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Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

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Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#101

Post by em-bee »

pjc50 wrote: post #42
giantg2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That won't fix anything. Many rentals are apartment buildings and are built/owned by large companies. You would effectively make the situation worse because individuals wouldn't be able to build high density housing if they're only allowed one unit. Edit: why disagree?

Controversial opinion, but corporate landlords tend to be better than individual landlords because it's impersonal and it's harder to hide. They also have different tax treatment. > individuals wouldn't be able to build high density housing Who exactly has (a) enough money to build an apartment block and (b) not enough to put it in a corporate wrapper? (Admittedly the wrapper problem is a serious issue for any kind o…

corporations can also be made to accept stronger rent-protection laws.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#102

Post by em-bee »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #94
wildrhythms wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That policy has been tried for 50 years and all we've seen (and the topic of this thread) is prices gone higher and higher, and properties become more and more consolidated under megacorporations.

50 years ago, this place where I live was a socialist country and we built HUGE apartment building neighbourhoods (literally thousands of apartments) + all the infrastructure needed (schools, kindergardens, stores, parks,...). After 1991 all of this has stoped. I don't know where you are from, but when was the last time you guys built a new neighbourhood for 10, 20 thousand people to live in? Because i've been all ov…

vienna is doing that right now: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seestadt_Aspern

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#103

Post by rft »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #98
rft wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the sentiment "I don't need it", but I do not understand the lack of consideration when you are landlord. The whole Corona WFH rush has demonstrated that digital infrastructure is an asset. If you have decent internet, you can either WFH yourself or attract people in roles allowing for WFH to your rental property. While tech workers (higher chance of WFH) in Germany are paid nowhere close to US salaries, they t…

>but I do not understand the lack of consideration when you are landlord. Because the landlord only thinks in RoI. He most likely thinks the cost and hassle of adding faster internet on his property will not reflect in an increased rent price he could charge, so why bother? >attract people in roles allowing for WFH to your rental property The pool of workers in Germany with 100% remote work allowance is much smaller…

Yes, very few roles offer 100% WFH here, but if you only need to show up once a week tops in your office, you can tolerate a longer commute. So it might not make the most rural areas that much more attractive, but it widens the area around a city you can consider commuter area. For reference, this is mostly the model my mom works with, she is employed in the public sector. Of course, she commuted before WFH every day, so the location was fine for that already.

> those few workers that do have 100% WFH are a rare pool of mostly SW devs that use remote work to travel or visit family, not live in some boring German village.

Careful with generalizations, this was more or less my plan until I ran into the problems I posted above :)

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#104

Post by Gigachad »

Sakos wrote: post #8
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #3

Of course, if everyone's wages would rise X%, it will increase rents and real-estate prices accordingly, as those are always prices as high as the market would bear and the more disposable income the market has, the more it can bear price increases.

Housing is a fixed cost that everyone is required to pay. I can stop buying chicken. I can't stop paying for housing. There are peculiarities about housing as a "product" that make it nonsensical to compare to other products or markets. The housing market can easily increase prices as much as it wants without losing out on revenue or potential gains, and in many markets it has done so to the degree that millions of p…

There is no standard unit of housing. I currently rent a 2 bedroom apartment to myself. But if it got too expensive I could switch to a 1 bedroom or get a roommate. If it got even more expensive I could move in with my parents. If it got much cheaper, I might switch to a 3 bedroom.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#105

Post by dagw »

giantg2 wrote: post #66
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Office space is not good for apartments, because the floor plans are usually huge. WTC towers were (iirc) 63x63 meters large, if the rooms are 5x5 meters, you can only build usable rooms in the outer strip of the building, while the internal 53x53 square is usable only for storage, toilets and hallways, which don't require windows... and that's a huge waste of space

Well, what else are you going to do with the vacant building? Seems like it's a bigger waste not to. I guess we'll see how it turns out in NYC since they're proposing it right now.

This weeks 99% Invisible podcast is on this exact topic. The bottom line is that while it is technically possible, it is really expensive and only makes financial sense if you create luxury apartments that can charge the very highest levels of rent. Also the legal and regulation red tape is a massive problem making many projects impossible to do, even if on paper they might be viable. In most cases the most practical solution, after taking financial and regulatory considerations into account, is simply to leave the building empty and hope for a future upswing in commercial real estate.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#106

Post by SauciestGNU »

etrautmann wrote: post #97
theonlybutlet wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in the case of property, multiple supply/demand equilibriums are possible. Land is a finite resource and rents way exceed mortgage repayments. I think there is a way to encourage the supply of rental in a scenario where they hold less quantities of land.

Is that true in us cities? Mortgage payments seem to be much higher than rents on equivalent places right now.

Small city resident checking in here, 1br apartments are going for $1500/mo on average here, and we're considered an extremely affordable place to live. The average person I know carrying a mortgage has a payment below that for much more living space.

What I would say we're missing is condominiums in the city center. Lots of apartments, fewer places to own in the inventory of downtown housing.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#107

Post by FirmwareBurner »

rft wrote: post #103
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but I do not understand the lack of consideration when you are landlord. Because the landlord only thinks in RoI. He most likely thinks the cost and hassle of adding faster internet on his property will not reflect in an increased rent price he could charge, so why bother? >attract people in roles allowing for WFH to your rental property The pool of workers in Germany with 100% remote work allowance is much smaller…

Yes, very few roles offer 100% WFH here, but if you only need to show up once a week tops in your office, you can tolerate a longer commute. So it might not make the most rural areas that much more attractive, but it widens the area around a city you can consider commuter area. For reference, this is mostly the model my mom works with, she is employed in the public sector. Of course, she commuted before WFH every day…

>but if you only need to show up once a week tops in your office, you can tolerate a longer commute

Depends on your family situation. Sounds fine for couple with kids but most single and childless people still want to live in the big city close to their friends and support network.

Moving to the countryside could mean you get to live for cheap in a big house all by yourself, but it could also mean a crushing lonely depression if your closest friend is over 1h away and need to schedule meetings ahead of time instead of spontaneously meeting for a coffee in the neighborhood on the way back from work/gym.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#108

Post by SauciestGNU »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #80
kkfdkerpoe wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the area. Lots of countryside areas have high unemployment statistically, but are actually very chill because there are so few people, and most of them are retirees. With adequate internet connectivity they can be perfect for remote workers.

>Lots of countryside areas have high unemployment statistically, but are actually very chill because there are so few people, and most of them are retirees. Not true. Unemployment numbers don't account for retirees or children of school age or involved in education/trainings programs. If an area has high unemployment it means only adults of working age not involved in any schooling, trainings or apprenticeship, who a…

Ah so it's the NEET index

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#109

Post by theonlybutlet »

cableshaft wrote: post #81
TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

progressive property tax which will increase with amount of owned properties.

People usually own multiple properties (outside of main home/vacation home, at least) to rent them to others. So they will just pass that cost to their renters, and make rent more expensive. Although I guess there could be some number of properties where that becomes untenable as well.

It encourages supply and liquidity in the market. Individuals will see an opportunity to undercut the large investors if they're hoarding property, so will build new property if they can't get their hands on existing properties. And if it is no longer feasible they're likely to sell rather than hoard for property appreciation.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#110

Post by dagw »

kajaktum wrote: post #56
nateberkopec wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what you care about is climate change, you should be in favor of cramming people into the smallest possible spaces in urban areas, not putting them in rural areas where they have to drive 20 minutes to get to the grocery store. The carbon footprint of your average city dweller is far lower.

Or provide better public transportation?

Public transport is only more environmentally friendly if people actually use it. Out where my parents live it was not uncommon to see busses driving for miles with 0-2 passengers. The problem was that providing good enough public transport that you didn't need a car at all is basically impossible. And since everybody had a car, the number of people that wanted to spend 60+ minutes taking a buss that went 3-4 times a day into town, instead of driving 30 minutes, was basically zero. They eventually cancelled the bus line since it was just too expensive and inefficient to run. The alternative of trying to provide a truly useful public transport service (say 2 buss lines running every 30 mintues) would have been extremely expensive and would have meant even more empty busses.
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