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My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

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Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#61

Post by photonthug »

peterldowns wrote: post #16
coding123 wrote: post #9

There needs to be some standard addendum attached to homes as an option that anyone selling a home can attach to the sale. Something like: This house cannot be used as an investment vehicle. It cannot be sold by a real-estate agent with a contract of more than 1%. It cannot be used as a rental. It cannot be sold for more than inflation would allow. Anyone found violating this addendum may be sued. All proceeds from t…

(Ignoring the obvious problems of how such an addendum could be written and enforced.) Why? When would it make sense for someone to attach this addendum to a sale? All these penalties and restrictions would only mean getting paid less for the same property. On the buyer side, why would anyone want an asset like you've described? I live in a home that I enjoy in part because it is a fantastic investment that is highly…

Buyers might want an asset like that because they could afford it and because they don’t have to gamble about whether the smoke and mirrors keep going for the 30 year duration of their mortgage.

Congrats on your fantastic investment and other high octane adulting, but even if you’re winning, look around, a huge chunk of the “wealth” of nations is tied up in real estate nonsense that represents a vast and willful collective kind of madness. This should freak everyone out in aggregate even if they like the idea of their own position.

But more concretely.. everyone pays the “investment vehicle” premium even if they aren’t trying to invest, and even if the home or area definitely can’t deliver a ROI. After pricing lots of the more thoughtful and plan oriented people out of the ability to have children, we are probably well on our way towards pricing single people out of the ability to have a home, even after some market crash that cuts those prices drastically. And yet western society in the northern hemisphere is too individualistic to dwell together collectively in larger family clans or even friend groups long term. To put it mildly, housing as “investment” is a really bad idea, and we’d be better off if people that are interested in that just stay busy with stocks instead. Less mild, we’ve moved past the point where it’s merely unsustainable.. it’s actively destabilizing judging from the rise in populism everywhere.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#62

Post by pram »

honkycat wrote: post #50

My parents build a big ass house in the middle of nowhere around the year 2000 It was a nice place! rooms for the kids, a pool, etc. Then 2008 hit. WOW. We went from a prosperous family to NOTHING incredibly fast. This asset was so toxic the bank wouldn't even fucking take it. It was an albatross for YEARS and my parents had to liquidate their 100 year old family business, and all other assets before they could wiggl…

Oof, that sucks. My parents managed the exact opposite. We had a house in the middle of nowhere. Their business was slowly going under so they decided to sell and move in with my mothers father (lol) and did this at the absolute top of the market (2006)

The person who bought it is still holding the bag if Zillow is any indication, it’s still about $30k under what he bought it for. I often think about how many people are still screwed from that time.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#63

Post by bartonfink »

spamizbad wrote: post #49
sandspar wrote: post #19

I've seen a few sides of money. Raised upper class, lost it all and became underclass, then made it back. I'm always amazed at how limited rich people's worldview is. The average software developer, coastal liberal etc. They've never felt terror, the visceral feeling of being terrified. They've never been predated upon. They've never been used and discarded. The underclass lives with this stuff every day, 24/7, and r…

One sad element of society is the expectation that a poor person has a duty to rise above poverty and if they don’t it’s their personal moral failing. The middle class have no such obligation to jump to a higher tax bracket.

> no such obligation to jump to a higher tax bracket

...the gospel of graham to the contrary

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#64

Post by klik99 »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #5
analyte123 wrote: post #4

During this same time period I had a project at a part-time gig which involved updating document templates and adding a few fields here and there for a legal application. The application was used by a law firm which specialized in mortgages. So I saw the details of various documents one is served in these situations: notice of default, acceleration notices, notice to vacate, and ultimately evictions and foreclosure a…

> you probably would have had to completely ignore probably a dozen of these documents for at least 6 months, not paying your mortgage all along. Fun-fact: thems the benefits of being a mortgage holder. If you're a tenant that's renting, you get no such legal protections - let alone discretion from whichever faceless entity actually owns the property: where I am in King County WA, I think, at most you can get 30 days…

For a bank, evicting someone from a house is expensive and the departments they have to handle it are very understaffed, their risk is so spread out that not getting 6 months payment is barely a blip. For a landlord, any loss of income for 6 months could be catastrophic, so there is much more urgency behind their action, and many act rashly and without compassion.

While there are certainly asshole landlords, I don't think this situation happened because of a systematic class warfare, it's just landlords tend to be smaller institutions that have a much higher risk profile than banks. Add to that that renters tend to have less political power, and you end up with a situation that greatly prefers mortgage owners.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#65

Post by ThunderSizzle »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #52
silisili wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just discussing this with a friend last week. In my case at least, it was too easy to forget. I grew up low end of middle class at best, and after high school was dirt poor. Getting overdrafts weekly, in that era where they reorder transactions to really turn the screws. Sleeping early because it's cheaper than eating. Working two jobs and still not getting ahead. The shame of having to ask to borrow a few buck…

> in that era where they reorder transactions to really turn the screws I cannot come up with the words about how absolutely evil someone had to be to make transactions work that way. How utterly fucked up and sociopathic do you have to be to steal money from the poor?

Welcome to the entire system. The entire purpose of income tax is to keep the poor poorer while pretending it's a tax on the rich. That and inflation. Constant inflation really targets the have-nots, who have to figure out how to save faster than asset inflation to be able to buy an asset.

It's all orchestrated by evil people, while they try to get political warfare to hide behind.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#66

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

RGamma wrote: post #26
mminer237 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you live that you don't have foreclosure sales?

It's not about foreclosure sales. It's about the desperation, the ruthlessness, the intense pressure, the instant legal armament. Some other commenter here mentioned 3 day eviction notices (when renting) are a thing. Come on...

You obviously read other comments, so you'd know that people talk about foreclosures taking 6 months. That's far from "instant legal armament". I wouldn't even call it ruthless.

The 3-day eviction notices on renting are a red herring. We're not talking about renting from an owner, we're talking about foreclosures.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#67

Post by ThunderSizzle »

pram wrote: post #62
honkycat wrote: post #50

My parents build a big ass house in the middle of nowhere around the year 2000 It was a nice place! rooms for the kids, a pool, etc. Then 2008 hit. WOW. We went from a prosperous family to NOTHING incredibly fast. This asset was so toxic the bank wouldn't even fucking take it. It was an albatross for YEARS and my parents had to liquidate their 100 year old family business, and all other assets before they could wiggl…

Oof, that sucks. My parents managed the exact opposite. We had a house in the middle of nowhere. Their business was slowly going under so they decided to sell and move in with my mothers father (lol) and did this at the absolute top of the market (2006) The person who bought it is still holding the bag if Zillow is any indication, it’s still about $30k under what he bought it for. I often think about how many people…

Its an interesting tale, because we might be in a very similar bubble. Or not. It's hard to tell, because the dollar has been so devalued, while housing is over-inflated, and money is expensive.

It's a cruel joke when money is worthless and expensive at the same time.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#68

Post by locallost »

Terrific writing even if difficult to read. This hits close to home, my family and relatives left our homes because of a war, we were on the wrong side of the fence. The experiences of these people are not much different. Maybe we can do better in the 21st century.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#69

Post by yonran »

The tragedy is even sadder when you find out that the foreclosure crisis and Great Recession were self-inflicted by the Federal Reserve and CFPB after 2007, not the inevitable result of reckless borrowers. Kevin Erdmann has been studying this for about a decade and gives examples of cities such as Atlanta that had no housing boom at all but were forced into foreclosure crisis. Here is his most recent op-ed: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/09/05/housing-c...

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#70

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

pfdietz wrote: post #43
crooked-v wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you know, just actually build enough houses for people to live in. I feel like that would be a better start than suing people into bankruptcy because they made 5% off a house sale instead of of 4.5%. Houses are only an attractive investment vehicle in the first place because there is a massive shortage of housing.

YIMBY. Preach.

Some local residents were fighting against some new apartment building being built, claiming that the area wouldn't be able to handle the extra traffic, it wouldn't have enough parking, etc...

Meanwhile, not only was there going to be 1.5 parking spots per unit, but the main entrance is literally 500 feet from the metro line. Many residents there were likely to not even have cars. And it was just one building with 40 units placed next to a major throughfare. Plenty of traffic handling capability.

I imagine everyone fighting it was a homeowner worried about increased housing availability lowering the home's value.

I own a house, and there's a new complex being built about half a mile from me. Judging by the size of the plot of land and the poster showing what it's going to look like, I imagine it's probably gonna have ~200 units. I'm all for it being built. My house has gone up in value by ~62% in 9 years and that's ridiculous.

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