in here, 1br apartments are going for $1500/mo on average here, and we're considered an extremely affordable place to live. The average person I know carrying a mortgage has a payment below that for much more living space. What I would say we're missing is condominiums in the city center. Lots of apartments, fewer places to own in the inventory of downtown housing.

Yes but those people got mortgages before the last year. With rates at 6-7%, the payments are going to be a lot higher or you get a lot less.

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

#148

Post by Kretinsky »

bsder wrote: post #44
Kretinsky wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a chicken and egg problem. Reduce public services in rural areas, get population outflow, reduce public services even more. You can stop the vicious circle by increasing the services back to make it attractive and at the same time densify rural cities to make them less costly to cater to.

> at the same time densify rural cities This does not work. People live in rural areas because they don't want density . That is the whole point. (Alternatively, it might be because they are too poor to move. However, densifying/gentrifying an area does not fix that--it just boots people to a different poor rural area.) You are trying to make rural areas viable by making them a city. You might as well just improve th…

People live in rural areas for a multitude or reasons. Not all rural towns are like in the US, some have streets, some are dense.

In Europe, a lot of the small towns are pretty dense, due to the historical need to preserve agricultural land and have a community to rely on[0]. In ex-soviet countries, you will often see in the countryside condominiums, as it was then seen as much more efficient and better community-wise.

So yes, if you densify rural towns to reduce sprawl, it becomes much easier to provide good services like doctors, groceries and schools.

[0] Here is one that comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordes-sur-Ciel

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

#149

Post by Kretinsky »

pjc50 wrote: post #49
Kretinsky wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a chicken and egg problem. Reduce public services in rural areas, get population outflow, reduce public services even more. You can stop the vicious circle by increasing the services back to make it attractive and at the same time densify rural cities to make them less costly to cater to.

> rural cities This is an oxymoron.

Rural towns if you want.
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