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The house I was born in sold for $4000

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Re: The house I was born in sold for $4000

#81

Post by nitrogen »

sliverstorm wrote: post #66
rdl wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shantytown full of rich (at least, in earning potential elsewhere) startup/burningman type people which grows around convenient fiber might be different than one full of labor surrounding a mine.

I don't really buy it. The hallmark of shantytowns is everything is "half-assed". I can't see tech workers breaking out the saws and sandpaper and building quality neighborhoods in their spare time, and nobody will invest real money and labor into something you intend to bulldoze in 3-5 years. You will also get a domino effect; people with money and the desire for a nice place to live will automatically avoid your sh…

I can't see tech workers breaking out the saws and sandpaper and building quality neighborhoods in their spare time...

Why not? Building physical things for yourself can be just as satisfying as building virtual things for others.

Re: The house I was born in sold for $4000

#82

Post by istorical »

rdl wrote: post #31

I'd really like to see a low-tax, low regulation part of the US (WA, NV, TX, or TN) where someone buys a few thousand acres and lets people build "temporary" structures (with power/fiber/wifi/etc.) for living and solo-working, combined with some more permanent structures for offices, meetings, socialization, etc. Essentially like a 2-5 year Burning Man encampment campus for various startup projects. If someone's "per…

There's no need for someone to buy a few thousand acres and let people build structures. You could move to several 250,000+ population cities in the Midwest and there are already startup communities, incubators, and coworking spaces. I live in Omaha and went to school in Lincoln, NE. Omaha is getting gigabit internet soon from CenturyLink, Kansas City has Google Fiber. I worked at an incubator in Lincoln for the summer after my sophomore year in college and got the chance to build whatever I wanted to build with a team of five other students with all expenses paid. There are startups here that have problems finding enough qualified technical talent. I actually laughed really hard when I interned in Palo Alto and saw the internet speeds at our office.

Anyway, my point is that the problem isn't one of infrastructure. It's a chicken and egg problem in meatspace: if there were huge startups hubs in cheaper cities then it would be an easy decision for many to move to lower cost of living cities, but it's hard to start a movement. Silicon Valley's present success is the result of decades of tradition. What makes the small towns in the South Bay interesting places to live isn't the infrastructure but the density of interesting people.

Edit: I should add that the cost of living in the Midwest for a decently frugal, childless hacker willing to live with roommates is indeed $15,000 or less.

Re: The house I was born in sold for $4000

#83

Post by declan »

jluxenberg wrote: post #15

Homeowners of HN: how do you justify tying up a large percentage of your net worth in a home?

I own a single-family house on the San Francisco peninsula which I bought three years ago (and spent the summer of 2010 remodeling it and the summer of 2011 landscaping it).

What others have said elsewhere in this thread is true: owning a home limits your flexibility in terms of moving for another job. It ties up a lot of your assets, for most people, in a decaying pile of lumber that needs maintenance and upkeep and furnace replacements and driveway repaving and so on. Patrick.net, run by a SF bay area programmer-renter, is an able representation of this point of view.

For me, the benefits outweigh the costs. I'm in the mid-peninsula off the 280, so if necessary I can work at any job between and including San Francisco and San Jose and closer portions of the east bay. I was tired of renting and wanted a place that I could customize and run multiple Cat6 and RG-6 cables to each room, install a home automation system, etc. Plus single-family homes available for rental aren't as nice as the ones available for purchase. Finally it's a hedge against inflation.

Those are reasons why, to a first approximation, anyone in the SF bay area who plans to stay here long enough and can afford to buy a home does.

As bradleyjg said further down, the relative desirability of home ownership is also due in part to government subsidies. The first $250,000-$500,000 of appreciation in home value is not taxed when you sell. And mortgage interest is tax deductible.

Re: The house I was born in sold for $4000

#84

Post by sliverstorm »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #80
sliverstorm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really buy it. The hallmark of shantytowns is everything is "half-assed". I can't see tech workers breaking out the saws and sandpaper and building quality neighborhoods in their spare time, and nobody will invest real money and labor into something you intend to bulldoze in 3-5 years. You will also get a domino effect; people with money and the desire for a nice place to live will automatically avoid your sh…

So basically you're saying "that's hard and vaguely similar things have failed before." That's not much of a contribution to the discussion.

I'm saying "that doesn't make sense and the closest analogues failed before, please try to convince me more". This isn't a courtroom, but until rdl puts forth a solid case, the burden of proof is not upon the detractors.

Re: The house I was born in sold for $4000

#85

Post by sliverstorm »

nitrogen wrote: post #81
sliverstorm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really buy it. The hallmark of shantytowns is everything is "half-assed". I can't see tech workers breaking out the saws and sandpaper and building quality neighborhoods in their spare time, and nobody will invest real money and labor into something you intend to bulldoze in 3-5 years. You will also get a domino effect; people with money and the desire for a nice place to live will automatically avoid your sh…

I can't see tech workers breaking out the saws and sandpaper and building quality neighborhoods in their spare time... Why not? Building physical things for yourself can be just as satisfying as building virtual things for others.

Because as much as engineers tend to think they are experts in all fields, they aren't actually. So take a bunch of working professionals who just came home from an 8-hour day, and see how much quality skilled labor in fields they don't know anything about you can get.

I mean, I like building things, yes. I make small tables, I replace parts on my car. But I can't really hope to raise a decent house, even if I had 20 of me.

Ok, so you managed to put up a house? Wait, there's more! Did you build it to code for fire, sanitation, earthquakes...? Of course, some of the codes are overly pedantic and there is some baggage there, but frankly I don't expect IT professionals moonlighting as completely untrained architects will build houses that aren't going to crush hundreds of people in earthquakes or start fires.

Re: The house I was born in sold for $4000

#86

Post by nitrogen »

gridmaths wrote: post #70
Jun8 wrote: post #27

In his much-quoted column, Friedman says( http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/friedman-ne... ): "Every middle-class job today is being pulled up, out or down faster than ever." Middle income families who rely on manufacturing has been hit hard, with no prospects of an exit.

yeah, well maybe all manufacturing will be superseded by 3D printing.. in which case you'd want to move into design rather than assembly. I think eg. Foxcon is going to be a very temporary thing. I always thought that at some point a robot arm will be cheaper than a human to assemble electronics.. but we may skip that stage altogether. Pretty soon you'll just print your iPhone, bypassing assembly completely.

3D printing electronics from the transistor (or even IC) up is a very long way away. Centralized manufacturing will exist for a long time. ICs are significantly cheaper in quantities of 10k+, and there's no way a 3D printer could generate a silicon wafer and etch a working circuit onto it, at least not economically. Chip fabs still cost 10 figures.

Re: The house I was born in sold for $4000

#87

Post by scarmig »

nilkn wrote: post #52
raldi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're asking two questions: 1. Why do you choose to live in a house rather than an apartment? 2. Why do you choose to own that house, rather than rent it? To the first question, a house often provides a much higher quality of life than an apartment. You might get a backyard garden, or a workbench, a guest room, an office, a full kitchen, etc... and, you can drill all the holes you want, paint it your favorite color,…

> To the second question, buying a house rather than renting it generally increases your options by about a hundredfold -- many, many more houses are available for sale than for rent. And while property tax can be painful, it's generally substantially cheaper than what you'd pay in rent on the equivalent property. So you get to save a lot more of your income, or at least apply it to paying down your mortgage. It also…

Financially, though, the fair comparison is whether the capital invested in a house generates more rental income (from yourself) than what the capital would make in equity, after accounting for property taxes, insurance, and upkeep.

Most calculations I see suggest it's pretty much a toss up at that point, and which you choose should depend on factors like preference for mobility or stability.

Re: The house I was born in sold for $4000

#88

Post by scarmig »

declan wrote: post #83
jluxenberg wrote: post #15

Homeowners of HN: how do you justify tying up a large percentage of your net worth in a home?

I own a single-family house on the San Francisco peninsula which I bought three years ago (and spent the summer of 2010 remodeling it and the summer of 2011 landscaping it). What others have said elsewhere in this thread is true: owning a home limits your flexibility in terms of moving for another job. It ties up a lot of your assets, for most people, in a decaying pile of lumber that needs maintenance and upkeep and…

The market has already priced those known tax benefits in, though, in setting the price of the house.

Re: The house I was born in sold for $4000

#89

Post by nitrogen »

cmbaus wrote: post #20
blazespin wrote: post #17

OP neglects to mention if there were any back taxes or water liens owed. Or if the house had been condemned. All I could find was one lot (not house) under 8K. http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Jamestown-NY/pmf,pf_pt/...

The point is that the house isn't worth even the back taxes on it. That is hard to imagine from a west coast perspective. Even after the bust in 2009, I don't think it got that extreme in too many places.

Would it make sense for cities to forgive the back taxes and liens to encourage new growth, or have they borrowed against the money owed to the point that forgiving it would bankrupt the city?

Re: The house I was born in sold for $4000

#90

Post by rdl »

sliverstorm wrote: post #66
rdl wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shantytown full of rich (at least, in earning potential elsewhere) startup/burningman type people which grows around convenient fiber might be different than one full of labor surrounding a mine.

I don't really buy it. The hallmark of shantytowns is everything is "half-assed". I can't see tech workers breaking out the saws and sandpaper and building quality neighborhoods in their spare time, and nobody will invest real money and labor into something you intend to bulldoze in 3-5 years. You will also get a domino effect; people with money and the desire for a nice place to live will automatically avoid your sh…

You've never been to burningman, have you? People spend hundreds/thousands of hours individually or in small groups for stuff that they expend in a week. They go to the extent of learning to weld, do carpentry, etc., and actually pushed some tech innovation for things like EL wire.
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