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The Costco of Housing is Costco? The retailer's plan to use CA housing laws

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Re: The Costco of Housing is Costco? The retailer's plan to use CA housing laws

#41

Post by ericd »

throwup238 wrote: post #26
modeless wrote: post #25

Costco is great but their parking lots are awful. I hope the housing has a separate parking entrance because fighting Costco shoppers every time I leave home sounds like a nightmare.

On the other hand, imagine all the money you could save if you just had a $1.50 hot dog and soda for every meal. You could eat on less than $200 a month. If you ate nothing but pepperoni pizza, you could feed a family of four for like $500 a month!

The bulk pack of medical care you’ll need soon might kill the savings.

Re: The Costco of Housing is Costco? The retailer's plan to use CA housing laws

#42

Post by ryandrake »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #2

Any housing that can be built is good housing for places that have a severe supply-side constraint of housing. The only way to bring house prices down is to build build build. I'd actually be quite trustful of a Costco apartment.

I wonder if they plan to also build all the infrastructure required to support all these new people living in these new housing. Like expanded electric service, water & sewer, trash pickup, transportation, schools, another fire station. Or are taxpayers going to have to pick up that bill? Build build build is great, we need more housing, but you can't do it without also planning for all the supporting infrastructure.

Re: The Costco of Housing is Costco? The retailer's plan to use CA housing laws

#43

Post by throwup238 »

ericd wrote: post #41
throwup238 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, imagine all the money you could save if you just had a $1.50 hot dog and soda for every meal. You could eat on less than $200 a month. If you ate nothing but pepperoni pizza, you could feed a family of four for like $500 a month!

The bulk pack of medical care you’ll need soon might kill the savings.

Nothing bulk gummy multivitamins and semaglutide can't solve.

Costco even sells an MCT supplement that doubles as the best massage oil and lube I’ve ever used.

Re: The Costco of Housing is Costco? The retailer's plan to use CA housing laws

#44

Post by elevatedastalt »

meragrin_ wrote: post #18
ozuly wrote: post #4

I'm continuously impressed by Costco. Not only is it one of my favorite places to shop, but I also recently recent to the Acquired episode on Costco[0] and was super impressed by how they run their business. They've continuously been able to align their unique advantages to reenforce each other and make their advantages even stronger. I highly recommend this episode to everyone. [0] https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/c…

> their unique advantages What are those? I never really found any sort of "unique advantage" of Costco. Certainly nothing to drive the extra distance past Sam's. While I had a membership, it was largely more expensive or didn't have what I wanted.

Product filtering: Low number of SKUs of high confidence. I can basically blindly pick up anything at a Costco and be assured of a certain basic quality. It's the opposite of a place like Amazon.

Customer filtering: The subscription model creates a high trust customer base with way lower chances of shoplifting, fraudulent returns and the like.

Re: The Costco of Housing is Costco? The retailer's plan to use CA housing laws

#45

Post by Apocryphon »

carabiner wrote: post #37
josephpmay wrote: post #29

Hi, I'm the person who wrote the Twitter thread this article is based off of, so happy to answer any questions about it

Do you regret writing it in misleading clickbait style, calling it a "prison"?

This gotcha question already has an answer, funnily enough:

https://x.com/CohenSite/status/1800905974490005978

> Because it got over 400,000 people to read a tweet about somewhat esoteric housing regulations

Re: The Costco of Housing is Costco? The retailer's plan to use CA housing laws

#46

Post by m463 »

Arrath wrote: post #16
elevatedastalt wrote: post #2

Any housing that can be built is good housing for places that have a severe supply-side constraint of housing. The only way to bring house prices down is to build build build. I'd actually be quite trustful of a Costco apartment.

I wonder what the return policy will be like.

probably pretty good, but I wouldn't attempt it on saturday afternoon.

Re: The Costco of Housing is Costco? The retailer's plan to use CA housing laws

#47

Post by Apocryphon »

neilv wrote: post #11

I like what I know of Costco, as a service, and as a company. But that architectural rendering, of the cool housing straddling the no-frills Costco big box, reminded me of Idiocracy's "Welcome to Costco; I love you". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdNmOOq6T8Y

I too am in a Costco household, one of my friends is a long time employee there and loves it, and I would like to visit a Costco apartment open house, and the satire that this proposal (a big box store getting into residential housing) reminds me of is Sorry to Bother You's WorryFree:

https://thebaffler.com/latest/worryfree-seymour

Re: The Costco of Housing is Costco? The retailer's plan to use CA housing laws

#48

Post by Apocryphon »

throwup238 wrote: post #26
modeless wrote: post #25

Costco is great but their parking lots are awful. I hope the housing has a separate parking entrance because fighting Costco shoppers every time I leave home sounds like a nightmare.

On the other hand, imagine all the money you could save if you just had a $1.50 hot dog and soda for every meal. You could eat on less than $200 a month. If you ate nothing but pepperoni pizza, you could feed a family of four for like $500 a month!

Even cheaper: https://mashable.com/article/cotsco-disaster-kit

Re: The Costco of Housing is Costco? The retailer's plan to use CA housing laws

#49

Post by smugma »

josephpmay wrote: post #29

Hi, I'm the person who wrote the Twitter thread this article is based off of, so happy to answer any questions about it

The article had a great headline but I didn’t really understand it. Your Twitter post filled in the missing details.

Thank you!

Re: The Costco of Housing is Costco? The retailer's plan to use CA housing laws

#50

Post by WrongAssumption »

ryandrake wrote: post #42
elevatedastalt wrote: post #2

Any housing that can be built is good housing for places that have a severe supply-side constraint of housing. The only way to bring house prices down is to build build build. I'd actually be quite trustful of a Costco apartment.

I wonder if they plan to also build all the infrastructure required to support all these new people living in these new housing. Like expanded electric service, water & sewer, trash pickup, transportation, schools, another fire station. Or are taxpayers going to have to pick up that bill? Build build build is great, we need more housing, but you can't do it without also planning for all the supporting infrastructure.

I’m unclear what your concern is. How is this different than any other home builder? Also unclear what you mean by taxpayers being on the hook. More people in housing expands the tax payer base. The new homeowners will literally be paying for these things when they pay their property tax.
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