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Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

economist.com

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Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#591

Post by robertlagrant »

bitexploder wrote: post #450
wonnor wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>~30 years later, you've deprecated it down to an effective value of $0 >An no one will now rent, since your building has an effective value of $0 since it has become crap. Are you really in good faith trying to argue that nobody will rent a house that is 30+ years old?

Narrator: They were not arguing in good faith. I know we like to give the benefit of doubt here on HN, but that crosses a line. Landlords are known to perhaps not take the best care of their property, but in general, even if a tenant totally trashes the place it isn't too hard to strip down whatever got abused and rebuild it. Same thing happened to us when we rented a property. Tenant did as much damage as you can im…

It doesn't cross any lines. This is HN, not some chest-thumping political rag.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#592

Post by Ajedi32 »

wonnor wrote: post #443
ChrisLomont wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you pay no income tax on your rental income And are losing value on the property, which is the point of depreciation. >~30 years later, you've deprecated it down to an effective value of $0 An no one will now rent, since your building has an effective value of $0 since it has become crap. All throughout your list you ignore all the costs involved in being a landlord. Have any friends that have tried it? (I do). Did…

>>~30 years later, you've deprecated it down to an effective value of $0 >An no one will now rent, since your building has an effective value of $0 since it has become crap. Are you really in good faith trying to argue that nobody will rent a house that is 30+ years old?

If it's worth $0 then by definition you couldn't sell the property for more than $0, let alone charge a monthly rent higher than that.

Obviously that wouldn't actually happen in real life, which I think is the GP's point.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#593

Post by wildrhythms »

11101010001100 wrote: post #372

Housing is another one of these systems (I don't have a name for), but once you have a house, you really don't care about many of the ills. The same for immigration. The same for college admission. The same for many jobs. Once you have what you want, the default is to not do anything to improve the system.

The term you're looking for is 'class system'.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#594

Post by dexterdog »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #587
dexterdog wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you are the owner/user and not the landlord you should be paying the taxes because most of the taxes are for use in the local community and most of that is schooling. The landlord gets no benefit from the majority of that stuff. The tenant does.

That assumes that the landlord lives in a different tax jurisdiction. Possible, certainly, but not inevitable.

If he lives in that jurisdiction then he is paying the taxes for the place where he is living.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#595

Post by kenned3 »

nemo44x wrote: post #506
kmeisthax wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[laughs in Phoenix] In all seriousness, no. The way you multiply housing count is by making buildings taller and closer together, not by spreading them further out. This is how we used to build cities before cars and roads ruined them.

It's because most people don't want to live in small boxes stacked on top of each other. The market responded to what people wanted and it was larger single family homes with yards and living space. An automobile to get you to other places for shopping and entertainment. This is what most people people want. I agree though that a lot of suburbs are just wastelands and I would consider them to be depressing places to…

This!

I love how people seem to feel they can enforce their views of how a city should be build on others.

The fact of the matter is very clear.. we have so many detach houses because that is what people WANT.

For some odd reason there is a subset of the population who feel entitled to dictate how OTHERS should live. These people go on and on about "increasing density" while ignoring that some don't want to live like this.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#596

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #460
ChrisLomont wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you pay no income tax on your rental income And are losing value on the property, which is the point of depreciation. >~30 years later, you've deprecated it down to an effective value of $0 An no one will now rent, since your building has an effective value of $0 since it has become crap. All throughout your list you ignore all the costs involved in being a landlord. Have any friends that have tried it? (I do). Did…

>"Did they become silly rich? Or did they quit because it is a major problem to actually make it very profitable versus other uses of capital and time? I'm a decently saavy investor (in many things), and have watched multiple friends start up rental properties, only to stop once it became clear that tenants destroy things, costs to maintain properties are volatile and astronomical, the work required is significant, a…

> Most landlords I have met buy properties and then outsource their administration to property management companies.

Who do not actually pay for any repairs or upgrades to the property (that is the landlord's responsibility, and who in addition take an extra 5-20% of the rental upfront. Yes, it "outsources" actually dealing with the rental property and renters, but has no impact on the costs other than making them higher.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#597

Post by edmcnulty101 »

Apocryphon wrote: post #370
edmcnulty101 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Housing affordability plagued Germany of the early 20th century You gotta reach back to over a hundred years ago to find an example? > Can you list these rich countries with 'population explosion[s]'? What the hell are you talking about? The population in the US is the highest it's been in history. You're using a bullshit metric like growth rate which is a percentage of constantly increasing number? 1% of 100 is th…

Before you indulge in bargain bin Malthusianism and nativism, first consider the vacancy rates of housing in expensive metros. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/how-many-vacant-homes... https://sfist.com/2022/02/01/report-10-of-san-franciscos-hou... Next, the housing shortages in other previously-afforded cities are being bought up by... other Americans, some moving from such expensive metros. That boom that hap…

This isn't Malthusian. The world can support current population.

Just the worlds entire populations wants to be in a small part of the world America or Europe for some reason.

Which isn't sustainable and is destabilizing those places.

The ultimate solution is to make other places desirable to live, which is confusing because the US and Europe are only a small portion of the worlds landmass.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#598

Post by pharmakom »

SoftTalker wrote: post #400
llbeansandrice wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many college students want to bother with owning a home for The number of people that end up never owning or wanting to own a home is likely small. But there is a very real case for non-ownership depending on what stage of life people are in and how they want to live their lives.

Not uncommon for parents to buy a house for their kid to live in, rent it to a few roommates to cover the mortgage, then keep it as an investment or sell for a profit when the kid graduates.

But notice how that only works for a fraction (the larger part “paying” the mortgage)

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#599

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

dexterdog wrote: post #529
namdnay wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what universe does paying tax on what you inherit equate to communism?

In the universe where the tax was already paid on what was inherited, AKA this one.

The tax is paid on the transfer, not the property. And, as has been repeatedly noted, for an estate of less than $12M, there is no tax at all.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#600

Post by cheriot »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #439
idkyall wrote: post #122

Housing in the US has gotten to where it is due to horrible laws effectively allowing total tax avoidance for landlords. Take some investment property. You buy it at some basis price, let's say 500k. You rent it out for 15k a year. Each year you can offset your rental income against deprecation of the property and property taxes - meaning, you pay no income tax on your rental income. ~30 years later, you've deprecate…

>you pay no income tax on your rental income And are losing value on the property, which is the point of depreciation. >~30 years later, you've deprecated it down to an effective value of $0 An no one will now rent, since your building has an effective value of $0 since it has become crap. All throughout your list you ignore all the costs involved in being a landlord. Have any friends that have tried it? (I do). Did…

> And are losing value on the property, which is the point of depreciation.

The house depreciates while the land appreciates. In the US for the last 50 years has been net appreciation for most homes.

> If it were so profitable, then tons of capital currently being spent on other uses (tech, medical, finance) would instead go into buying up more housing.

Hedge funds have been buying houses at scale since the great recession.

> Historically, housing has performed quite similar to the stock market for returns

Which increases faster than incomes. Hence the way each generation has a declining rate of home ownership.

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