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Artist faked being a billionaire to photograph New York City’s best views

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Re: Artist faked being a billionaire to photograph New York City’s best views

#191

Post by knolax »

choeger wrote: post #102
cheriot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you want to ruin their investment then issue building permits for more of them. > They cast these huge shadows and block views Talk about first world problems. Expecting a city skyline to never change is ridiculous. The only problem is that so few people use these buildings. The best kind of density regulation requires _more_ density.

Yeah, more density, because all that matters is the size of cities and their economy. 90% of children never waking up to the sounds of birds around their house? Who cares? 90% of grownups never plant even a tomatoes? What does it matter! Families of four or more confined to single-bathroom, two-bedroom apartments? The cosier, the better! The most important bit is that the cheap workforce reaches their dull jobs in ti…

> 90% of children never waking up to the sounds of birds around their house?

As someone who grew up in such an environment, 90+% of my peers spent the entirety of our adolescence doing as much as possible to get away from suburban hells like that. And you know what's ironic? I have way more access to actual nature now that I live in a city close to some national parks than I did when I was younger and was trapped in endless suburbia.

Re: Artist faked being a billionaire to photograph New York City’s best views

#192

Post by SamuelAdams »

dmurray wrote: post #170
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #8

> They’re investments, not really meant for living in. They cast these huge shadows and block views—really change the skyline—just so they can stand empty. That is definitely one of the saddest parts for me. These billionaires (many of whom got their wealth in shady circumstances) are just using these condos to park their money. I may think NFTs are insane but at least when people with too much money park their wealt…

I don't get the "billionaires buy property and leave it vacant, because it's more valuable as an investment" trope. Billionaires like to make money with their money. Sure, property prices increase, but rents are significant. If you can make 5% a year from your real estate appreciating, you can make 10% by renting it out. That's the difference between a mediocre yearly return and a fantastic one. Maybe at the absolute…

Here's how I've had this explained before. You see the same thing in California with their real estate market. Buying property in these markets is a foolproof investment. Even if it sits empty for 2-5 years, you will still make money.

Therefore, renting it out is a secondary concern. You could rent it out, but that comes with all sorts of liabilities - what if tenants damage your property, stop paying, claim squatter's rights, infest the property with bedbugs, etc. There's a number of things that could go wrong with renting, and many landlords rarely make much profit on rental units.

So for these millionaires and billionaires it's easier to simply not rent them out at all.

Re: Artist faked being a billionaire to photograph New York City’s best views

#193

Post by smcl »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #182
smcl wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wanted to provide a bit of an international perspective on golf as I think it might be interesting. Golf isn't considered a stereotypical wealthy persona activity everywhere. Many towns and villages in Scotland have a local golf course that's inexpensive to play on with a scruffy clubhouse basically becomes the village pub. There are places which are for the wealthier among us, as you can imagine you can't just…

Does that few quid also cover clubs, though?

Probably not, so you’d either be renting them or (if you’re into golf) you’d have a set already. I just looked up my old local course (which is in a reasonably well-to-do town) and it’s about £20 for a round for one person. So a little more than “a few quid” as I’d originally said, but in Scotland at least, it’s definitely quite accessible. Now whether you’re actually into golf and would want to, is another thing entirely :D

https://montrosegolflinks.com/broomfield-course/

Re: Artist faked being a billionaire to photograph New York City’s best views

#194

Post by maxerickson »

pharmakom wrote: post #184
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rail network is only part of the solution: It certainly won't visit many small towns. A robust bus service truly needs to be in place as well so that folks can travel from town to town to train. Heck, trains don't even have to be fast for much of it: Simply making passenger trains a priority would be a huge improvement - right now, passenger trains have to wait for freight trains.

Rail networks in the UK once visited even small villages. It can be done but requires political will. If the settlements are very small then the number of people driving to the nearest station will be low anyway. I’m optimistic for services that are halfway between bus and taxi.

The US is considerably less dense than the UK. We could afford lots more rail in higher density areas, rail to everywhere doesn't make any sense (we have freight tracks, the part that wouldn't make sense is frequent passenger service).

My county is rural but not that rural and has a density of 12 per km². It's a 2 hour drive to a small city.

Re: Artist faked being a billionaire to photograph New York City’s best views

#195

Post by 271828182846 »

throwaway210222 wrote: post #175
271828182846 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Thailand isn't more of a third world country than the US ... http://hdr.undp.org/en/dashboard-human-development-anthropoc... Highlight Thailand and US and you'll find both in the same section above or below the median.

> Well, Thailand isn't more of a third world country than the US The USA is flying a helicopter on another planet right now. SMH.

Yeah, right ... somebody forgot to tell those people:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=california+homelessness&t=h_&iax=i...

Re: Artist faked being a billionaire to photograph New York City’s best views

#196

Post by yojo »

Clewza313 wrote: post #65
yojo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and I once visited a friend of a friend who was “living like a king” in northern Thailand. He had a walled compound with a Mets baseball theme, a half dozen Burmese slaves, and had recently downsized from multiple wives to 1. He explained that there were three ways people make money in Thailand, drugs, money lending, and prostitution. And that he didn’t touch drugs... It was one of the saddest and strangest e…

Just to tamp down on the hyperbole a little, while Burmese legal refugees and illegal immigrants are mercilessly exploited, slavery (and polygamy for that matter) are illegal in Thailand, and many Western people who think that their money insulates them from the legal system find out the hard way that no, it does not.

This was 13 years ago, so the political situation may have changed. But this guy was very much operating in the open, and definitely breaking all kinds of laws. He’d been doing it for more than a decade, and no jail time yet.

He did also finance construction of an elementary school and some other community improvement stuff. He didn’t explicitly talk about bribes, but I’m sure he was paying people off. At least at the time he seemed to have figured out a way to avoid the law. But maybe corruption is down and it finally caught up with him - I’m definitely out of date here.

Re: Artist faked being a billionaire to photograph New York City’s best views

#197

Post by iso1210 »

bmilleare wrote: post #190
iso1210 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many homes in London are empty? Numbers I see are in the region of 25,000, out of 3.6 million, under 1%.

It would be more interesting to see those numbers in square footage and not straight counts. I would expect the majority of the 'empty' homes are the £10M+ ones in Knightsbridge, Chelsea, Kensington etc.

Offices and hotels far more empty square footage

Re: Artist faked being a billionaire to photograph New York City’s best views

#198

Post by wcfields »

MathYouF wrote: post #171
dmurray wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the "billionaires buy property and leave it vacant, because it's more valuable as an investment" trope. Billionaires like to make money with their money. Sure, property prices increase, but rents are significant. If you can make 5% a year from your real estate appreciating, you can make 10% by renting it out. That's the difference between a mediocre yearly return and a fantastic one. Maybe at the absolute…

Why don't you rent out your car on Turo when you're not using it, or resell your items when you're done with them rather than throw them away? I suspect, for the car example at least, it's for similar reasons. The liability of damage and hassle of managing a tenant is greater than the potential upside of rent for them.

If the property is to park money and with US real estate you can liquidate it very quickly for a cash sale, a tenant will throw a huge wrench in that.

A tenant in a single unit/house will easily drop the price by 10% or more from my experience trying to buy a single family home in SoCal in 2016.

As well, who can afford to rent these units? The mortgage/break-even point for for a $8mil value would be $37,825 a month.

Re: Artist faked being a billionaire to photograph New York City’s best views

#199

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

dmurray wrote: post #170
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #8

> They’re investments, not really meant for living in. They cast these huge shadows and block views—really change the skyline—just so they can stand empty. That is definitely one of the saddest parts for me. These billionaires (many of whom got their wealth in shady circumstances) are just using these condos to park their money. I may think NFTs are insane but at least when people with too much money park their wealt…

I don't get the "billionaires buy property and leave it vacant, because it's more valuable as an investment" trope. Billionaires like to make money with their money. Sure, property prices increase, but rents are significant. If you can make 5% a year from your real estate appreciating, you can make 10% by renting it out. That's the difference between a mediocre yearly return and a fantastic one. Maybe at the absolute…

Because many of these billionaires come from countries where their political systems are rife with corruption or otherwise unstable, and oftentimes they received their wealth through dubious means. This has been well documented for many residences on Billionaires Row in Manhattan, so much that laws have been passed preventing hiding identities through shell corps.

Buying real assets is seen as a way to protect their wealth when it is at risk of being confiscated or devalued by their home governments.

Another way to think about these apartments is similar to art. Billionaires spend obscene money on art, and they aren't renting out those paintings or really even looking at them very much.

Re: Artist faked being a billionaire to photograph New York City’s best views

#200

Post by blamazon »

knolax wrote: post #188
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #8

> They’re investments, not really meant for living in. They cast these huge shadows and block views—really change the skyline—just so they can stand empty. That is definitely one of the saddest parts for me. These billionaires (many of whom got their wealth in shady circumstances) are just using these condos to park their money. I may think NFTs are insane but at least when people with too much money park their wealt…

> they don't fuck up an entire city Skyscrapers fuck up a city how???? Do you expect Manhattan to consist entirely of 2 story suburban homes? It's attitudes like yours that are the reason the streets are full of so many homeless.

Empty skyscrapers fuck up the city. I expect manhattan to be full of skyscrapers, I don’t expect it to be soulless and lifeless.
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