171–180 of 185 posts
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Meh. The newer landlords will realize what the rest of us have know for years. You'd be crazy to be a landlord in SF. Which, of course, is part of the problem.
Which is why massive new rental buildings are coming up? NEMA, One Rincon Hill Tower Two, etc.
Take the feelings you have from this article and channel into a concrete good that you can do right now, today, for minimal effort and zero cost. The sad truth is that the people whose voices get heard at city council today are generally those people wealthy enough in both dollars and time to spend hours every week at city hall. They're mostly retired homeowners sitting on multimillion dollar properties. Renters, poor people, and homeless people receive almost no representation because they don't have the luxury of coming to city hall meetings- they're busy figuring out where they're going to spend the night and how they're going to feed their kids this week. These groups are doing just that on their behalf, so please support them.
If you're in Palo Alto, check out www.paloaltoforward.com (also www.facebook.com/paloaltoforward
If you're in Mountain View, check out http://balancedmv.org/ and https://www.facebook.com/mvhousingdiversity
If you're in SF, https://www.facebook.com/BARentersFed and www.sfbarf.org
Menlo Park: https://www.facebook.com/MenloParkNoOnM
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Here's a question for you: REITs dehumanize and perhaps volatilize real estate markets. Do their benefits outweigh their costs? And if so, what are those benefits? Is it legitimate public policy in a system that ostensible has free markets as a principle to suppress or otherwise regulate REITs?
Benefit: REITs commoditize the real estate market. If you're just a regular joe and you want to invest in stock or gold or pork bellies, a reasonably small investment is enough to get you started. Trying to buy into real estate is nigh impossible, though, unless you pool money because the "unit" price is so high.
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Benefit: REITs commoditize the real estate market. If you're just a regular joe and you want to invest in stock or gold or pork bellies, a reasonably small investment is enough to get you started. Trying to buy into real estate is nigh impossible, though, unless you pool money because the "unit" price is so high.
Umm Pork Bellies would be nearly impossible to invest in for an average investor even before they stopped being exchange traded commodities. The margin requirements alone are on the order of real estate investments, not to mention the contract prices.
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Which is why massive new rental buildings are coming up? NEMA, One Rincon Hill Tower Two, etc.
Sure, eventually you get an equilibrium. Because nobody else wants to be a landlord you can charge so much that it's worth the aggravation. I wonder how many of these new units would be needed if people were more willing to rent out unoccupied units. The problem isn't as acute for big companies. If you have 1000 renters you have a staff to deal with problem tenants. You have lawyers on retainer. You expect some numbe…
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> These are people who may not intend to actually live in the Bay Area, yet they buy up homes without even seeing them. A higher property tax with a "homestead exemption", i.e. for those who live in the property they own, would serve to counter-act absentee owners. As you sort of allude to, the tax structure and Prop 13 incentive is to buy and hold, regardless of occupancy.
Right, but how do you prove that? That is the dilemma all these prospective piece of legislation in Vancouver, NYC are running up against? What would you do? How would you enforce it? Water bills? Electricity? Which you could fake. Phone presence? A rebate program, which no one would vote for anyway.
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Curious what you think of this chart of home prices showing Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco moving almost in lock step: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BolI6BiIMAAgpWT.png To me it seems like this seem would to imply statewide factors exert more influence than local ones (tech jobs, city zoning, etc).
That's not the right chart. The rest of the country probably looks somewhat similar. If you were to take historical data, California home prices were 27 percent higher than the U.S. median in 1960, then 35 percent higher in 1970. But by 1980, they were 79 percent higher, and then by 1990, they were 147 percent higher. (Fischel, 1995) http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674753884 In the early 1960s, Califo…
The chart was simply an observation that SF isn't "pulling away" from Los Angeles and San Diego, since their percentage movements are very similar. I.e., if there were something unique to SF that significantly affected prices (crazy laws, etc) it would follow that prices should rise faster than in other big California coastal cities.
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Umm Pork Bellies would be nearly impossible to invest in for an average investor even before they stopped being exchange traded commodities. The margin requirements alone are on the order of real estate investments, not to mention the contract prices.
Initial margin for pork bellies was around $2000, which is hardly on the order of most real estate investments. Anyway, it was just metonymy.
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Many may interpret this as victim blaming but I think it's a valid question: why have we as a country/culture become so much more resistant to moving? I know I've read more comprehensive literature on this before a but a quick google brought up these starting points: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/11/declining_ame... http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/generati... I understand that we dev…
I personally seriously don't get it. I mean, the article describes a guy who is out of job, fails to find a job anywhere around after multiple attempts, but it still adamant on remaining in a city where, for example, I - being fully employed and pretty handsomely paid professional - would not live because prices there are freaking insane. Why? I'm not even saying move to Arizona desert or something - but even moving…
1- every place here requires first and last months rent as a security deposit at a minimum. Even I a "cheap" place that's a lot of cash when you don't have a job.
2- credit/background checks make it unlikely that he would ever be approved by a landlord.
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Initial margin for pork bellies was around $2000, which is hardly on the order of most real estate investments. Anyway, it was just metonymy.
On which exchange?
I mean, even if you were to take delivery (!!!), pork bellies traded for less than $1 per pound, so you could buy it outright for less than many real estate deals.
Oh, here, found a number: $1620 for CME. http://www.investopedia.com/university/commodities/commoditi...