dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40489250
dupe
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40491157
check the timestamps :p
Priced out of home ownership
151–160 of 1001 posts
Re: Priced out of home ownership
#152Given how abundant land is, does it imply that supply shortages are purely man-made? (e.g. policies not allowing large swaths of land to be built on). Otherwise it doesn't make sense that prices are high for a good (housing) whose primary input (land) is in great supply.
The primary input isn’t land, it’s tolerable neighbors. That is of course what “good school district,” “location, location, location,” and similar euphemisms actually mean. If you have a high tolerance for crime and other antisocial behavior there is plenty of extremely affordable housing in major US cities with plenty of amenities like walkability and public transportation.
Good school district doesn't just mean tolerable neighbors, it also means wealthy neighbors (for more collected school taxes).
Re: Priced out of home ownership
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
You talk about demand for home ownership as if it is entirely induced via economics rather than inherently valuable. I don’t understand why? There are reasons why home ownership is desirable neglecting economics entirely. Owning a home gives you more control over the space you live in, in terms of the ability to customize the space.
That's again a false argument, made a complete lie by the existence of Home Ownership associations and other contract covenants. Rights come from your contract with whoever hold power not "property ownership" There is yes some cases where owning is giving you a better deal then leasing in terms of rights and obligations but this is not an universal truth and not the reason house prices consistently rises faster then…
> Rights come from your contract with whoever hold power not "property ownership"
Rights of property ownership is always a superset of the rights of renting property. It is not a false argument.
Re: Priced out of home ownership
#154> In recent months, the White House has tried to address concerns about affordability head on, offering proposals such as rules to limit closing costs and a $10,000 tax credit for first time homebuyers.
"Here's a nickel, sonny."
Re: Priced out of home ownership
#155I am not an economist but if we would treat house ownership something that is beneficial for the whole society (less traffic from commuters, less homeless etc) and remove the speculations/foreign investments around housing? Why not apply the following: - every house not used for primary living place is highly taxed (removing all speculative ownership) - charge foreign investors heavily (australia will do this soon) -…
This is extremely unlikely to happen because the people who own multiple houses have more political power than those who don’t, and they don’t want to give them up. And even if it did, there would be ways to pay experts to get around it, just like the tax system.
Re: Priced out of home ownership
#156The problem is pretty easy to fix. 50-70% of homes (Depends on Area) are owned by people over 58-70 (Baby Boomers). They don't have good senior apartment/living options. Make more senior housing and provide incentives for them to sell their homes. There are so few available affordable senior apartment options. It's really saddening. Most places have 5-10 year waiting lists, if the waiting list is open at all. Fixing…
Handouts to the homeowners does not feel like the right call here
unfortunately, since they own the homes, unless you want to take them from them by force, you'll have to give them some sort of incentive to give up their homes so no matter how much you structure it, it will amount to the same thing in order to get them to move.
Re: Priced out of home ownership
#157Some other less-cited reasons home ownership may increasingly be considered expensive: - Increasing density in older cities requires infrastructure upgrades that are much more complex and expensive to retrofit than it was to plan and build the first time when space was abundant. - Multi-story buildings are more expensive per floor space area than single-story buildings. As cities become denser, the added expense of m…
>Increasing density in older cities requires infrastructure upgrades that are much more complex and expensive to retrofit than it was to plan and build the first time when space was abundant.
>Multi-story buildings are more expensive per floor space area than single-story buildings. As cities become denser, the added expense of multi-story buildings is realised.
A lot of that is parking. Parking minimum laws basically hollow out intermediate-density development. In order to meet parking requirements, the only legal and economically viable types of buildings are low-density with cheap surface parking, or high-density with expensive underground parking.
Re: Priced out of home ownership
#158Given how abundant land is, does it imply that supply shortages are purely man-made? (e.g. policies not allowing large swaths of land to be built on). Otherwise it doesn't make sense that prices are high for a good (housing) whose primary input (land) is in great supply.
The primary input isn’t land, it’s tolerable neighbors. That is of course what “good school district,” “location, location, location,” and similar euphemisms actually mean. If you have a high tolerance for crime and other antisocial behavior there is plenty of extremely affordable housing in major US cities with plenty of amenities like walkability and public transportation.
Or if you venture outside of major cities there is also plenty of affordable housing in unfashionable suburban. Many of those areas also have low crime and decent public schools. Not much public transportation, but plenty of free parking.
Re: Priced out of home ownership
#159I bought in 2022, and while it was new construction, it's a pretty mid-range house. No premium finishes, in a growing but small city northwest of Houston. If you told me 10 years ago how much I paid for it, I'd ask what the name of my butler is.
Indeed. My home "value" has roughly doubled in the last five years. Sounds nice, but land/home values in the area I'd like to move to has nearly tripled in the same timespan. I feel bad for renters priced out of the market, but many of us who have "enjoyed" the upside are actually deeply underwater relative to our preferences, to say nothing of the doubling of insurance premiums, and ~25% property tax hikes in the la…
Property tax shouldn’t be going up with this tbh. If everyone’s housing and land is becoming more expensive, then you need to tax smaller %s to get the same budget.
To me this sounds like your city/state is just ballooning their budgets.
Re: Priced out of home ownership
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's again a false argument, made a complete lie by the existence of Home Ownership associations and other contract covenants. Rights come from your contract with whoever hold power not "property ownership" There is yes some cases where owning is giving you a better deal then leasing in terms of rights and obligations but this is not an universal truth and not the reason house prices consistently rises faster then…
> Rights come from your contract with whoever hold power not "property ownership" Rights of property ownership is always a superset of the rights of renting property. It is not a false argument.
And your property rights come from the contract you have with the state. It's all in the formal and informal contract that govern society, and you can(as most suburbanites have) sign away all of the "control" that you seem to argue property gives you to some collective body.
In the same vain the government(and some wery much do) can set pretty strict rules on what restrictions a private landlord can put in rental agreements and that's before you remember that the government itself have historically been the largest owner of rental properties.
In the old days before the idea that owning a house was a ticket into a higher strata in the class system a lot of the problems now caused by unreasonable housing prices was solved by the government acting as the reasonable landlord, essentially curtailing the amount of shenanigans some wannabe aristocrat could get away with before going bankrupt from people not putting up with the abuse.
In a pure "realty don't matter" libertarian mindset your of cause right that property rights are always supreme but in the real world it's always a balance of power and negotiations especially once we deal with urban communities(which is the only ones where property prices are a problem).