“Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900” • Hacker News Board

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#591

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 6:14 PM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #568

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF is expensive, but not 10x so compared to other American cities. If you do move to a place like Manila, you might not be able to find the talent you need.

It is 10x expensive. I lived in the RTP area. I paid roughly $800 for a very nice three bedroom house with a 10 minute commute to downtown for work. That's a house I owned. Lots of tech talent there, lots of jobs, lots of startups. That's more than 10x what the rent for this shoddy apartment is being set at. A very nice downtown condo would run you about 1.5 times as much. What does an apartment in downtown SF go for…

That is just rent, not your other non housing expenses which are quite comparable to the rest of the country. SF is not Norway/London/Switzerland/or even Japan expensive, nowhere close!

To get your 10x cheaper location, you aren't looking at RTP, but maybe Cambodia (though much of the south feels like a developing country to me...they still aren't that cheap).

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#592

Post by cookiecaper » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 6:33 PM UTC

prawn wrote: post #467

jsprogrammer wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Because that is generally the law. Typically with a 30 day notice of termination required from the tenant. 2) The reason for the law is that people should not be thrown out of their homes on the whims of a second or third party.

The law as it pertains to these contracts or all residential tenancy contracts in the US? Are 3-, 6- and 12-month leases common? All the residential arrangements I know of here in Australia would be 6- or 12-monthly. Gives a tenant some certainty, but also enables a property owner to move back in, sell, redevelop, etc.

Almost everywhere in the US the standard is 12 month leases. Sometimes a landlord will do a 6 month lease. When these leases lapse (or if no lease was signed), the relationship is governed by landlord-tenant law, which usually states that the landlord must provide 14 or 30 days of notice when removing a month-to-month tenant.

I'm not very familiar with rent control practices, but in 99.9% of the US, this thing where the tenant is allowed to indefinitely block the usage of your own home is not done.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#593

Post by kristopolous » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:09 PM UTC

jusben1369 wrote: post #555

kristopolous wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? The idea was without rent stabilization or leveling, rent would magically be more stable then if mechanisms were in place. We don't need to argue about this. Rent control has been removed from many communities, and the rent becomes much more volatile without the stabilization control. There's lots of actual case study literature on this. These things aren't mere untested hypothesis where our personal politics co…

I think the problem here is assuming terms like stable and volatile equate to better and worse. A lack of rent controls will definitely result in price changes occurring based on supply and demand and therefore much more frequently than with controls. So in that respect they're more "volatile" At the same time that market is much healthier because the prices are transparent and all economic agents can act rationally…

The claim was that markets without stabilization eventually stabilize. However, from what I've read, the markets studied continue to be more stochastic for the long term.

I really think you should look into the research. There's a lot of tested hypothesis and survey analysis in them.

We tend to not treat economics like a science - as if our general education is enough to have an informed opinion. We certainly don't do that with psychology, chemistry, biology, or even softer sciences like sociology and anthropology.

But yet, when it comes to economics, we all have a pretty solid opinion and think we are all fairly well informed.

I encourage you to look deeper into the topic. Attend proseminars at your local university. Watch some graduate level lectures online. And, this is just an encouragement, revisit statistics and calculus --- you'll find out why if you look into 21st century econ.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#594

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:11 PM UTC

simoncion wrote: post #535

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the majority of owners don't wish to personally utilize their property, and to extract rent from it, what exactly are the renters supposed to buy? If you offer to pay at least as much for the building as the landlord would expect to make from renting it out then any rational landlord will sell you the building. > Owners can apparently force renters to bleed ever more money If they raise the rent significantly ab…

Rental housing (like garbage collection) is only efficient when there is more than enough housing (or memory) available to meet demand (of tenants, or of the garbage collection machinery). In obscenely undersupplied cities like SF, rents become absurdly high very, very fast. Case in point. In 1998 (At about the height of the Dot Com bubble) a one-bedroom apartment in my building rented out for ~$500/month. In 2010 (W…

> In obscenely undersupplied cities like SF, rents become absurdly high very, very fast.

That's what an efficient market is supposed to do. The high price then encourages the construction of more housing.

There isn't enough supply because of rent control and other regulations that discourage or outright prohibit the construction of new or higher density housing. The market is doing exactly what an efficient market is supposed to do under those conditions: Increase the price until demand at that price no longer exceeds the artificially constrained supply.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#595

Post by michas » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 8:16 PM UTC

jsprogrammer wrote: post #462

harryh wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you dumb? I just made up the numbers. I never said anything was linear and even though the grocer is willing to sell at 40 cents he doesn't because then he wouldn't be able to meet supply so he raises the price until he can. Maybe the real life numbers are 45, 50 & 55. Maybe they're 34, 37 & 50. Maybe you really fucking love apples and it's 34, 37 & 5000 in which case go nuts, buy up the whole orchard, and keep a…

Oh wow, u mad bro? Supply/demand curves are literally 4th grade curriculum where I come from. So yeah, mastered that shit 20+ years ago. Thanks for assuming though. You've gone off the rails and are now confusing 'cost' with 'worth' or 'value'. We can only determine a 'value' or 'worth' when an actual transaction occurs. You can't just extrapolate out on a model curve and expect it to hold in the real world, no matte…

Economic 101 course for you. In your original comment you said: > By definition, profit is extracting more than the 'worth' of something.

You are terribly wrong, because, by definition, there is no such thing as objective worth of something you buy. There is only subjective worth and it is different for different people. And that is the sole things that enables us to trade goods at all.

Example: what is worth more: 5$ or a pack of ciggaretes? non-smoking shop owner probably will choose 5$, average smoker will choose pack of ciggaretes. And they DO choose that every day - every time you buy something you prove that the thing you bought is more valuable to you than the money you spent. Otherwise you wouldn't buy it.

So, if two people make transaction volunteerly the price paid is always fair, and both people end up thinking that they traded something less valuable for something more valuable. That's called "mutually beneficial" :)

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#596

Post by tizzdogg » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 8:39 PM UTC

simoncion wrote: post #523

tizzdogg wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually know a few homeowners in San Francisco in this situation right now. They have extra units in their building (which is also where they live), and choose to leave it vacant rather than deal with the hassle of rent control. They do not need the income and would rather not bother with possibly getting a tenant who never leaves. It's not economically rational, but people are not always rational, especially when…

> They have extra units in their building (which is also where they live), and choose to leave it vacant rather than deal with the hassle of rent control. Good for them. Better that they do this than take the rental income, and later whine about how terribly unfair renter protection laws are. :) Based on my immensely scientific[0] survey of Internet Message Boards (and personal experience in the American Southeast),…

The problem with leaving units vacant though is it takes those units off the market, driving rents up for the remaining units. That is the end result of overly aggressive rent control, and one of the big problems in San francisco right now.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#597

Post by gress » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 8:53 PM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #586

gress wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of home is far older than 1000 years, and is deeply important to humans.

So let's go simple here: Just because i've lived somewhere, means i get to live there as long as i want? So once someone's got theirs, nobody else gets a chance? As I mentioned in another thread, i'm 100% not a fan of people having some magical right to continue to live somewhere just because they've lived in that place, or their parents have lived in that place, a while. It's essentially "blood right", and I emphati…

What you are calling 'simple' is actually an absolutist position based on neoliberal principles that serve those with power and capital. That's far from the only way to think. By introducing terms like "Blood Right", you are also exaggerating to create a straw man.

Being part of a social fabric is a basic human need. In the past the strong would displace the week from their communities through violence. Now we do that through the law, which seems like a great improvement.

Nevertheless there is no getting around the harm that you do to someone when you displace them from their community and support networks. This is why the law is not as absolute as you and others with your viewpoint would like.

By all means let's consider by what means we can balance this against other important human needs, but I don't think it's reasonable to claim that the freedoms to deploy capital without restriction trumps the need of humans for stable community.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#598

Post by pascal1us » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 10:21 PM UTC

This sort of thing has been building up for a long time. This is mainly due to the Greed of the SF tenants to who prevent developers from building more units with local politics NIMBY. By constricting the supply artificially it prevents new buildings from going up. Also, the mayor is to blame as well, for incentivizing more companies to come to SF making the situation even worse.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#599

Post by marak830 » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 10:35 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #577

visarga wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should realize that not everyone can live in a good area of the city. A city, by its structure, has a center and periphery. The good zones are good by relation to the other zones, otherwise, space is just space. So, valuable property will always be limited in quantity.

> They should realize that not everyone can live in a good area of the city. A city, by its structure, has a center and periphery. The good zones are good by relation to the other zones, otherwise, space is just space. So, valuable property will always be limited in quantity. And who lives in the good parts of a city should not be determined solely by the depth of their pockets.

Why? Isnt this the free market at work? Allowing the people who work the hardest for it (of course this always the case, but you get my point), to choose their place of residence.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#600

Post by WalterSear » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 11:00 PM UTC

TheHypnotist wrote: post #551

WalterSear wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an eviction by another name. The rent they are asking for is just a way to make it happen. There's no story here.

Simplified, yes. But the HN landlord lobby is nauseating. This thread is sad.

You are aware that you made this comment on a post that was at the top of the site with over 100 points, just because it sorta-kinda looked like justification for SF renter butthurt?

The overall lack of self awareness is what is nauseating about HN.