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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

#101

Post by robotresearcher »

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…

| And mortgage interest is tax deductible.

In some jurisdictions. Not Canada.

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

#102

Post by DannoHung »

rdl wrote: post #90
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…

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.

People also spend ~$50 dollars a day for the tickets. The Burningman organizers arrange for medical care and infrastructure concerns before any of that cool shit even happens. And that's for living out of a god damned tent.

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

#103

Post by mikestew »

yyqux wrote: post #11
cmbaus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think a house can be built for $12k. Houses in the rust belt routinely sell below replacement cost because demand is so low.

Right, and a house is a liability as well as an asset: at that sort of price, the main cost of owning the house is the ongoing maintenance, utilities, etc.

In NY state, I think the main cost of the house is going to be property taxes. I don't recall the rates, and don't care to look them up. But I do recall (when the subject has come up) that my sister-in-law in Alden, NY (small town 30 miles east of Buffalo) pays ridiculously high property taxes in comparison to what we pay here in Redmond, WA.

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

#104

Post by sliverstorm »

rdl wrote: post #94
sliverstorm wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I was thinking stuff in the 300-500 square foot range, which is far more feasible. Converted containers or other modular elements. Mobile homes/trailers at the low end. The idea would be to have private cheap/transit stuff and a few professional/serious buildings (like older converted farmhouses). I can certainly build a shed, even from lumber, and pretty much anyone moderately competent could.

I can build a shed too. I wouldn't live in a shed, though.

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

#105

Post by calinet6 »

general_failure wrote: post #48
yekko wrote: post #2

More startup needs to move to low cost areas.

It's better for well established players to move to low cost areas. Startups need to be in places where there is abundance of talent. Engineering salary are extremely high as-is, it would be nigh impossible to make them move to the middle of nowhere.

And, hate to say it, but Talent likes to live where it is desirable, fun, and interesting to live. Because Talent can afford it, and Talent wants a life full of desirable characteristics. The Bay Area isn't expensive because of magic. It's expensive because people want to live there, and people want to live there because it really is a great place to live, all things considered. You can play the value game all you want and try to make the argument that upstate New York is somehow unfairly treated by an economic imbalance, but the truth is, people want to live there less than they want to live in NYC or SF or nearly anywhere else.

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

#106

Post by biot »

baby wrote: post #49
cletus wrote: post #44

This is going to be an increasing issue and it's something that Western nations in particular just haven't had to deal with until now. The West came out of Europe. Europe is small. To put it in perspective, the distance from SF to NYC is ~2900 miles. The distance from London to Baghdad is ~3100 miles. So abundance of land is not a problem the West has traditionally had (not until colonization anyway). Added to this,…

I had to google it, might be useful for others: 2900 miles = 4667km 3100 miles = 4988km

It could have read 2900 gribloops vs 3100 gribloops and, not knowing anything about gribloops other than it's a measure of distance between cities, the expected conclusion is the same: the two pairs of cities are roughly the same distance apart. Ergo, converting the units presents no additional information.

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

#107

Post by dfc »

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…

Where are you going to get staff for the great medical care facilities? I'm dating a girl who just graduated from medical school and I can't imagine any of her friends wanting to move next to shantytown.

Do you think the burning man-esque campus would work over a 2-5 year time period with burning man level of sewage treatment facilities?

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

#108

Post by napolux »

Maybe it's just a stupid statement made out of tv shows like 'extreme makeover home edition', correct me please if I'm wrong....

In US most of the houses seems to be made over a wooden structure, making them more fragile, easy to be renovated / customized / moved / rebuilt and, most important, cheaper.

Here in Italy (and AFAIK in the whole Europe) there's nothing like that: full concrete and a proper basement, basically no wood (except from roof).

I just bought my first flat and I've spent 168k euros for a 85 square meters flat 25 km from Milan. Despite the crisis, prices are stable and/or are decreasing very slowly.

You will never find, even in the worst zones of the cheapest cities an house at 10k euros here, neither a bunch of bricks will be sold for that. :)

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

#109

Post by dfc »

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"

I should have you over to my house sometime. I completely tore out the downstairs of my house. The guy that's helping me with the kitchen cabinets is an old cobol programmer. I think your experience with carpentry and people that enjoy carpentry might leave a little to be desired. (I don't mean any disrespect by this) and I'm not saying that just because you chose "saws and sandpaper" for what is needed to build a structure.

I am curious why do you think tech people would not be interested in building things using lumber? If you are looking for a book to read pickup "Shopclass as Soulcraft." I don't think its going to make you want to pick up a trade but I think it might give you a different perspective.

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

#110

Post by blader »

fearless wrote: post #73
michaelochurch wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you might think that, the way things are going, by 2025 a person born without VC connections (i.e. an EIR position earmarked for him when he's in the womb, somewhat like a trust fund) will have to live in a shantytown in order to have a shot at surviving in VC-istan. Well, I'm here to tell you that you're wrong. He won't have to inhabit a shantytown. He'll have a nice storage cell to live in.

Is there anything that is not somehow VC-istan's fault?

There are lots, but none in michaelochurch's life apparently.
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