If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund • Hacker News Board

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

#551

Post by CapmCrackaWaka » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

spoonjim wrote: post #547

davidw wrote: post #125

Here's why investors buy up houses: they know your neighbors will do the dirty work of artificially constraining the housing supply, which makes it a good investment. Here's one who comes right out and explains this: > Meanwhile, local opposition to building is so commonplace and the approval process so cumbersome, time consuming, and expensive, even when a proposed project complies entirely with requirements, approv…

After I spent my entire net worth plus a good chunk of my future net worth on this house you can be damn right I’m going to vote to protect its value.

Hmmm this just seems like a bad decision on your part. I bought my house in 2018 and it was expensive, yes, but definitely manageable on my salary. I definitely would not buy a house right now, especially if it required spending 'my entire net worth plus a good chunk of my future net worth'.

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

#552

Post by epistasis » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #470

JamesBarney wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If you believe that no town homes should be built in the U.S. than you might not qualify as NIMBY. But if you believe that town homes shouldn't be built next to you that's the definition of NIMBY. Of course every instance has a long list of reasons why next to them is especially bad, character of the neighborhood, parking issues, infrastructure, etc.... But the end result of everyone fighting increased density i…

What if you're someone who thinks building stack-and-pack residences is the incorrect response for an investor-manufactured housing shortage?

I think if you are using derisive terms like "stack and pack" for apartments then you are probably precisely the investor that is manufacturing the housing crisis.

Apartments create greater affordability, they allow for designing cities with lower carbon impact than single-unit homes, they allow better community, more connections, cradle-to-grave living, they allow people to survive without having to get in a car to do any task during the day. They are fantastic. I would live in a "stack and pack" home in an instant if they were allowed in my community.

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

#553

Post by maxsilver » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #524

maxsilver wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everybody opposed the rezoning and fought to defeat it. Why? That's kind of an important point. For example, unless this is NYC or similar, 49 townhomes is going to need a minimum of at least 110 parking spots (just to hold the occupants alone, assuming no one ever has guests ever). A realistic parking minimum should be 2.5 spots per townhouse. A lot of builders outsource their pollution to the local neighborhood,…

> Ok, that means it would likely carry the highest prices per square foot in 4 counties, which means it would immediately make that neighborhood the most expensive neighborhood in 4 counties. Could that be a reason it was opposed? Artificially constraining expensive housing isn't a good thing. If the demand is there in the first place, doing so just means that the people who are interested will insteaad buy or rent e…

> Artificially constraining expensive housing isn't a good thing

Again, this isn't California. This is the Midwest. We have gentrification problems even in cities that are still losing population. And we've never constrained housing, for our cities that are slowly growing, many have built more new units than residents for years now. Most cities have no meaningful housing shortage here, but every city currently has a housing market manipulation problem.

> If the demand is there in the first place, doing so just means that the people who are interested will insteaad buy or rent existing homes that could have otherwise gone to lower-wealth families.

Or you could just reduce demand. Perhaps Pension Funds shouldn't be allowed to buy housing at all. Make them invest in something that doesn't hurt citizens. That would reduce prices instantly, without requiring the construction of fake-unusable for-equity-firms-to-hold-only housing.

In what world does it make sense for real humans to have to compete with private equity firms or pension funds for housing? Real humans are constrained by their incomes (incomes that famously haven't grown in decades), everything else is not.

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

#554

Post by fighterpilot » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #463

_greim_ wrote: post #142

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…

You don't think geoism is just naive? This idea that the state can magically assign a value to property and not have it go sideways for the politically disenfranchised (the poor) is pure fantasy. If you haven't gone through the process of buying a house. I suggest trying it (especially during a frothy market), and each step of the way stop and think, "how would geoism get turned around to screw the poor".

Poor people don't own property, though. So how could it disenfranchise them?

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

#555

Post by headbee » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

adflux wrote: post #16

This is what happens when you keep printing money and keep mortgage rates incredibly low. All that money's gotta go somewhere. Hey, at least the CPI isn't going up right? Its only the most expensive thing in most people's lives that has doubled in cost in about 10 years. Same thing for stock prices, and slowly other commodity prices are catching up as well. Non-homeowners are being shafted by this fed/ecb policy. Eve…

The illusion of realty appreciation transcends recent quantitative easing.

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

#556

Post by michaelmrose » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

maxsilver wrote: post #510

brightball wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just experienced something similar to this and it makes me wonder if much of this is just perception. We recently dealt with an out of state builder pushing to have a property that was zoned Neighborhood Commercial to be rezoned to something more flexible so that he could build 49 town homes with 49 parking spots on 5 acres of land. Everybody opposed the rezoning and fought to defeat it. The project would have been…

> Everybody opposed the rezoning and fought to defeat it. Why? That's kind of an important point. For example, unless this is NYC or similar, 49 townhomes is going to need a minimum of at least 110 parking spots (just to hold the occupants alone, assuming no one ever has guests ever). A realistic parking minimum should be 2.5 spots per townhouse. A lot of builders outsource their pollution to the local neighborhood,…

If you can only build dense housing in the places where there are no few jobs and few people it doesn't help much. The fact that the locals are by definition negatively impacted by new development is a great reason to take virtually all say away from the locals.

Anyone who is already a home owner will find that increasing supply of homes a necessary function of the society decreases the value of the asset in which they have parked most of their wealth. Even when it increases the value you can't get them on board. Look at your own logic.

> my taxes will spike 200%+ to cover your luxury development

You aren't covering the cost of their development they are actually increasing the value of your property. For your taxes to spike 200% they would literally have to triple the value of your property. It's like they are throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars in bags full of hundred dollar bills over your fence and you are complaining about income tax.

Presumably if someone did something like build a crack house and halved the value of your property you wouldn't thank them for halving your tax bill!

Basically for any given project locals have interests that are almost always out of alignment with the rest of society. The some people in aggregate elect your state wide officials but at least those folks are apt to think and plan based on a broader perspective than the locals whose attitude is universally "I've got mine"

This is both the worst timeline and the worst most selfish nation.

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

#557

Post by Manuel_D » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

plank_time wrote: post #209

seanp2k2 wrote: post #170

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.

> 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.

Or maybe, make it so that property tax increases are limited but only if the owner:

1. Is past retirement age 2. The owner lives in the property. 3. The owner does not have the means to pay the normal property tax rates.

This is how most other States' solve this problem. Instead of freezing property tax rates across the board, they narrowly limit property taxes of old residents that don't have the means to pay the normal property tax rate.

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

#558

Post by jedberg » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #526

wwweston wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was a red herring when prop 13 was passed, and is a red herring now. 49 other states don't have prop 13, and yet seniors aren't priced out of their homes. Prop 13 is bad in at least half a dozen ways, but I'm not so sure this problem isn't coming elsewhere or even is absent. It seems to me California may have experienced a leading edge of metro dynamics that are going to come for other states soon. > everyone'…

> Residence-first real estate policy needs to include tax that increases on the number of properties owned (and maybe even more steeply in a supply constrained market). People might try to get around this by forming corporations or trusts that hold max one property each. There is really no need to count how many other properties someone holds. Just do a re-assessment every year and ratchet up the assessed value on al…

It's pretty easy for the taxman to detect such shenanigans. There are a bunch of corporate laws that only apply when certain limits are met, like minimum revenue or 50 employees, etc. It's illegal to form extra corporations to get around those rules, and the regulators usually catch on.

I'd be especially easy in California because every foreign (out of state) corporation has to register with the state and tell them who the beneficial owners are. It would be fairly easy to trace it back to actual people.

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

#559

Post by thehappypm » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

plank_time wrote: post #209

seanp2k2 wrote: post #170

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.

These poor millionaires!

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

#560

Post by browningstreet » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #483

browningstreet wrote: post #411

I went on Zillow and looked at the house I'm renting (not in a major market) and it went up $28K in expected value in the last 30 days. Can't see buying in this market at all. Fully expect my rent to be raised after my 1 year lease is up. Who's improving what?

At least you have somewhere to live. Our rental is being sold. There are no rentals in this county and few in the next. All of our jobs are here.

Sorry to hear that :-(