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

Re: Why Do Fewer Renters Expect to Move?

#111

Post by preg_match » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 2:07 AM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #45

rogerrogerr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not sure, but they likely won't know. Too many people ask permission for things. You'd have better luck doing what big corporations have done for decades. You just do the thing, cover it up, and hopefully never have to ask for forgiveness. And if you DO have to ask for forgiveness, well that's still easier than asking for permission!

Re: Why Do Fewer Renters Expect to Move?

#112

Post by preg_match » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 2:11 AM UTC

mono442 wrote: post #9

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 "…

Even if the house is worth less, the morgage is eventually paid off. Rent has to be paid forever. I can't even imagine renting when I'm retired and have less money.

Realistically mortgages are also forever - very, very few people actually outright own their homes. Because when you sell, which you might be forced to do due to a new job, divorce, etc, you enter another mortgage.

Also homes are a bad bad retirement plan. If you're debating paying off your mortgage early, or investing said money in a 401k, 401k is almost always the correct choice, in just about every market. Debt is not a bad thing. Often having more debt means having more cash flow, which means greater investments. That's why companies don't outright buy their real estate, either.

Re: Why Do Fewer Renters Expect to Move?

#113

Post by preg_match » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 2:14 AM UTC

mindcandy wrote: post #73

Maybe my feed is biased. But, I’ve been seeing good arguments lately that “The rent is too damned high!” is largely a problem created by voters. And, I don’t know how we’re going to fix that. Ex: https://youtu.be/yoT76zITRx8 TLDR: 60% of both left and right wing voters like rent control. 98% of economists oppose it. Even liberal lefty economists. Even though they support price controls elsewhere like utility monopoli…

Rent control is really about curbing opportunist pricing and gauging, which people do because of course they do.

Realistically, a, say, capped 10% rent growth is MORE than enough to turn a profit on a property. In fact, you wouldn't just be turning a profit, you'd be compounding. Because your mortgage doesn't go up like that.

When we see this insane 100% rent bumps or whatever, that's opportunistic behavior. The landlord knows they can get away with it because of some blip in the current market, some temporary volatility they can leverage. That's bad for everyone involved.

For the landlord, they're trading off security in their investment for "more money now". They might not realize it, but it's a bad choice. Because eventually they will be forced to aggressively cut the rent or be pushed out. If they had just taken a modest hike year over year, they likely would've come out on top.

Re: Why Do Fewer Renters Expect to Move?

#114

Post by the_sleaze_ » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 3:50 PM UTC

jmyeet wrote: post #93

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.

You're so close to realizing the point but the difference is between a dystopian future and a future worth living. Corporate housing, and worker housing in general, is what we're bouldering towards. The only way to extract further wealth from most of the population is for them not to own anything. It's the Western equivalent of South Asian brick kilns. What we need instead is social housing like Vienna [1]. Americans…

It's a joke my friend. You should try to take things less seriously.