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Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

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Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#321

Post by pc86 »

greenie_beans wrote: post #276
vovavili wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have yet to read a comprehensive overview of how this happened and how we get out of it Allow me to introduce you to Bryan Caplan - https://www.amazon.com/dp/1952223415

i would love to hear a YIMBY consider the market forces/how capitalism works and not just reduce it to regulation. aka when it costs over $500k to build a single apartment unit and most of those costs are construction with very little of the regulation burden driving up that cost.

If we're talking about home prices why are you talking about apartments? There are a lot of costs associated with apartment buildings that simply don't exist for SFH and MFH builds.

Apartments are a different beast.

Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#322

Post by reducesuffering »

mamonster wrote: post #286
inglor_cz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No amount of money will help jurisdictions that still refuse to permit new buildings in face of a constant influx of people. You cannot live in Musk's banking account. You have to have the actual physical structure, and current laws in hotspots like San Francisco and New York do their utmost to prevent new development. Places like Austin, which are less restrictive, don't have this problem.

>You cannot live in Musk's banking account. You have to have the actual physical structure, and current laws in hotspots like San Francisco and New York do their utmost to prevent new development. >Places like Austin, which are less restrictive, don't have this problem. Not really fair to compare 2 cities on the waterfront with no obvious space to build over to a city in the middle of Texas. San Francisco is even wor…

We've had the technology to build skyscrapers for over 100 years. They're illegal in 90% of the city

Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#323

Post by cpburns2009 »

chadgpt3 wrote: post #261
cpburns2009 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else do live in an area short term, with no desire to purchase property, without the existence of someone owning the rented property?

How would I own a microwave if I only needed a microwave for two months?

A microwave is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to purchase than housing. In fact, they appear to be too cheap to be available at Aaron's for rent. So you're going to have to cough up $50 for a microwave from Walmart if you only want one for two months.

Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#324

Post by pc86 »

throwaway041207 wrote: post #268
amazingamazing wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very simple. Housing is not built.

This reductionism doesn't seem useful. The population of people who want to buy homes has not grown in any way that is proportional to the cost of a home.

I've yet to hear anyone say why "build more" isn't a valid answer to lowering the cost of housing. Even if new builds stay at exactly the same price they're at today, the price of older homes will decrease as supply increases.

And I don't just mean in this thread, I mean ever. It's always hand-wavey "it doesn't work like that" when the evidence suggests that it does.

Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#325

Post by cloverich »

Aurornis wrote: post #62
whoknowsidont wrote: post #20

Landlords are the least productive class in society, and it's not even close in terms of ranking.

The market rate and supply and demand are going to determine the price of housing whether or not you have landlords. Remove landlords from existence and the alternative is to make everyone buy homes. I guess that would drive housing prices down a little because so much of the population would be living with their parents until they save up enough for a down payment, which might not occur in their lifetime. So demand…

demand is not number of buyers. it is amount of dollars buying. Excluding investors will disproportionately drive down prices.

Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#326

Post by rafram »

nullorempty wrote: post #98
rafram wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$35,000 in 1998 is $72,500 in 2026, which is still a totally fine income. I know people living pretty well on that in New York City .

well, if one bedroom now goes for 2000$ that's x4 increase where as the 72K vs 35K is only x2 increase So, no, your math doesn't work.

Who said a one-bedroom is $2,000?

Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#327

Post by NDlurker »

ghaff wrote: post #146
mrweasel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably also doesn't help that to many people want/need to live in the same few areas. If you could take your office job (which in most cases would work perfectly fine) and move to a less popular area, 30% might be rather high.

That's the thing or at least one thing. These discussions aren't about most small towns and cities in the Midwest. They're about prime areas on the coasts for the most part. Heck where I live about an hour west of Boston/Cambridge is a lot cheaper than the metro itself for the most part.

I'm paying 28% of my net income for rent and utilities on a one bedroom apartment. I could find a cheaper place too and it would be just as nice, just not in as desirable part of town. Not sure I'll ever be able to afford a house though.

Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#328

Post by reducesuffering »

greenie_beans wrote: post #294
inglor_cz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No amount of money will help jurisdictions that still refuse to permit new buildings in face of a constant influx of people. You cannot live in Musk's banking account. You have to have the actual physical structure, and current laws in hotspots like San Francisco and New York do their utmost to prevent new development. Places like Austin, which are less restrictive, don't have this problem.

housing is expensive everywhere, not just in SF and NYC. def expensive in Austin. how do the zoning laws in SF make NYC more expensive?

Housing in SF and NYC are on some level substitute goods. Many of the people living there are mobile and the ones deciding prices on the margin. If SF rent was $10k and NYC was $3k, many are going to leave SF to get a similar type of lifestyle in NYC for cheaper, raising demand for NYC housing. If SF zoning laws allowed building an incredible amount of housing, lowering rents to $2k, while NYC is at $4k, many people would leave NYC, lower housing demand and thus rents, to get a similar urban lifestyle in SF.

This is the whole crux of why NIMBY is such a collective problem. When NYC doesn't build because SF should, when SF doesn't build because the Bay Area should, when the Bay Area shouldn't build because Texas should, everyone collectively pays higher prices because overall housing supply is reduced and many people move between them.

Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#329

Post by fooker »

raybb wrote: post #280
rootusrootus wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you remove landlords (but keep property managers, developers, etc In this scenario, who owns the property? And if you are advocating that everyone should own their home, what is the point of a property manager? What about the people who do not actually want to own their home?

Community land trusts, cooperatives, nonprofits, universities, local government, etc. The problem is always financing. If you're going to own a place you need a lot of upfront capital. If you own a place and plan to maximize rent increases it's easy to leverage your new asset to buy more properties. But if you just want to keep it near cost then you need a new infusion of capital for each new property. So, by their n…

The problem is not capital here. Universities and governments have quite a bit of capital. They could do this in a larger scale.

It's more about risk management. Do you want your university to be disbanded or your local government bankrupt if there is a war or natural disaster, or even a standard city block fire.

I assure you wars and natural disasters are not that uncommon in the grand scheme of things. That's why we have people or corporations with a higher appetite for risk assume the risk. These entities, unfortunately, don't always have your best interests in mind.

Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#330

Post by pc86 »

zugi wrote: post #265
jader201 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the jobs to get replaced by AI, I would be happy to see realtors to be first in line (but I also think this is wishful thinking). I feel like I get very little value out of what seems to be a mostly fixed/required price. I know flat fee realtors exist, and if/when we sell our home, I’ll be looking into this heavily. But I feel like they rank up there with car salespeople/dealers.

I used a discount buyer's agent and it worked great! We viewed houses on the internet ourselves, went to open houses ourselves, and arranged showings with seller's agents ourselves. Once we had it narrowed down to two houses, we brought our buyer's agent to look at both houses, offer suggestions, and do all the bidding and purchase paperwork. The realtor cartel still enforced a 6% commission, with half to the seller'…

Yeah even our best realtor, who I actually liked and thought he did a good job (see other comment here) spent probably 1/3 of his total time on our purchase just hanging out or also walking around an open house. Such a waste IMO.
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