Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#241

Post by Spivak » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 4:30 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #176

Spivak wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being able to vote electronically is also really weird since ballots are only paper at the edge. Yes there are downsides, just like when you mail-in you give up non-repudiation, but the fact that it's not even an option is crazy. I personally would be more than happy to give up my personal ability to vote anonymously if I meant I could just sign up for a vote.gov account at the BMV, login, vote and be done with i…

I absolutely do not want electronic voting. I legitimately believe that system would be kept behind a black box, and would be far too likely and liable to be cheated and gamed. At least with a huge stack of paper that is stored for an approved number of years there is an option for independent verification.

How about vote by email? Go to a vote.gov, fill out your ballot, it gives your a PDF you can review, you email that to your board of elections, they reply with a "got it!", and they're counted like all other mail-in ballots on election night.

Same process, just s/USPS/SMTP/. But if that's fine, why make the user jump through the email hoop? Hell, digital ballots would give you stronger guarantees for verifying your vote. Publish all the ballots publicly and base the final tally for digital votes on that public ledger. Every voter will have a code they can use to pull up their specific ballot and see that it's correct. And since the codes are public that's not actually enough to prove it was yours (yay non-repudiation).

No cryptography, no hashes, no zero trust proofs. The internet is only used to move a document from A->B and security model could be explained to the least technical person since it's a direct analogue of how you would do it IRL.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#242

Post by 29athrowaway » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

reedjosh wrote: post #165

rowanG077 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeping people in misery is not the solution. Population control is much less ethically challenging IMO.

Again assuming a solution is even needed when birth rates in first world nations is already low.

Keep telling yourself that. The environmental impact of the human population at large, which is growing consistently, has nothing to do with you by any means!

The millions of marine animals drowning in single use plastic bottles will concur with you.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#243

Post by adamsmith143 » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

Supermancho wrote: post #230

adamsmith143 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Little wrinkle in your calculation is that 15000 in rental income doesn't even cover half of your Mortgage + Property Tax bill.

> 15000 in rental income doesn't even cover half of your Mortgage That depends on how much you put as a down payment. Work backwards from the payment to make it sensible.

Give me a break. You'd need a down payment of ~400K to have a mortgage low enough to barely break even at $15,000 in rent per year. None of his math makes sense.

Of course you would really rent a 500k property at something more like 2500 a month but even then you'd need a down payment near 200k to start making a profit.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#244

Post by quatrevingts » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #208

datacruncher01 wrote: post #132

It's a simple problem, we turned housing into an investment. Now everyone who owns a home is incentivized to ensure their investment is maximized and that results in a lot of NIMBYism. The simple solution is we need more housing in cities and suburbs. How we get there is an exercise that's taken on by local housing authorities and they are not incentivized to solve the problem. That's because they work for voters who…

> Now everyone who owns a home is incentivized to ensure their investment is maximized and that results in a lot of NIMBYism. This motivation is backwards. Getting zoning restrictions around your house removed multiplies the value of that house. NIMBYism comes from places where people live. YIMBYism maximizes property values, although there's an element of blockbusting because overbuilding and a change in neighborhoo…

YIMBYism simultaneously raises prices (presumably for the greedy developers and sellouts) and lowers them (for the noble neighborhood defenders who are forced to sell). Got it.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#245

Post by tzs » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 4:32 PM UTC

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #198

romel wrote: post #31

I think this a problem in everywhere. Take for instance, Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. Housing is a disaster. The home ownership percentage is so negligible it is a shame. Land and housing price is so high, it is almost impossible for most people to own a house in one life time. I hear the same kind of scenario in many other developing countries.

American companies are working on doing that in the US: buying up the liquid housing, and driving up prices, only to turn around and rent it back to people who could have afforded it if they hadn't driven up prices by trying to monopolize markets. "You will own nothing, and be happy."

> American companies are working on doing that in the US

Is that why I have gotten several phone calls over the last few months from people asking if I'm interested in selling my house, many saying they will pay above current market rates and in cash?

I'm not in a big city. I'm in a county with a population density of around 600/mi^2, where the biggest city population is 40k and second biggest is about half that. My house is a little bit outside a town that is only about 10k.

It's about an hour on a good day to commute from here to the nearest big city.

It's not a place I'd expect there to be a lot of interest in speculative house buying...but I'm getting the calls and can't think of what else they might be.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#246

Post by anovikov » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #164

mrep wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, you do need to google up if you want to look at an actual data analysis. I mean, you aren't even counting the rental income in your comparison. If you look at the rate of return on everything from 1870-2015, equity markets and housing actually provide somewhat similar returns [0]. Equity markets are far more liquid though so I choose them personally. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19817584

The equivalent to rental income is "with dividends reinvested". Dividends are the cash flows from owning a stock, just like rent is the cash flow from housing. So the 10x capital appreciation from housing is equivalent to the 37x capital appreciation from the S&P 500. You and anovikov reach different conclusions because you're looking at different time scales. You're citing returns from 1870-2015; he's citing returns…

OK, so returns from 1870 to 2015 are same for housing and stocks. Which again proves that there's nothing morally wrong about housing prices, if these investments are replaceable, one can always invest in stocks to save up to buy housing (at least on average, that is).

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#247

Post by colinmhayes » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

namelessoracle wrote: post #216

namdnay wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people had to pay inheritance tax on their family home, how many could not afford such a tax bill and would have to get rid of their family home to please the tax man. so if they can't afford to pay tax on the windfall, they'd have to sell the house and buy a smaller one. is that the end of the world? > Regarding the cost basis rest that is so people can upgrade their house without having to pay a tax bill what…

So a family on hard times should be forced to leave their grandmothers home when she dies and hope they can find a new one? Gentrification can easily push a property in the place they've lived their whole lives out of their price range. And the family home might not have been super well kept up so the "windfall" isn't as big as the property values in the area may reflect. This happens now with gentrification in big c…

Yes, if you can't afford your house you need to find a new one. The family will come out well ahead here because the tax would only be on a percentage of the houses value, they can use the proceeds to buy a new, cheaper house. No one has the right to live anywhere just because their grandma did.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#248

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#249

Post by pessimizer » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

axg11 wrote: post #141

datacruncher01 wrote: post #132

It's a simple problem, we turned housing into an investment. Now everyone who owns a home is incentivized to ensure their investment is maximized and that results in a lot of NIMBYism. The simple solution is we need more housing in cities and suburbs. How we get there is an exercise that's taken on by local housing authorities and they are not incentivized to solve the problem. That's because they work for voters who…

When was housing not an investment? Throughout history, people have always wanted to drive up the value of their land and properties. There are still plenty of places in the US/Canada/UK where housing is cheap. The problem is that nobody wants to live in those areas.

> When was housing not an investment?

Housing was never an investment before recent decades, with an emphasis on the housing bubble. Housing tracked inflation for 400 years.

https://thegoldobserver.substack.com/p/amsterdam-real-housin...

edit: the history of US house prices is that they strictly tracked inflation, then with government subsidy right after WWII, housing prices jumped up, then stayed flat at that new level for the next 50 years, then the turn of the millennium happens and housing becomes an investment (after a stock market crash.)

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#250

Post by aluminussoma » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

DubiousPusher wrote: post #215

aluminussoma wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if persistently low interest rates is the real culprit that led to housing as investment. I have been recently intrigued by FinTwit arguments that an excess of demand spurred by too low interest rates is the real reason for many shortages. As a saver, that argument naturally appeals to me.

> I have been recently intrigued by FinTwit arguments that an excess of demand spurred by too low interest rates is the real reason for many shortages I don't believe this is the case as since 2008 the U.S. construction industry has not even built enough units to keep up with population growth. I believe this is a supply problem which is two-fold. 1) Restrictive zoning and permitting which really took off around the…

> I don't believe this is the case as since 2008 the U.S. construction industry has not even built enough units to keep up with population growth. I believe this is a supply problem which is two-fold.

A counterargument to this is that population growth has not been very high in the past few decades: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=SUL3

You certainly have valid points, especially in San Francisco. Nevertheless, looking at the broader market, outside of California, the market appears to be working: builders find a way to build what will sell and maximize their profits. Last week, I drove around a planned community in a middle-America state. Developers started building houses around ~2010 and are still building out the area. These developers had no problem building thousands of homes that were selling well until very recently.