Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 352 posts

Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

#271

Post by PrimalDual »

pmoriarty wrote: post #232
dlp211 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's scandalous that it was a better investment to simply walk away then lose money on every transaction? And then you think they should be taxed because the government is forcing them to lose money? I'm not some anti-government zealot, but think about what you are saying/asking for here.

If they still own the building and don't let people live there, then that is scandalous. I'll stand by that.

I don't think there are mustache twirling landlords that buy buildings only to leave them empty and refuse to let people live in them. Frankly it's appalling that government regulation could get bad enough that a landlord's only choice to minimize his losses is to leave a building unoccupied. I really hope the parent's comment is an exaggeration or a myth. What is even worse is that people actually think it's somehow the landlord's fault.

Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

#272

Post by ryanlol »

foldr wrote: post #270
ryanlol wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a plenty of legal migrants working illegally.

Polish people have the right to work in the Netherlands (or any other EU country).

Yes? You can work illegally in any country by getting paid in cash and not reporting your income. I really don't see where the EU or the nationality of the worker comes in here.

Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

#273

Post by ptaipale »

Shivetya wrote: post #147
oneplane wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, I knew about things being bad in the USA, but I didn't know living conditions are going towards third-world standards :/ Where I live (The Netherlands) there are laws that even protect foreign workers (i.e. from Poland) from all being stuffed in a single room. At this point it's starting to look like even jail cells have more room and privacy.

well his example probably violates more than one regulation the issue being of course, someone has to report it.

...after which the people who lived there have even less of a roof over their heads.

Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

#274

Post by ptaipale »

laurencerowe wrote: post #115
x0x0 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of it is nimbys, just not sf nimbys. The entire peninsula dumps their housing problem onto sf and san jose. viz linkedin and google building millions of ft2 of new campuses for tens of thousands of employees in a town of 80k that is possibly going to study maybe building some housing. Potentially. So where do the employees go? The only places there is housing available.

SF has a net commuter inflow so it's better characterized as the peninsular becoming more like SF when it used to be more like SJ.

Indeed. If there are more jobs than apartments in SF, and more people commuting to SF than from SF, it doesn't sound like "the entire peninsula dumps their housing problem onto sf"; it's rather the other way round.

Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

#275

Post by mhenr18 »

repsilat wrote: post #246
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The loan repayments on my three bedroom house are AU$47 a day, or about US$35. ($215,000 purchase price in 2016).

Is your $215k Aussie house in close to town in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane? There are plenty of cheap houses in America too, living in LA/SF/NYC is a luxury that people pay a premium for.

It's interesting that a lot of people act like living in those big cities is a necessity rather than the luxury that you've pointed out it really is.

Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

#276

Post by ptaipale »

didibus wrote: post #58
spikels wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that laws passed to deal with high housing costs are often counterproductive in the long run. The classic example is rent control. Can you explain your theory that low rates drive high rent inflation? Seems like it would be the opposite for several reasons: low rates are associated with low inflation, low rates make it much cheaper to build and operate apartment buildings, etc.

Counter productive in what ways? Rent control works great for Montreal and has for years. That city is very affordable to live in, because of it.

Montreal city has today a lower population than it had 50 years ago (using current city limits). Abbreviated from Wikipedia:

  1966	1,750,969	
  1976	1,664,527	−5.7%
  1986	1,541,251	−0.9%
  1996	1,550,369	−0.2%
  2006	1,620,639	+2.3%
  2014  1,731,245	+5.0%
So I don't think you can attribute the affordability to rent controls at all.

You can perhaps attribute it to the rent controls that all the metropolitan population growth has gone outside the city (where it has over the past 50 years doubled from 1.3 million to 2.6 million).

Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

#277

Post by jstanley »

rfrey wrote: post #179
golergka wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> protect Curious about what exactly does it mean in this content. Is it about banning full grown and consenting adults from signing a deal because government think it knows best what's good for them?

Your objection could apply against all tenants' rights laws, or against any workers' rights laws as well, such as maximum allowed work hours, rights to breaks every few hours, etc.

Correct. And I agree with him.

Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

#278

Post by vertex-four »

ryanlol wrote: post #272
foldr wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polish people have the right to work in the Netherlands (or any other EU country).

Yes? You can work illegally in any country by getting paid in cash and not reporting your income. I really don't see where the EU or the nationality of the worker comes in here.

There's significantly less incentive to do that when you don't have to. Or, in other words - why would a Polish worker do that any more than a Dutch person, when both of them are otherwise there entirely legally?

Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

#279

Post by conanbatt »

spikels wrote: post #123
conanbatt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low rates drive up mortgage lending and increases housing value, that is far from being "my theory", it's an accepted phenomena. There are other things related to the housing market, like construction lagging demand(the U.S. is not building as many dwelling units as purely demographic demand needs) or demand being pro-cyclical. As far as i can tell, developers are picking up the pace and the whole situation might fix…

I thought we were talking about rent levels not home prices! Again how does low rates drive up rents? Keep in mind that very few people borrow to pay rent while most apartments and their construction is financed by debt. At first approximation low rates would be neutral for demand but positive for supply.

Rent prices and house prices are linked.

The more houses people buy to live in, the supply for houses for rent lowers. People that had property renting out see a higher return by just selling their property, reducing the supply for the rental market.

How strong is that correlation, i don't know. There could be other demographic factors like people moving to cities more and more (SF still has a huge influx of people).

Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

#280

Post by ryanlol »

vertex-four wrote: post #278
ryanlol wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes? You can work illegally in any country by getting paid in cash and not reporting your income. I really don't see where the EU or the nationality of the worker comes in here.

There's significantly less incentive to do that when you don't have to. Or, in other words - why would a Polish worker do that any more than a Dutch person, when both of them are otherwise there entirely legally?

The cheap migrant worker probably doesn't care if he pays the Dutch taxes or not, but his employer will definitely be very happy if he and his coworkers don't.

Unreported employment is super common.

Post reply on HN