141–150 of 328 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm going to clarify that I'm not picking on you, but I loathe this attitude. I see it in Denver constantly. I moved here, but now we're full up. Ironically, it mostly comes from people that are transplants themselves. It's rather elitist to tell people where they can and can't live especially with the "forget you, I got mine" dynamic going on from the transplants themselves.
Denver has so many wonderful things, but this undercurrent of "I hate all the new people" is so gross. I've encountered it in situations where I'm literally handing money over to someone who is bitching about people moving here.
Its the same thing in Austin, even though Austin has really be fully deconstructed at this point and it is nothing like the nice place it once was. It's become ever more exclusive, ever more restricted, ever more douchy and pretentious, ever more expensive, ever more packed with people that are trampling everything.
What's actually disgusting is people like you who are incapable of understanding why people would rightfully be resentful about freeloaders and moochers trampling and disrespecting things they created and have a bond to. It's easy being a freeloader and moocher, but it really does undercut any incentive to create anything.
I suspect that in the future we will see examples of restrictive legislation or policies that will rightfully penalize newcomers and mooching types that started swarming to the next version of Austin due to the internet brigading effect.
I'm sure the fact that there's an increasing trend of empty Chinese investment properties isn't helping. I grew up in Cupertino, and when I visit my parents there, I'm rather shocked at how downhill the neighborhood has gone in parts. It's crazy that these old 70's tract homes go for 1.5 million. Even more insane is that they're bought and then left empty to go downhill. Literally broken windows and paint falling off…
> Until the South Bay gets serious about mass transit, merely adding more housing is only going to make the traffic pain worse. This seems very chicken-and-egg. SF has a million dollars in its annual budget tied up in maintaining the status quo for homelessness -- if those people had homes, that money could get redirected into mass transit.
A million? If only. Try $241M
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record...
I'm sure the fact that there's an increasing trend of empty Chinese investment properties isn't helping. I grew up in Cupertino, and when I visit my parents there, I'm rather shocked at how downhill the neighborhood has gone in parts. It's crazy that these old 70's tract homes go for 1.5 million. Even more insane is that they're bought and then left empty to go downhill. Literally broken windows and paint falling off…
It's like this all over North America. Not just the west coast.
I lived in a chinese-built condominium in Toronto a few years ago, and the rumor was that 50% or more of the building's units were owned by absentee landlords.
Which made sense, because almost the entire building was seemingly vacant.
Hardly any lights on at night. No furniture on most of the balconies. Never had to wait for an elevator (at 30+ floors, that is strange). Always ample visitor parking spots when there was only 15 of them shared between ~300 units. And I knew most of the neighbors on my floor, would see them come and go regularly, but there were always a few apartments that just never made any noise.
Makes sense. I wrote a piece called "Do millennials have a future in Seattle? Do millennials have a future in any superstar cities?" ( http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-futu... ) that focuses on Seattle, but the problems in SF are even worse. We're seeing decades of parochial land use policies turn into affordability crises in SF and similar cities. Which is why so many people are moving to Texa…
You can have good mass transit or affordable housing, but not both. This sucks.
Who knows, though?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would make it a less interesting investment is if there were a credible threat to add enough supply to devalue it. That's generally how markets keep prices regulated: if they go up enough, more people jump in to producing the good. That mechanism is severely broken in the Bay Area, among other popular places in the US.
Or we could tax foreign investment properties at a higher rate. "Remove barriers and let the market work" isn't the only solution to any given problem.
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We made a pact with the devil when as a society we decided to believe that our primary homes would also double as investment vehicles that will appreciate in value and help us fund our retirement.
Except no one decided that - it falls naturally out of the facts that homes are expensive (and therefore represent a large chunk of the wealth of most people) and that homes do not depreciate very much as a result of people living in them.
I get what you are saying, but this part above isn't a "natural order of things". For example, homes in Japan are expensive (perhaps representing an even larger fraction of lifetime earnings than in the Statse) yet they depreciate like they are cars.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would make it a less interesting investment is if there were a credible threat to add enough supply to devalue it. That's generally how markets keep prices regulated: if they go up enough, more people jump in to producing the good. That mechanism is severely broken in the Bay Area, among other popular places in the US.
Alternatively, repealing Prop 13, so that property taxes rise with the value. Or increasing property taxes as you get more homes. Both of these would decrease housing prices significantly.
(Though the real motivation for an imputed-rental-income law is usually to combat tax fraud: people who're renting out apartments under the table and not reporting the income. It just has the secondary effect of making it more expensive to sit on vacant real estate.)
I'm sure the fact that there's an increasing trend of empty Chinese investment properties isn't helping. I grew up in Cupertino, and when I visit my parents there, I'm rather shocked at how downhill the neighborhood has gone in parts. It's crazy that these old 70's tract homes go for 1.5 million. Even more insane is that they're bought and then left empty to go downhill. Literally broken windows and paint falling off…
> "I'm sure the fact that there's an increasing trend of empty Chinese investment properties isn't helping." This. This. This. A couple of years ago, I found myself utterly shocked by the price of homes in San Francisco. In a fit of frustration, I fired off a few emails a few random real estate firms in SF, asking one simple question: "Who the BLEEP can afford these homes?" You see, I was frustrated. I have a great j…
Among the people who voted, this is the number for Taxable household income for 2016 More than $150,000 16% Prefer not to respond 11% Rest of the % are all under $150,000. Good senior engineer/product people make way more than that. I don't think any of those people are leaving. They are the critical-mass who will make/break good technical companies and power the innovation cycle. SV is in no trouble. There is no rea…
I am interested to hear what other people have to say about this.