Why Do Fewer Renters Expect to Move? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Do Fewer Renters Expect to Move?

#41

Post by the_sleaze_ » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 1:46 PM UTC

morkalork wrote: post #38

the_sleaze_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy fix, the department of defense has been doing it for years in Southwest DC. Just build corporate housing. Then we can have little Amazon towns where all your needs are met and everyone lives in perfect harmony in downtown San Fransisco.

Could even include Amazon store credits in the compensation package!* * Non-transferrable, no cash value, forfeit upon separation, taxes on items purchased with credits must still be paid in USD by user

Toss in a robot that folds laundry and I'm in

Re: Why Do Fewer Renters Expect to Move?

#42

Post by quadragenarian » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 1:46 PM UTC

jsw97 wrote: post #15

bobson381 wrote: post #4

30 year mortgage is founded partly on the idea that your house will be worth more in the future when you sell it. That you can lock in a lower price now. Number cannot always go up. We are at the top of the carbon pulse. Financialization has taken us far from the material baseline of the rock we are flying through space on. Debt will only get us so far. For this and many other reasons, why would you believe a house "…

Buying a house isn't just about expected return. It's also about hedging. You need to live somewhere, so you have an implicit liability of a stream of rental costs. The most natural hedge for that is a house. If expected future rental costs go up, your house value goes up. If they go down, your house value goes down. Overall, your risk, in present value terms, is reduced. Of course this doesn't work exactly and you c…

Keep in mind though that by entering into a 20% down mortgage you are effectively levered up 5x against your local real estate market. So it’s not like you’re totally reducing your risk. Luckily for homeowners, home prices only go up since the GFC so this leverage seems like a good position to be in.

Re: Why Do Fewer Renters Expect to Move?

#43

Post by inigyou » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 1:46 PM UTC

petcat wrote: post #10

bobson381 wrote: post #4

30 year mortgage is founded partly on the idea that your house will be worth more in the future when you sell it. That you can lock in a lower price now. Number cannot always go up. We are at the top of the carbon pulse. Financialization has taken us far from the material baseline of the rock we are flying through space on. Debt will only get us so far. For this and many other reasons, why would you believe a house "…

You're falling for the trap of just thinking of buying a house as an investment . Buying a house can be an investment, but it's also buying a place to live. Even if the home's value merely keeps pace with inflation over 30 years, you've converted a largely fixed housing payment into ownership rather than paying ever-increasing rent indefinitely.

That isn't a trap if we're talking about how other people perceive things. You might want a place to live, but the houses are all owned by people who want investments, so for the purpose of explaining the housing market, they're investments.

Re: Why Do Fewer Renters Expect to Move?

#44

Post by recursivedoubts » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 1:47 PM UTC

petcat wrote: post #10

bobson381 wrote: post #4

30 year mortgage is founded partly on the idea that your house will be worth more in the future when you sell it. That you can lock in a lower price now. Number cannot always go up. We are at the top of the carbon pulse. Financialization has taken us far from the material baseline of the rock we are flying through space on. Debt will only get us so far. For this and many other reasons, why would you believe a house "…

You're falling for the trap of just thinking of buying a house as an investment . Buying a house can be an investment, but it's also buying a place to live. Even if the home's value merely keeps pace with inflation over 30 years, you've converted a largely fixed housing payment into ownership rather than paying ever-increasing rent indefinitely.

you are falling into the trap of thinking of a house as a maintenance-free place to live

Re: Why Do Fewer Renters Expect to Move?

#45

Post by inigyou » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 1:47 PM UTC

rogerrogerr wrote: post #33

Carrok wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along the same lines, you are buying a place. A place that you own and can do whatever you like with. I spent twenty years renting and twenty years of feeling like you can’t hang a picture on the wall, paint a room, upgrade an appliance, or really do anything to improve your surroundings, tends to get tiring.

Why can't you hang a picture on the wall? Fixing holes in drywall is super trivial, a good life skill to learn.

Is there a law saying your landlord has to accept the repair?

Re: Why Do Fewer Renters Expect to Move?

#46

Post by cauliflower2718 » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 1:47 PM UTC

rogerrogerr wrote: post #33

Carrok wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along the same lines, you are buying a place. A place that you own and can do whatever you like with. I spent twenty years renting and twenty years of feeling like you can’t hang a picture on the wall, paint a room, upgrade an appliance, or really do anything to improve your surroundings, tends to get tiring.

Why can't you hang a picture on the wall? Fixing holes in drywall is super trivial, a good life skill to learn.

Painting, too. Not sure how common or uncommon but my landlord explicitly allows painting, as long as it's not a dark color

Re: Why Do Fewer Renters Expect to Move?

#47

Post by fatnoah » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 1:47 PM UTC

petcat wrote: post #10

bobson381 wrote: post #4

30 year mortgage is founded partly on the idea that your house will be worth more in the future when you sell it. That you can lock in a lower price now. Number cannot always go up. We are at the top of the carbon pulse. Financialization has taken us far from the material baseline of the rock we are flying through space on. Debt will only get us so far. For this and many other reasons, why would you believe a house "…

You're falling for the trap of just thinking of buying a house as an investment . Buying a house can be an investment, but it's also buying a place to live. Even if the home's value merely keeps pace with inflation over 30 years, you've converted a largely fixed housing payment into ownership rather than paying ever-increasing rent indefinitely.

> Buying a house can be an investment, but it's also buying a place to live.

I'm a strong proponent of both owning and renting, and each has tradeoffs vs. the other. I've moved between renting and home ownership a couple times, and I appreciate the customizability of ownership along with the very real financial advantages.

On the other side, I've also enjoyed "freedom" of renting, where I didn't have to spend any additional time, energy, or money on maintenance tasks. In my HCOL part of the country, I could also afford the rent to live "downtown" when owning anything remotely similar was out of the question.

Your "also a place to live" line is fantastically underrated. When the housing market was flat or declining, I'd always get annoyed when people said something like "I've owned this house for 5 years, but now it's worth $20k less than when I bought it!". That also means if they sold it right now at that $20k "loss" then they effectively paid $333/month plus upkeep to live somewhere for 5 years!

Re: Why Do Fewer Renters Expect to Move?

#48

Post by willmadden » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 1:47 PM UTC

the_sleaze_ wrote: post #29

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way back when I started my career - I almost COULDN'T take a good job in Boston, because I couldn't figure out how I could literally live there long enough to get my first few paychecks to pay for my rent. I decided that I'd just go into credit card debt and live in the crappiest hotel that I could find until I had enough money to pay the first/last/security deposit. Luckily, I found some shady landlord on Craigslist…

Easy fix, the department of defense has been doing it for years in Southwest DC. Just build corporate housing. Then we can have little Amazon towns where all your needs are met and everyone lives in perfect harmony in downtown San Fransisco.

Yes, then we can build a company store where the slav... er, "employees" can shop and discuss how to be more productive on their projects!

Re: Why Do Fewer Renters Expect to Move?

#49

Post by lolnice » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 1:48 PM UTC

129487 wrote: post #8

Because you cannot pay market prices if you leave your rent controlled apartment. Once you are out, you never get one again. Apparently that is beyond the high and mighty Federal Reserve employees who wrote this speculation. The housing market needs to be socialized.

Get off Reddit, there is no rent control. It's thousands a month, they got you by the balls

Re: Why Do Fewer Renters Expect to Move?

#50

Post by inigyou » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 1:48 PM UTC

graceful6800 wrote: post #31

Yiin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

inflation disagrees with your premise, there is no reason why number can't always go up, there are plenty of countries that prove otherwise.

Mathematics agrees with you, there are in fact infinitely many numbers. Physics and reality do not. Once the number gets big enough it loses all practical value. Humans are not really built to reason about very large numbers. At some point you reach Zimbabwean inflation and your currency loses all value because everyone is paid in the trillions. Then you reset your currency back to lower numbers because that's what h…

There are some countries where a thousand or a million of their currency is worth a dollar. People just start thinking in thousands or millions.

Heck, the dollar is already it. What used to cost a penny now costs ten dollars. We just think in dollars and forget about the pennies.