281–290 of 312 posts
Corporations shouldn't be able to own single family homes. Corporations shouldn't be able to own single family homes. Corporations shouldn't be able to own single family homes. Corporations shouldn't be able to own single family homes. Corporations shouldn't be able to own single family homes...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This^, this is how you end up with serfdom
Ah yes, the down votes have started I forgot that this is a forum for the rent seeking class
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's be honest, it's not even that. It's more like "relative to historic trends, many people want houses [in desirable areas] who can't afford the current prices." Building tons of new houses outside of the hot areas that all these people want to live would still elicit cries of a shortage and an affordability crisis. Because there are currently affordable places outside of hot areas, but not very many takers. It's…
Exactly this. There's something about housing which causes so many people to think its an easy thing to solve by just building more and that's not actually true
Building houses in places 3 hours away from closest job wont.
The reasons for high housing prices generally come down to "government restriction of supply, as supported by a large amount of voters". There's no other expense where we talk about it as a market, at least in general layman focused new and discussions. People aren't concerned about the fuel market or the grocery market. They're concerned about fuel prices. Grocery prices. Housing is an exception due to catastrophic…
You have to run on agressive redistribution and get your political mandate from those that are kept out of this frankly insane system, else you're doomed to fail and join the other democrats who promised social justice but ended up delivering a boring half-competent technocratic stewardship of the economy instead, and disillusioned yet more people from the "left".
Ban corporate ownership of residences. Only individuals, Coops or condominiums. Cap how many rentals an individual can own. The government should also build massive amounts of housing. Everywhere of all types - apartments, townhouses, single family. After built transferred to the residents as coops.
> Ban corporate ownership of residences. Only individuals, Many/most corporate owners are individuals (as per the linked report). See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46208561 > Cap how many rentals an individual can own. Yes. Cap to 0. Until we get data on the breakdown (what percentage of rental homes are by owners who own 1, 2, 3, etc), we don't really know. It won't be easy to determine becau…
> Yes. Cap to 0.
That is saying let's eliminate rentals entirely. If nobody can own a rental, there can be no rentals.
Some people do prefer to rent. I wouldn't, but I know people who truly prefer that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why isn't a carefully-regulated market of institutional single-family-home lenders a good thing? Is there a good example of this? Every corporation I've rented from have all fought me tooth and nail when I needed maintenance and did basically everything possible to ignore any and all complaints (because it costs them money, obviously). I have had to have a lawyer send a letter on my behalf more than once. But that'…
It has not been my experience that individual owner landlords have been better than institutional owners! Anyways, I was just calling out that your logic didn't appear to hold. The right response to the comment that roots this subthread is "institutional landlords are not generally a thing". Again: the median number of properties a California corporate landlord lets out is 1.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is this special depreciation corporate owners get? IIUC any landlord can use depreciation to lower their tax bill. Wouldn't the depreciation from a new purchase also apply to the rents from that new purchase? Somewhat more outrageous is the 1031 exchange. Sell VTI at a profit to buy VOO and the government hits you with a capital gains tax. Sell your primary residence for $250k more than you bought it - same thin…
> IIUC any landlord can use depreciation to lower their tax bill. This is also not really how depreciation works for assets that retain their value. If you buy a building to rent it out, the cost of the building essentially a cost of doing business, i.e. a tax deduction. You pay tax on the profit which is revenue (rents) minus costs (building, interest, maintenance, advertising, etc.) Depreciation is the building, th…
Homeowners get a tax exemption but only up to a certain amount in gains.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You tell me! Local merchants just warehouse products they didn't manufacture and don't know anything about, and they give you much worse customer service and are more expensive than Amazon. It's not very common that local merchants give a damn about the people in their community.
I keep getting these hail-corporate responses here. It's a wee bit strange to me. Let me tell you about the bodega man. I'd walk over there to his shop if I wanted to buy something -- a soda, some beer, a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk or some pasta sauce or whatever. It was a good bit of healthy exercise, and it was as local as it could get. He didn't keep a ton of inventory (it was not a big shop), but he'd stoc…
I don't buy groceries online, have never liked the idea. But for other goods, Amazon or other corporate giants are normally the best choice. And you probably know it too.
> How many specialty items has Amazon kept in stock just because you, individually, wanted to buy them?
Places like Amazon are usually the only place to get specialty items. Go to a local merchant and their answer is always "We don't have them in stock, but we can order them for you". Even specialty stores never have specialty items which they know customers need. After having spent the day going to 5 different specialty stores and none of them having the item, you'll wonder why you didn't buy it on Amazon in the first place.
> How many items have you successfully (even if accidentally) negotiated an ongoing price with Amazon on?
Never, of course. Their prices are already cheaper than what you can get after successfully negotiating with a local merchant. And I don't enjoy negotiating. I have nothing against local stores being more expensive for the convenience.
> How many minty new Weber grills has Amazon offered to give you before they fell over dead?
About fourteen.
For most sectors, local merchants simply offer no convenience, no knowledge, no stock, annoying sales tactics, lying salesmen, predatory terms, no product guarantees, a hateful attitude, and jacked up prices. The local merchant is usually a multi-millionaire who gives as little a damn about you and the community he operates in as Amazon does.
With Amazon I can return a product if I need to and get my money back. I can purchase it in peace with all relevant information about the product presented clearly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No I’m saying given a choice between working with a company that has 500 units an onsite staff and on call repairmen and Billy Bobs one person operation, statistically you are more likely to get better service from a professionally managed complex.
And anecdotally, my lifetime of experience so far does not support that conclusion at all. I'm an outlier; I understand that most rentals in the US are not owned by individuals, but instead by [large-ish] corporations. I understand that it is impossible for my experience to be broadly shared.
And the reason I ended up back in an apartment for four years from 2012-2016.
And during those years I was fortunately in my mid to late 30s and could afford to stay in nice apartments in an upper income suburb of metro Atlanta.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's interesting how "shortage" is defined across different products. From an economics standpoint, "shortage" isn't a useful word, unless it's applied in the extremely unlikely scenario where there nothing is available at any price. Generally, this is because price dictates supply. "Shortage" for the current housing market is generally used to mean, "relative to historic trends, many people want houses who c…
Let's be honest, it's not even that. It's more like "relative to historic trends, many people want houses [in desirable areas] who can't afford the current prices." Building tons of new houses outside of the hot areas that all these people want to live would still elicit cries of a shortage and an affordability crisis. Because there are currently affordable places outside of hot areas, but not very many takers. It's…
Uh have you heard of telework? I am sure that both federal and state governments could incentivize companies to offer telework instead of some forced RTO situation.