51–60 of 76 posts
Okay, somebody help me out here. Maybe I'm missing something, but the basic equation is that you as tenant are paying the landlords costs plus their profit. How can renting ever be cheaper than buying?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd point out that while an asset, yes, it is a liability. Not in the typical financial sense, either! I'm hesitant on buying because I have next to no certainty in my role. If I be a good little Business Man and make someone else filthy rich, have all the make-up beers, and show up on time: at-will employment is still a thing. I may still be forced out by circumstance. Equity might make the hit softer, I don't know.…
The ugly thing is that you're most likely to get laid off when the market is down. I've argued this with people so many times and I think some of them are finally starting to see what I was saying. btw I don't think getting rid of at will employment will change that. These cycles are so long they'll certainly find a way to get rid of you during a down cycle if they want to.
Say I buy somewhere affordable and am now officially remote. No longer conveniently in the same city as the office, but at home... truly elsewhere. The calculus has changed!
Then we get into fuzzier topics like AI use. It's absolutely not just about productivity. The non-minded gap between my peers and I shows that to be irrelevant. I sandbag, they grind. It's a wash. In the end, a weird litmus/loyalty test that I can't quite articulate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd point out that while an asset, yes, it is a liability. Not in the typical financial sense, either! I'm hesitant on buying because I have next to no certainty in my role. If I be a good little Business Man and make someone else filthy rich, have all the make-up beers, and show up on time: at-will employment is still a thing. I may still be forced out by circumstance. Equity might make the hit softer, I don't know.…
Well if you have to move to take a new job then you can always sell your home or rent it out. You'll take a hit on transaction costs or property management fees but you're unlikely to lose all of your equity.
Right, that's 'forced out' with extra steps :) I'm buying a home to live in (and if we're honest, die). Not employment. It may not even pay!
> unlikely
Hence the hesitation [for certainty]. This is half a statement about the market and half about my capacity for it. If I lost my job - the more likely case - I don't want this burden, too.
To your/OPs point: this can be an opportunity... but so is that fat down payment! Losing the position with savings/options: video games and burn-out recovery for the next three years. Comfortably trying on the next fad.
Without savings/options but a house/debt: panic, hot potato, and paperwork with a much more urgent job search.
I've done the math on this many times, and it still puzzles me how anybody would choose to buy a house in the Bay Area today versus renting an equivalent one. When mortgages are over 2x rent, the calculation skews tremendously in favor of renting and investing the difference in an index fund. This considers all possible factors and even chooses favorable conditions for homeowners (high appreciation, low stock market…
The conflagration of Prop 13 and an unregulated influx of rich people from all over the US and the world ultra-gentrified the Bay Area beyond the small crust of billionaires and marginal millionaires and a sea of middle class-ish people. There were no meaningful, comprehensive supply or demand protections post Prop 13.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hot take: that’s actually desirable. Sell and let someone who can make better use of it (i.e. more readily stomach the property tax) take possession. Calcified landed gentry just sitting on dirt that appreciates due to the efforts and investments of everyone around them is Bad, Actually.
Not for those of us who like our home and have made a life here. What you're advocating for is treating potential club members better than current club members. It doesn't make that much sense. If you really were advocating for sensible policies, you would be advocating for many many more multifamily dwellings and/or taxes being directly proportional to the cost of the infrastructure needed to support it--generally b…
I agree that property square feet is a bad metric. The right way to do this is actually to tax based on the unimproved value of the land, which would in fact create many many more multifamily dwellings by virtue of increasing the carrying cost of land as the market demand for density increases.
They both also default to much lower increases in rent than the US average, so it's off on both ends of the equation. Over the last few decades, inflation-adjusted rent has increased by several percent per year: https://nowbam.com/rent-prices-vs-inflation-and-income-growt... . The calculators are useless if the data going into them is useless, but even if it perfectly reflected past national averages, that doesn't ma…
> most investors don't rent property out at a loss I was under the impression that this was actually fairly common in places with rapid house price appreciation. Which includes a good portion of the places where people want to rent. The main source of profit for the landlord is the capital appreciation rather than the rent, so they're willing to rent at levels that wouldn't be profitable if they weren't also planning…
In theory it wouldn't have an effect on the rental market, but in practice cash buyers are much more likely to be corporate land owners, who tend to have higher margins than the casual investment property owner.