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

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381–390 of 1001 posts

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

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COVID denialism, election denialism, and “The Great Reset” are high profile crank subjects. Being a conservative Christian doesn’t make you a crank; those things do.

I remember last year when believing COVID may have come out of a lab made one a crank. It was only on certain news channels or specific papers. Of course, let's also assume there are no widespread liberal beliefs (the world is going to end in 12 years) that should label someone as a crank.

"the world is going to end in 12 years" is not a widespread belief, liberal or otherwise

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

#383

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.

I own a house in East Bay, and paying >$10k/yr of property tax. While I don't mind tax in principle, it greatly annoys me that I'm paying much more than my neighbors just because I bought it a few years ago.

And why would my opinion change when I get older? Prop 13 won't do shit to lower my taxes, I'll have less income and still be paying through the nose, because the city needs money and half of its residents are paying virtually nothing. If anything, I'll be even crankier about the whole situation.

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

#384
Is it somehow crazy or unpalatable to say that there should be a law against institutional investors and corporations from owning residential real estate that was built for owner-occupiers? Bc there should be a law and it should have been passed by congress yesterday.

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

#385
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, having views that divorced from reality is crazy, plain and simple. It's also dangerous, as the ongoing insurrection against the US government shows. It's not bigotry to call them out for how outlandish and insane their beliefs are.

Nothing is bigotry if there are enough bigots. And, as everyone knows, HN is a one-party site, so I'm not expecting many upvotes.

the idea that HN is a liberal-only site is... not correct

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

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is "they"? Some article in a newspaper? A handful of researchers and futurists? Edit: Got it. It's from a list of unsurprising predictions from [at least] the marketing department of the World Economic Forum. Thanks.

It was from a series of predictions made by the WEF in 2016 about life in 2030[0]. The claim of many is that the WEF wants to bring about a world in which the vast majority of people don't have ownership. Reuters "fact checks"[1] this claim by saying that it was merely a prediction, and that it isn't actually a goal listed on their website. I find the fact check unpersuasive. The WEF says "you will be happy" about no…

It feels like this analysis is missing something, ex. have you had any property rights taken away in the ensuing 5 years? If discourse hinges on a 2 minute YouTube video and refusing to accept any downplaying of it, what hope does discourse have? There's approximately infinite two minute YouTube videos

edit: -4 in 7 minutes, anyone have tips on exactly how you are allowed to discuss any of this without wholesale accepting it?

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

#387
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, no, California has Prop 13, because wealthy investors in property used constructed images of that scenario to build support for a law to transfer more wealth to the already wealthy, not because its was a real problem (and, even if it was, Prop 13 doesn’t focus on dealing with that problem.)

There are problems with prop 13, but it does prevent people from being kicked out of their owned homes for temporary market conditions that are out of their control. Imho the problem was that the politics of the day got it passed to cover commercial properties too, when it really should just cover primary residences. And not secondary homes or rental properties.

The California Tax Postponment Program prevents displacement of low income seniors and the disabled. Prop 13 is wholly unnecessary.

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

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently went down the Geoist/LVT rabbit-hole myself. It strikes me as uniquely appealing across the political spectrum, since it reduces tax on wealth-creation AND redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor. Sadly, this very fact provokes enough superficial resistance to keep it out of the Overton window. Whenever it comes up, shouters on either side have plenty of ammo to blast it, saying things to the effect…

It's never appealing to make a long time member of a community leave because they can no longer afford the land they've owned for years, because other people say "I want that" I move to a cheap, small town. I embed myself in the community and help build it up over decades. And then, at the peak popularity, in part due to my presence, I am forced out, because someone who has never been here says that they would like t…

> I move to a cheap, small town. I embed myself in the community and help build it up over decades. And then, at the peak popularity, in part due to my presence, I am forced out, because someone who has never been here says that they would like to live here.

Why would you be forced out? Yes, taxes on the underlying land would increase because it is more valuable, but you would be able to move into a new property in the same community, as housing would increase in density. Now if you don't want to live in a denser community, that's fine, but you don't really have a right to prevent the densification.

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

#389
Sigh. They know land is the real wealth. And since current buying generation does not know this, it's ripe to snap up. In addition it is very hard for the current generation to even own. This is were I detest free market economy because it creates such an unfair situation. And this leads me to think things like houses should be capped. Everyone should be able to have a piece of land and a home. Corporations can lease land from cities but should never own. The idea here is simple, corporations cannot be treated the same as an individual human.

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

#390

This hurts people who already own houses, too - property taxes are assessed on the appraised value of the home, which is a function of what the similarly-sized houses in your area sold for most recently. My property taxes have increased 10% every year for the past several years (and it would have been more if not for a legislative 10% annual cap). I worry that there will come a day when I've paid off my mortgage but…

There is another way it hurts homeowners: the high cost of housing increases the cost of upgrading and maintaining the home you own, mostly via the construction labor market - because the workers need to pay for the roofs over their heads too.

Therefore, just keeping the depreciation of your house at bay ends up becoming expensive. If you are lucky enough to enjoy DIY work like I do, you can avoid this somewhat, but the moment you need to do any major renovation that you don't have the time and skills to do yourself, it costs about the same as a purchase.

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