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International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

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Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#51

Post by danny_codes »

microgpt wrote: post #42
mantas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you draw a line? 100 years? 200? 500? Especially if buildings age nicely and they’re still considered good-looking. I’m in Europe and here if people suggested to tear down some art noveau buildings because they’re just 100-150 years old… I’d be absolutely furious. Don’t get me started on buildings from 200 or 300 years ago. With US having much less old buildings, I totally get why people want to preserve suc…

Ultimately, variety is key. Let's keep a sample of them to remember the past, and build everywhere else? A city with a mix of building types is much more interesting than a monoculture.

Jane Jacobs approves of this comment

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#52

Post by Obscurity4340 »

microgpt wrote: post #47
fragmede wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxing empty housing seems like the obvious answer. Make it more expensive and more work to keep it empty than it is to fill it.

Which form do I file to claim that my empty house is not actually empty?

Maybe demand the electricity bill? How do insurance companies deal with this kind of misrepresentation?

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#53

Post by Schiendelman »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #26
legitster wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of insane that you look at a city like San Francisco that's on a tiny bit of land in a desirable location and they absolutely refuse to build up. I get that their Victorian houses are pretty, but they're only about a 100 years old and they are now crammed full of people and cars. It's too young of a city to be sycophantically in love with its past self.

> 100 years old It’s 2026, they’re more like 140 year old by now :) > now crammed full of people and cars Funnily enough, if you look at the 1950 census, in every single building I have lived in in San Francisco, there were more people than there are now :). The city has so much underdeveloped land (come on, 2% of of the surface of of the second densest city in the US spent on the lowest density sport ever, golf???),…

Instead of trying to decide for yourself where growth should go, I recommend letting the owner of each place decide what to do with it. That's what really solves crises like these - not everyone's opinion, but allowing the owner of every property to act in their motivated self-interest.

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#54

Post by Schiendelman »

pydry wrote: post #35
dripdry45 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

imo The big key here is zoning. I live in a city where they actively work against people who want to build out their properties and create more density. The property taxes are sky high, but the city actively works against your affording them. It’s terrible.

How high is sky high?

The real answer is rough:

By giving the public any say at all, they push and push until they have restricted growth. It's far better for everyone to not ask anyone but the owner of the property how tall they want to build.

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#55

Post by Schiendelman »

fragmede wrote: post #12
kurthr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some 10-15% of San Francisco housing is unoccupied. The exact why and how to fix it are arguable, but I'm doubtful the investment is actually helping. https://www.pacificresearch.org/time-to-ask-why-so-many-san-...

Taxing empty housing seems like the obvious answer. Make it more expensive and more work to keep it empty than it is to fill it.

This wouldn't be necessary if we weren't using zoning to restrict supply. The restrictions are what cause scarcity, and it's the scarcity that drives up prices. Land owners are already well incentivized not to let housing sit empty, unless their housing's value is being artificially pushed upward through the scarcity we create.

Basically, if we quit creating the housing problem with zoning restrictions, you wouldn't see housing sit empty, and it wouldn't matter anyway because the motivated self-interest of FAR more people would build housing to meet demand.

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#56

Post by jjk166 »

ggm wrote: post #7

True or not, there is little doubt demagogues play on foreign capital when arguing about house ownership costs to the mostly young renting classes. My own belief is that at national scale the % of foreign capital in housing stock for most western democratic states is low, and when it exists in scale its things like the Canadian teachers pension fund or .. Blackstone. In America, I suspect it's Blackstone before forei…

The problem is real estate can not be looked at on a national scale. It is fundamentally local. In a country like the US, probably 95%+ of the land is absolutely worthless as an investment. You can get a residential plot in North Dakota for like $5k. But owning a very small portion of a country can have an extreme influence if it's that part of a country that people seek to live in. Further, the overwhelming majority of real estate in any given area is typically occupied by someone who has no interest in selling soon. Only about 3-4% of US homes are on the market at any given time. If an entity bought up every home on the market in the Bay area, they'd own a measly 0.009% of the US real estate market in terms of housing units, but they would be able to unilaterally set the price of housing for over 2% of the US population and over 4% of the US economy.

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#57

Post by carlosjobim »

cuvert wrote: post #49
carlosjobim wrote: post #32

Housing is globally unaffordable in the entire industrialized world. Everybody knows why, but people are desperately looking for scapegoats because the truth is too uncomfortable. The people to blame can easily be found among your own family and friends. It might even be you yourself. It is probably your parents. Everybody who works for a living has relatives who have become wealthy by real estate value appreciation.…

Am I the only one who barely knows people who think of making money by buying a house? In my circles, everyone buys a house to live in it and that's it. Same goes with NIMBYS, never met someone saying: "Don't build here because the value of my apartment/house goes down." What I've usually met, it's people who just been lucky because grandpa, grandma, and/or other very old relatives, usually after WW2, bought large pl…

> In my circles, everyone buys a house to live in it and that's it.

Really? Are they buying the tiniest cheapest apartments or chalets to live in while they save up money to upgrade to something bigger later? Or are they buying the biggest and best thing that the bank will allow? Because I'm mostly seeing the latter. Which means they are using the monetary system to get the best deal they can.

The only people purchasing tiny apartments and houses are doing it to extract rent from others, those places hardly even get out on the market.

Most people want to buy a house or an apartment just to live in, I agree there. But they usually don't have the money for that. They have to pay rent, taxes and other tributes to the non-working class in this global feudalistic system.

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#58

Post by phil21 »

cuvert wrote: post #49
carlosjobim wrote: post #32

Housing is globally unaffordable in the entire industrialized world. Everybody knows why, but people are desperately looking for scapegoats because the truth is too uncomfortable. The people to blame can easily be found among your own family and friends. It might even be you yourself. It is probably your parents. Everybody who works for a living has relatives who have become wealthy by real estate value appreciation.…

Am I the only one who barely knows people who think of making money by buying a house? In my circles, everyone buys a house to live in it and that's it. Same goes with NIMBYS, never met someone saying: "Don't build here because the value of my apartment/house goes down." What I've usually met, it's people who just been lucky because grandpa, grandma, and/or other very old relatives, usually after WW2, bought large pl…

Pretty much everyone in my life growing up and into young adulthood preached about how you needed to buy a house because it was an investment you could use as a retirement account. That I resisted this was seen as kook behavior as I kept repeating that your primary residence is not an investment - it’s a lifestyle choice and expense.

Pretty much everyone I know cares a whole lot about how much their home is worth.

Same goes for NIMBY behavior. Plenty of relatives preach about how there needs to be more cheap housing, but whenever they are directly impacted they at least talk negatively about the changes. Almost no matter what they are. From the “nuisance” of too much density, not liking renters in their neighborhood, not wanting subsidized housing near them, or not wanting rural land near them developed on since it ruins their view on walks or whatever. Basically they are for building in everyone’s backyard but their own.

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#59

Post by leonidasrup »

esalman wrote: post #48
leonidasrup wrote: post #4

All kinds of money: "Anyone who’s lived in London as long as I have can’t fail to notice that over the last 30 years, the city’s become awash with money. From the mid-90s onwards (the last time property was affordable to anyone on an average salary) shops have got more designer, cars faster, and property commands ever more eye-watering sums. Knightsbridge and Belgravia have become the playground of oligarchs and at t…

This. And it's not just the Russian oligarchs. In 2024 a corrupt government was toppled in Bangladesh. In subsequent investigations it was revealed that just one member of the cabinet had bought more than 200 luxury properties across US, UK, and UAE. The fact that the West welcomes black money from anybody and everybody causes both inflation to go up in the West and exploitation to prevail in less developed countries…

"Nearly 40% of dirty money is laundered in London and UK crown dependencies"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/14/nearly...

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#60

Post by cuvert »

carlosjobim wrote: post #57
cuvert wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who barely knows people who think of making money by buying a house? In my circles, everyone buys a house to live in it and that's it. Same goes with NIMBYS, never met someone saying: "Don't build here because the value of my apartment/house goes down." What I've usually met, it's people who just been lucky because grandpa, grandma, and/or other very old relatives, usually after WW2, bought large pl…

> In my circles, everyone buys a house to live in it and that's it. Really? Are they buying the tiniest cheapest apartments or chalets to live in while they save up money to upgrade to something bigger later? Or are they buying the biggest and best thing that the bank will allow? Because I'm mostly seeing the latter. Which means they are using the monetary system to get the best deal they can. The only people purchas…

I currently live in Italy and always lived in an European city. Most apartments are tiny here.
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