Houses are for living, not for speculation • Hacker News Board

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#71

Post by skillina » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:29 PM UTC

Taronar wrote: post #29

Ekaros wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am against "speculation" on any sort of real estate. On other hand I am not against real estate investments. And I don't think single family housing deserves any kind of special treatment. I see no reason why someone providing capital to build a building and then renting it out to cover cost of that capital, maintenance and building cost is unreasonable or bad thing. Issue really is when market is manipulated to ke…

Lets say a transaction has 2 parties that want to extract value (builder, buyer) if there are 3 parties now everyone needs to make money. (builder, speculator, buyer) middle mans ALWAYS increase prices and add little to no value to the actual GDP of a country. They do offer financing, but a financing value of lets say 500k vs a construction value of 500k the construction value has more weight because it is fully fina…

"Speculators" are not built-in middlemen, they are competing on bids with the buyer. Perhaps there could be some policy put in place to level the playing field between an owner-occupant who will bring mortgage-related red tape and an institutional investor who can make an immediate cash purchase, waive inspections, etc.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#72

Post by bpt3 » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:32 PM UTC

CodingJeebus wrote: post #50

Ekaros wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am against "speculation" on any sort of real estate. On other hand I am not against real estate investments. And I don't think single family housing deserves any kind of special treatment. I see no reason why someone providing capital to build a building and then renting it out to cover cost of that capital, maintenance and building cost is unreasonable or bad thing. Issue really is when market is manipulated to ke…

> I see no reason why someone providing capital to build a building and then renting it out to cover cost of that capital, maintenance and building cost is unreasonable or bad thing. The problem is the scale of investment. For example, 3 companies own 19,000 houses, or 11% of the rental market, in the Atlanta, GA area[0]. The market is being "manipulated" in that investors with vast amounts of cash are outbidding fol…

No, the easiest way to curb this is to make it easier to build homes so that supply is closer to the level of demand, not create even more policies that will reduce supply.

Controlling 11% of the rental market is not enough to manipulate it, and that's one of the most concentrated markets in the US if I remember correctly. It's not an actual issue. If those 3 companies are in fact colluding, use the existing laws against that to prosecute them instead of inventing more counterproductive policies.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#73

Post by recursivedoubts » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:33 PM UTC

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #67

recursivedoubts wrote: post #31

You have to understand that our money supply is based on debt. It shouldn't be: the money supply is a public good and should be managed for the public good via citizens dividend or whatever, but currently it is debt-based and managed for the private good of the banks. Housing debt has to expand or the economy tanks because the money supply shrinks. Since we are at the end of the current debt cycle, housing has gone v…

Money is a promise of future work or in other words debt itself.

I don't disagree w/that definition (i think it's incomplete: store of value, medium of exchange, unit of account, etc) however when I use the term debt loosely here I mean the current privately issued, exponential, compounding interest mechanism.

That's the fundamental problem. This was recognized for a long time in the west, we banned usury, but now if you use that word people either have no idea what you are talking about or get mad at you because they make good money off it.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#74

Post by mothballed » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:34 PM UTC

mherkender wrote: post #60

mothballed wrote: post #19

Allow anyone to build a shack and shit into a hole on any postage stamp size of land they could get, and it would be far more affordable.

You can find places like that all over the world. They're slums. Maybe regulations put too much burden on homeownership but slums create huge issues as well. Basic plumbing shouldn't be taken for granted.

Built my house for 60k (post-COVID dollars). A couple turns of 3" pipe into a tank. Up into a toilet. Not much more than that. It dumps into a big concrete tank and then from that the effluent goes out a couple pipes with holes drilled along it and into the soil. Quite clean and very cheap.

I think the 'plumbing' for sewage took me 2 days and $300 in pipe. The septic system was maybe $2000 in materials, you could easily replicate it with a shovel and a couple months of doing day labor on the weekends.

I take it for granted because it is extremely cheap, extremely easy, quite sanitary, and basically a footnote on building the shack. This ain't the 60s anymore, any tom/dick/harry can plumb a whole house using extremely forgiving pvc and pex with minimal cost or thought, though they're usually stopped by asinine licensing rules and the dumbass notion you need building plans (I had none).

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#75

Post by skillina » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:38 PM UTC

horsawlarway wrote: post #47

Taronar wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets say a transaction has 2 parties that want to extract value (builder, buyer) if there are 3 parties now everyone needs to make money. (builder, speculator, buyer) middle mans ALWAYS increase prices and add little to no value to the actual GDP of a country. They do offer financing, but a financing value of lets say 500k vs a construction value of 500k the construction value has more weight because it is fully fina…

I'm going to suggest that the "buy" case actually has far more interested parties trying to extract money. In no particular order: - Financing company - Realtor x 2 (both seller and buyer) - loan servicing company (may or may not be the financing company) - Insurance companies (multiple, depending on how financing is achieved, everything from property itself, to title, to PMI) - Appraisers - Home inspectors - Closing…

The difference is that all those parties serve a necessary function. We could debate the tax office - arguably the function of a transaction tax is precisely to deter speculation or sales for short-term use.

Some speculators serve a necessary function but many do not. In my area it's not uncommon to see homes listed where the last sale was ~6 months ago and it's clear they just slapped some paint on it, replaced appliances in ways that are not generally to my taste, and then doubled the asking price.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#76

Post by dahart » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:43 PM UTC

throwaway132448 wrote: post #44

Unaffordable housing turns entrepreneurship into a rare privilege. Whether you think that’s a good thing or not depends on whether you _actually_ believe in meritocracy or not. I’ve found most people don’t believe in it as much as they say they do.

Which kind of meritocracy - the original definition that points out that “merit” is a function of wealth and social advantage, or today’s sanitized version that attributes merit to achievement while ignoring all the advantages that lead to ahievement? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#77

Post by bpt3 » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:48 PM UTC

jrflo wrote: post #61

juliusceasar wrote: post #2

So is energy, food, water and space. And yet, all cost money.

I think energy is actually a good example here of how it should work. At least in the US, it's pretty tightly regulated. Utilities are allowed to run a profitable business, but it's not a totally free market like housing is. We could certainly use some regulations to prevent private equity from buying up millions of single family homes as assets.

It's hard to think of a market that is less free than housing, including electric utilities with the advent of solar. Probably pharmaceuticals? I'm sure there are a couple others. Calling it "totally free" is naive.

Because of how tightly coupled local taxation is to the real estate market, the political risk associated with angering local homeowners, and the regulatory capture performed by local government employees and supporters of the status quo, it's highly, highly regulated already in nearly every populated area of the US.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#78

Post by horsawlarway » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:48 PM UTC

skillina wrote: post #75

horsawlarway wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to suggest that the "buy" case actually has far more interested parties trying to extract money. In no particular order: - Financing company - Realtor x 2 (both seller and buyer) - loan servicing company (may or may not be the financing company) - Insurance companies (multiple, depending on how financing is achieved, everything from property itself, to title, to PMI) - Appraisers - Home inspectors - Closing…

The difference is that all those parties serve a necessary function. We could debate the tax office - arguably the function of a transaction tax is precisely to deter speculation or sales for short-term use. Some speculators serve a necessary function but many do not. In my area it's not uncommon to see homes listed where the last sale was ~6 months ago and it's clear they just slapped some paint on it, replaced appl…

Yes, and those people aren't landlords renting the property.

So I'm not certain how to tie that back to the original discussion about not needing a special case to handle people accumulating multiple residential buildings.

--

Side note - I don't see this case pretty much anywhere (and I'm literally in the process of looking at homes). I do see cases where a home sold 6 months to a year ago and the new price is ~10% higher, and I do see cases where a home sold in 2021/2022 and now the price is 2x higher.

But what I don't see any of is doubled sales price in a 6 month window with just a new coat of paint.

So I'm not certain how this is relevant at all given it's non-existent in any of the markets I'm looking at.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#79

Post by mothballed » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:52 PM UTC

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #67

recursivedoubts wrote: post #31

You have to understand that our money supply is based on debt. It shouldn't be: the money supply is a public good and should be managed for the public good via citizens dividend or whatever, but currently it is debt-based and managed for the private good of the banks. Housing debt has to expand or the economy tanks because the money supply shrinks. Since we are at the end of the current debt cycle, housing has gone v…

Money is a promise of future work or in other words debt itself.

Commodity money isn't necessarily that though. Debt is useful between people that trust each other or intermediaries, but if you trust absolutely no one you can use useful commodities as money. These also happen to be the forms of money that tend to be more resistant to government collapse. They have intrinsic value that stand on its own and encapsulate already performed work rather than just the promise of it.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#80

Post by Arnt » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:57 PM UTC

recursivedoubts wrote: post #31

You have to understand that our money supply is based on debt. It shouldn't be: the money supply is a public good and should be managed for the public good via citizens dividend or whatever, but currently it is debt-based and managed for the private good of the banks. Housing debt has to expand or the economy tanks because the money supply shrinks. Since we are at the end of the current debt cycle, housing has gone v…

Money isn't managed by anyone. There's an excellent description here: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-... Scan for the sentence "at that moment, new money is created" and then read the whole thing anyway ;)

It seems to me that if you want some sort of money creation management role in the economy, you need to restrict people's ability to lend and borrow from each other. So if you wanted to lend me money, or you wanted to borrow from me, we would have to apply for permission.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of anyone who's tried to restrict people's right to borrow from a willing lender. It doesn't seem like a good idea intuitively, but I do think it's something you must do if you want to have a money creation manager.