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“Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

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Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#451

Post by jlebar »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #406
jlebar wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not to mention supply/demand doesn't work for something with fairly inelastic demand lolwut? The free market works pretty OK for gasoline and food (taken as a whole; obviously specific foods are elastic). When was the last time you heard people clamoring for price controls at the grocery store? Even more to the point, the free market works just fine for housing in the vast majority of the US that does not have any…

> When was the last time you heard people clamoring for price controls at the grocery store? This is, in fact, extremely common, historically and currently. Just within the US in the past several years, look at the demand for price caps on bottled water in the wake of natural disasters.

Acute price controls -- lasting for ~days -- are a totally different thing than rent control lasting for tens of years.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#452

Post by foobarqux »

tptacek wrote: post #386
maxlybbert wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Externality" means something more than "thing I don't like."

That's a bit of a snarky way to put it, but this is correct; the parent comment is abusing the term "externality". The consequences of rental contracts for tenants in a free housing market are not an externality; the tenant is a party to the transaction.

Housing prices and displacing people from their homes has an obvious effect on the local labor market, which is an externality.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#453

Post by visarga »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #303
tptacek wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're missing is that housing is not a normal good This logic taken to its conclusion brings us to some pretty disquieting places. Maybe SF should just build a lot more housing .

Heaven forbid we devalue the existing property! Or change SF's character! /s

They should realize that not everyone can live in a good area of the city. A city, by its structure, has a center and periphery. The good zones are good by relation to the other zones, otherwise, space is just space. So, valuable property will always be limited in quantity.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#454

Post by Kalium »

foobarqux wrote: post #452
tptacek wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of a snarky way to put it, but this is correct; the parent comment is abusing the term "externality". The consequences of rental contracts for tenants in a free housing market are not an externality; the tenant is a party to the transaction.

Housing prices and displacing people from their homes has an obvious effect on the local labor market, which is an externality.

Given that they are displaced by other people, presumably with higher incomes and skill levels, I'm not sure how obvious an effect that is.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#455

Post by chongli »

tptacek wrote: post #386
maxlybbert wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Externality" means something more than "thing I don't like."

That's a bit of a snarky way to put it, but this is correct; the parent comment is abusing the term "externality". The consequences of rental contracts for tenants in a free housing market are not an externality; the tenant is a party to the transaction.

No, but there are serious externalities involved when classes of people are driven out of communities.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#456

Post by sampo »

shauncrampton wrote: post #443
sampo wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Affordable housing is something that would actually be solved by free markets. It's the heavily regulated (almost socialistic) systems when building new homes to new people in a growing city is not allowed (because the old residents don't want their city to grow), so supply is now allowed to meet the demand, when we have these problems.

Everything could be solved by a perfect free marker where everyone had perfect information, zero latency in decision making and where making a decision cost nothing. Trouble is, IRL, none of those assumptions is even remotely true. Just as the renter signs an agreement, so does the landlord; rent controls skew the bargain but they do it for both parties. If the landloard didn't want to have a rent-controlled tenant f…

A desirable city with very limited new construction will lead to increasing prices. You can use rent control to give cheaper housing to a smallish number of people, who kind of win in this lottery and get cheaper housing the others. But there will be those others, lots of them, who were not among the "lottery winners" and who will have to resort ti living with a much longer commute.

If demand is high, building new homes for people should be allowed.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#458

Post by tizzdogg »

pas wrote: post #370
bratsche wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you've got to tear a bunch of stuff down first. And I've read before that the city doesn't want to build up too much because they want to retain some of their character or something.

Then build a bit further away and link the new high rises with high-speed whatevers. Subways/underground/metro/u-bahn whatever you want to call it. It costs a fuckload of money, sure, but efficient cities are pretty much unimaginable without them (for now at least).

Well the geography and political climate of San francisco and its surrounding towns make this pretty difficult. It's a small city in a major earthquake zone, with tons of hills, surrounded by water and suburban neighbors who consistently vote down any expansion of the existing rapid transit system. Any new transportation infrastructure would take literally decades (see California's coming high speed rail line).

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#459

Post by eyeareque »

therealwill wrote: post #58

Here is the home: http://www.trulia.com/homes/California/San_Francisco/sold/71... Taxes are 11,043 with a value of 904,085. $2145 looks like an EXTREMELY low rent for a house of this size in San Francisco. (half of the rent is just property taxes.) The landlord was likely losing money keeping it rented at $2145 even if he owned it free and clear.

The property taxes are based on the price the owner bought the house for. Not the current value.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#460

Post by bhuga »

It's an incredible statement on the depth of the bay area talent pool and VC money network that so much tech concentrates in such a tiny place (and thus drives up the rent, as in the article). Nowhere else in the world can compete.

It's not for lack of trying. Louisiana, for example, will pay 35% of a programmers salary indefinitely[1]; other states and cities have similar programs. That's serious competition. But the talent/money vortex of the bay area is not just winning, it's actually getting stronger.

The other areas with real companies, like Austin, Seattle, and New York, still feel like also-rans compared to SF and the valley. If you want to raise money, it's still the place to go.

It's just incredible to think about. Is there any other field where there's just one geographical place that's just so far ahead of anywhere else? Especially fields like biotech, where geography isn't directly related to the business?

[1]: http://gnoinc.org/about/digital-media-incentive/

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