I don't get the hostility to car washes. I've owned cars for 40 years and I'm pretty sure I've never hand washed one once. Life's too short. I like and need car washes.
Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
371–380 of 615 posts
Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#372I really hate sounding like a broken record but this is just another instance of how low property taxes and the absence of land value taxes massively benefits low-value businesses. The real business of car washes is real estate, it's profitable enough to get 3-4x leverage with a low interest loan. TBH I think real estate used to have high information asymmetry between local residents and large investors; low property…
> The real business of car washes is real estate. Is there any evidence of this? Companies like Mister Carwash lease nearly all their properties and when they purchase plots seem to alway try to do a sale and lease. Their latest results claim they run 436 sites and lease 427: https://ir.mistercarwash.com/news-events/press-releases/deta...
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Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For example, in my city we have a carwash with its improvements valued at $400,000 and a biotech building with its improvements valued at $275,000,000. That's well and good, but, you know, people still want to wash their cars, and probably don't feel like driving 30 miles out of town to do it.
The pro-land value tax response is that, if someone really believed people highly valued washing their cars in the city, one could open up a car wash on expensive land. If people really don't want to drive 30 minutes but also really want to wash their car, they can pay more to use this expensive in-town car wash. It is of course possible that the economics wouldn't make sense to support such a use of urban land in th…
The car wash also doesn’t have to be the only thing on that land. build up - put a high-rise up and have a car wash at the ground level.
Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#374Henry George FTW.
Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#375Will it really be like the coffee market? I don't think so. Gen Z has the least intent to buy properties, buy cars, how will cars washes sustain in the future?
Is it intent or financial? If I couldn’t afford something, i can see myself, not bothering to try.
Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
$30/month to wait in a line. Fun times we live in.
Why assume there is a line? I spent like $1500 just for the tickets twice last year to take my family of 4 to Disneyland which is mostly standing in line.
Surely Disneyland is more fun than a car wash
Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#377I really hate sounding like a broken record but this is just another instance of how low property taxes and the absence of land value taxes massively benefits low-value businesses. The real business of car washes is real estate, it's profitable enough to get 3-4x leverage with a low interest loan. TBH I think real estate used to have high information asymmetry between local residents and large investors; low property…
Land value tax is turning out to be this year’s universal basic income.
When the wish for a positive solution doesn't pan out, people turn to the spiteful negative. Turn up the pain on others, that will solve things. Never mind that many real estate tax regimes already include a component based on the land value. Presumably to LVT enthusiasts those just aren't high enough. When the right level of pain has created the perfect incentives, wasteful duplexes will vanish and high density arcologies will spring forth out of the ground!
The real root of the problem was touched upon by the OP - the past two plus decades of ridiculously low interest rates as set by the Fed in support of one talking-head crisis or another. Borrowed money can only be invested in things banksters can understand, which given their limited imaginations is chiefly single family beige spec homes.
Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
The pro-land value tax response is that, if someone really believed people highly valued washing their cars in the city, one could open up a car wash on expensive land. If people really don't want to drive 30 minutes but also really want to wash their car, they can pay more to use this expensive in-town car wash. It is of course possible that the economics wouldn't make sense to support such a use of urban land in th…
The car wash also doesn’t have to be the only thing on that land. build up - put a high-rise up and have a car wash at the ground level.
Great point. Maybe you get clever with it and make it an amenity for your building and charge a lot for others who want to use it (etc).
Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somehow the idea of perpetually paying property taxes and land value taxes doesn't sound appealing to me, especially since businesses already pay taxes. I don't understand the argument of designing a system to hurt a specific business type such as low value businesses. If there's a loophole such as lack of sales tax for car washes, fix that, but let the playing field remain even. If desirable high value businesses ar…
> I don't understand the argument of designing a system to hurt a specific business type such as low value businesses. The argument is that good business spots are a limited community resource that it makes sense to tax, like radio spectrum. If you can make good use of the space you're taking up, go ahead, but you should compete fairly with other uses of the space. If anything taxing space use makes more sense than t…
> a profitable business is probably one that's serving the community well, whereas a business that takes up space and doesn't generate much profit is no good for anyone.
I think that attributes a lot more to profitability than such a metric deserves. Perhaps in a more narrow and ruthlessly capitalistic sense profitability signifies that a business is doing what it's trying to do well, but it's a big leap to get from there to how well its serving whatever is considered to be a community these days. Among other problems, just because some tiny amount of that money conceivably stays around in the region and people can buy stuff does not mean that the cost of the business being there isn't quite a lot higher, hence the term tragedy of the commons and the hollowing out of let's say America
Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So my main concern related to destruction of natural land is that there is a disincentive to keep land natural if you have to pay the tax anyway. There’s no need to limit land value taxes based on density as that’s what’s giving land its value. With the property if the tax is say 0.2%. An acre of farmland worth in rural Idaho worth 20k would be assessed as being worth 20k in a land value tax and an acre of swamp mi…
> There’s no need to limit land value taxes based on density as that’s what’s giving land its value. That can't be the case; density is an amenity and is, by definition, not part of the value of the land.
The point of land value tax is to charge the same taxes on an empty lot as to a building close by on the same sized lot. Under regular property taxes a speculator might buy a building, tear it down, and sit on the vacant lot for years, as a vacant lot is worth less and so lowers their taxes. With a land value tax they pay the same money either way, which may be higher overall - the general expectation is denser cities would set the tax higher to encourage land to be put to more productive usage - taller buildings, ground floor retail to go with the apartments or office space, etc.
Perhaps this isn't the value of the land as you would like to define it, but rather a way for local government to encourage land be put to more productive usage for everyone who lives or works nearby - without dictating exactly what that usage might be.