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

#631

Post by WYepQ4dNnG » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but houses should not be used as investments.

Every person on the planet has the need and the right to live somewhere.

Unfortunately the way it works today, allow a small fraction of the population to buy more and more houses at the expense of the majority of people who are constantly out bidden and forced to rent, thus fueling this circle. Landlord get richer, buys more houses and so on.

The only way to stop this is taxes! Should not be convenient to buy houses for the sole purpose of renting them amount, especially for foreigners, see Denmark.

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

#632

Post by JAlexoid » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

OldGoodNewBad wrote: post #466

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…

Why artificially? People move into single family dwelling neighborhoods because they have lower crime and better schools. There’s nothing artificial about selecting the best environment for yourself and your family. Is it necessary to artificially editorialize when you’re making what is, at its root, a thinly veiled socio-political point?

So why would people like you oppose development of other single family homes in your area? Or go out of your way to oppose development of high density buildings around transit stations? (Don't take it personally, but you know that many people will in principle oppose a mixed density development in not far from their homes - 5-10miles. Or pedestrianization of a street, in the middle of their town)

Look at the map of LA, where there's miles upon miles of low rise buildings... That need not be there, if a few high density blocks were created.

Or the insanity of San Francisco...

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

#633

Post by spunker540 » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:39 PM UTC

bennysomething wrote: post #612

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…

They know that the current government planning regulations mean that getting anything built is extremely difficult. They know that due to supply and demand that this makes property a wise investment. Blame planning regulations. I read recently that Japan and new Zealand scrapped various regulations and this led to stabilization / lower of property prices. Near me, someone is sticking up protest letters at bus stops c…

It probably didn’t hurt that Japan has a declining population, so supply > demand

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

#634

Post by amanaplanacanal » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

Telemakhos wrote: post #544

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,…

The developer wants to build the densest housing in four counties with little parking, and nobody has asked the real question: is this planned as Section 8/affordable housing? It sounds like it. Section 8 is guaranteed income for the landlord and probably a headache for the neighbors, especially if they had no poverty in the area before. A very similar situation happened in my rural village, where a developer decided…

I guess the other option is that poor people should just be homeless?

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

#635

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:41 PM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #618

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan's population is declining. What's your point? Why would you expect house prices to go up when there's a ridiculous oversupply of housing. There's only 55M households in Japan, and there's ~9M vacant homes. That's ~14% of homes. Housing is an expense unless there's someone to live in it and pay rent.

Tokyo is growing faster than New York, London, or most other major Western metros.[1] (It's true Japan as a whole has slow growth, but Tokyo still has robust growth because or rural to urban migration.) Yet real housing prices have not risen in Tokyo in 25 years. [1] https://livejapan.com/en/in-tokyo/in-pref-tokyo/in-tokyo_sub...

Tokyo had THE BIGGEST property bubble in the history of the world 30 years ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble

It arguably has STILL not deflated.

At one point, the Emperor's Palace alone was worth more than all the real estate in California: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/news-trends/article/309...

I guess if you believe those valuations made sense, then sure.

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

#636

Post by notimetorelax » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:41 PM UTC

swiley wrote: post #627

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…

This is a dumb investment. In order for the entier country to not descend into dysfunctional chaos there will have to be statewide laws that prevent this sort of brain damage. When that happens there will be nothing keeping the prices of individual housing units in these areas up.

By that time - funds will have charged their fees, personnel will have earned their bonuses, etc.

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

#637

Post by foogazi » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #530

foogazi wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prop 13 biggest beneficiaries are corporations. > so the barriers to entry are so much higher for those who didn’t have the foresight to purchase a home 40 years ago. 40 years ago it was still expensive to buy otherwise everyone would have bought, including the investment funds

40 years ago a home in the Bay Area cost about 3x median income. Now it is more than 10x. Buyers in 1981 benefitted enormously from high interest rates. I know they whine about it now, but objectively it was a massive windfall for buyers.

> 40 years ago a home in the Bay Area cost about 3x median income. Now it is more than 10x.

Interest rated have fallen 10x

> Buyers in 1981 benefitted enormously from high interest rates.

They didn’t benefit from paying more for a money loan. They benefited from being able to refinance on always lower rates, and the corresponding rise in asset price

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

#638

Post by vladgur » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

iso1210 wrote: post #375

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…

49 parking spaces for 49 houses seems like a disaster in anywhere other than the densest of US cities. Surely most houses have at least 2 drivers? 5 Acres is 2 Hectares, so that's about 25 houses per hectare. Typical new housing estates in the UK is about 25 hours per hectare, with minimum of 3 parking spaces (including a garage if given) for a 4 bed, and 2 for a 3 bed. Even that number of spaces is too low - especia…

What if that development was walking distance to transit? I live in SF Bayarea suburb in a SFH with a wife and a elementary school aged kid. We have 1 car that is parked in our driveway(on our property). For everything else there is a commuter train within 10-15minute walk and uber within reach.

Limited parking does incentivize non-car-oriented lifestyle. Im all for it.

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

#639

Post by amanaplanacanal » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

maxsilver wrote: post #536

KptMarchewa wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A realistic parking minimum should be 2.5 spots per townhouse. A realistic approach in the face of coming climate doom would be max 0.5, for the people that really need cars as primary transport due to disability etc.

In theory sure, but that's not realistic, it just induces sprawl. Great, you manage to artificially limit parking. So the new housing development moves another 10 miles outside of town, to get away from your artificial limit, and now their mowing down a cornfield out there instead for their build, so they can get the parking residents actually need. If cities want to be a solution to climate change, they have to let…

I’m not opposed to people who want to live out in the boonies, but given the extra cost of infrastructure to service them, they should have to pay for the privilege.

They never do though. It’s always the poor neighborhoods close in that subsidize the rich people in the suburbs.

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

#640

Post by larsiusprime » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 6:44 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".

This is a fully general refutation of ANY system, because rich people game every system, including and especially the current one. Why should the current one be favored?

The trick is to find a system that, despite attempts to game it, has an incentive structure that isn't already explicitly tilted in favor of the rich. Geoism is one such system.