If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund • Hacker News Board

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#351

Post by rcpt » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

plank_time wrote: post #209

seanp2k2 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve ranted about this before but CA Prop 13 not only makes housing a good investment, but one that you’re extremely incentivized to hold onto forever and never move. Two people can be living in houses next to each other valued around 1.5m, and one of them will be paying 1/10th the tax. If anyone wants to buy a house, they have to first be able to afford the property, so the barriers to entry are so much higher for t…

You’re saying that old people should be driven out of their houses because younger, richer people deserve to live in their houses. I’m sure your feelings will change as you get older.

the California Tax Postponment Program protects low income seniors and the disabled. They have 0 risk of being displaced by property taxes no matter what.

Prop 13 is wholly unnecessary

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#352

Post by iso1210 » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

world_peace42 wrote: post #168

cortesoft wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think that was disturbing, check out the substack linked to the twitter account. Full on nut job.

I clicked it. Looks like he's a Republican and a Christian (and has pretty standard opinions for that intersection) who likes to write long political essays. Are you sure he's a nut job, or could you possibly just be a bigot?

> has pretty standard opinions for that intersection

If that's true, that's a major problem that the US needs to solve

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#353

Post by rmah » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

jsmcgd wrote: post #62

adflux wrote: post #26

I really wish we'd get some innovation in the housing market. 3D printing of houses or something could be epic. "Just" disrupt the current construction companies... It's clear they can't keep up with the demand right now.

Lack of housing is not a technology or industrial problem. New homes can be made easily and relatively cheaply if given the go ahead. Lack of housing is by policy. By ensuring there are not enough houses ensures there is more demand than supply, which means higher housing prices, which means higher mortgages. The mortgage market is based on rising house prices. The banking industry is based on the mortgage industry.…

Remember, in the 1950s a new build home would cost about 1 years salary

I'm afraid that is mostly a myth. This source (https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-inco...) shows that the home price to median household income multiple in 1950 was around 6, or about the same as now. It did fall quite dramatically during the late 1950's, going a bit under 5x by 1960 and nearing an all time low of just over 4x by the late 1990's.

This other source (https://archive.curbed.com/2018/4/10/17219786/buying-a-house...) shows that median household income in 1950 was $3,000 and the median "home value" was $7,400. Which is still 2.45x. By 2000, the multiple had declined to 2.17. I suspect the media home sale price was substantially higher.

Both sources show a surge in home prices during the housing bubble between 2000 and 2010.

Note, you also get a LOT more house now than you did in the 1950's. Much much larger, much higher quality, many more amenities, etc.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#354

Post by JohnWhigham » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

kazen44 wrote: post #203

JohnWhigham wrote: post #131

The middle class continues to get raped and fleeced by corporations while our governments do nothing. This is how America dies.

i wonder how long until social unrest truely takes hold, especially among young adults. standards of living have been going down in the past decade, while the government seems to think young people have nothing to moan about. not to mention the massive bill called climate change which is due sooner or later.

I don't think there will be, at least not for several decades.

Things are "bad" for many people in the country, but not third-world-country bad. People will be too focused on just meeting their basic needs. In what little free time they have, they will distract themselves with their phones that will tell/comfort them that the "other side" is responsible for the general malaise (instead of the collective rich elites).

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#355

Post by JamesBarney » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

brightball wrote: post #218

davidw wrote: post #125

Here's why investors buy up houses: they know your neighbors will do the dirty work of artificially constraining the housing supply, which makes it a good investment. Here's one who comes right out and explains this: > Meanwhile, local opposition to building is so commonplace and the approval process so cumbersome, time consuming, and expensive, even when a proposed project complies entirely with requirements, approv…

I just experienced something similar to this and it makes me wonder if much of this is just perception. We recently dealt with an out of state builder pushing to have a property that was zoned Neighborhood Commercial to be rezoned to something more flexible so that he could build 49 town homes with 49 parking spots on 5 acres of land. Everybody opposed the rezoning and fought to defeat it. The project would have been…

Yes.

If you believe that no town homes should be built in the U.S. than you might not qualify as NIMBY.

But if you believe that town homes shouldn't be built next to you that's the definition of NIMBY. Of course every instance has a long list of reasons why next to them is especially bad, character of the neighborhood, parking issues, infrastructure, etc....

But the end result of everyone fighting increased density in their neighborhood is we have a less density (bad for environment) and more expensive housing.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#356

Post by selectodude » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

alexgmcm wrote: post #166

matthoiland wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everybody works but the vacant lot. I paid $3600 for this lot and will hold 'till I get $6000. The profit is unearned increment made possible by the presence of this community and enterprise of its people. I take the profit without earning it. for the remedy read Henry George. - Billboard posted in an empty lot, Rockford Illinois, 1914

It's a bit discouraging that over a century later the same problem still remains.

Pretty sure a plot of land in Rockford, IL is still worth about $3600 though :)

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#357

Post by shiftpgdn » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

tengbretson wrote: post #328

Smaug123 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The usual advocacy point is to reduce most of the other taxes and send the LVT way up. "We should have a land value tax" is usually meant to mean "most tax should be on land".

Wouldn't this accelerate the displacement of less wealthy home owners in neighborhoods that are being gentrified?

Many counties in Texas have solved this by setting a 10% maximum year over year increase in property/land tax for people LIVING in their homes. There are also locks and exemptions carved out for those over 65 and disabled veterans.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#358

Post by sokoloff » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

tachyonbeam wrote: post #312

datavirtue wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok...we need more houses so tax the hell out of developers?! You need people to be able to build and flip properties without being taxed at all. The current taxes are carving a modest profit down to "not worth it" for a lot of people who could otherwise build and revitalize affordable housing. More taxes on home sales results in less homes for sale.

IMO we should probably reduce taxes on house builders. Maybe even give them tax exemptions. Do what we can to increase supply. Speculators wanting to buy a house, redo the kitchen, and mark up the price 20% 6 months later though? We could just let older, unrenovated houses be cheap. That opens up deals to new home buyers. You can redo the kitchen after buying the house if you really care. You don't need some middle m…

Lots of people want to buy a move-in-ready house. Many don’t know much about construction, don’t know which end of a hammer to hold, can’t afford to have a house sit idle for 3 months while a renovation happens, and want to have the “Apple” experience for one or two hundred a month more in their mortgage payment.

That’s the service flippers provide, IMO. (I’m not one but I think they’re more helpful than not in terms of providing housing that owner-occupants want.)

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#359

Post by iso1210 » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #327

crypto-cousin wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever think about how crank "denialisms" are usually believed by small percentages of the population, but this time with COVID and the election it's nearly half? Isn't that strange?

Most people who voted for Trump believe Trump lost to Biden.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/24/republicans-...

> May opinion poll finds that 53% of Republicans believe Trump is the ‘true president’ compared with 3% of Democrats

> About one-quarter of adults falsely believe the 3 November election was tainted by illegal voting, including 56% of Republicans, according to the poll.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#360

Post by kaibee » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

tachyonbeam wrote: post #77

cosmojg wrote: post #32

If only so many people didn't treat land and houses like investments, there wouldn't be such a disastrous hoarding problem. Henry George's Land Value Tax [1][2] seems like an obvious economic fix that would require a large fraction of the population to change how they think about land and natural resources, but most of them are invested in such a way (i.e. owning multiple houses on multiple parcels of land, often wit…

I agree that we need to stop treating houses as investments, because they're a basic fundamental need everyone has. IMO, the problem could be fixed by having stricter laws prohibiting people who aren't residents from owning homes in another country. The requirement to become a resident is only to live in a country for over 6 months out of the year. Before that, you can just rent. We could also do things like limit th…

> but we probably don't want to live in a communist country where the government owns every home and everyone is renting either.

Yes, like the famously communist state of, checks notes, Singapore.

Sorry for the snarky reply, but I don't think calling the breaking of monopoly power/taxing unearned rents is communism.