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

wsj.com

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

#651

Post by stagger87 »

tptacek wrote: post #615
stagger87 wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasing the rental stock in an area of low rental units is one thing, but is not what the article is discussing. I'm not sure the relevance of the European housing market.

I don't understand the moral valence of an imbalance (in any sense) between owner-occupied and rented housing. Could you help me see where you're coming from here? I bring up Europe just to observe that it's not a settled norm, even in rich western societies, that homeownership is somehow better or prosocial.

> Could you help me see where you're coming from here?

I like affordable housing and think everyone should be entitled to it. Whether renting or to own.

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

#652

Post by _greim_ »

notahacker wrote: post #235
_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…

It's less to do with appeal to people on the other side of economic divides, and more to do with the impossibility of selling "the great thing is that it incentivises your next door neighbour to build a high rise" and "sure, your parents will have to downsize because their pension won't cover the tax burden of the house they spent their lifetime saving for, but on the other hand it's great how many investors and comp…

> the great thing is that it incentivises your next door neighbour to build a high rise

This is more about NIMBY attitudes and zoning laws, which are separate issues.

> their pension won't cover the tax burden of the house they spent their lifetime saving for

An LVT won't tax the house, only the value of the land. If the plot itself is hyper-valuable, that's not a bad place to be, financially speaking. Beyond that, "won't someone think of the poor landowners?" doesn't strike me as a very compelling argument in this day and age.

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

#653

Post by ClumsyPilot »

scotuswroteus wrote: post #373
opportune wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t even understand this comment at all. So the solution to NIMBY activists controlling local government is to do... nothing? You know YIMBY is itself an activist movement right? Activist isn’t a code word for “crazy left wing people I don’t like”, it just means people who are hyper politically active (moreover N/Y IMBY is not clearly demarcated on political lines IMO). All you have done is said the person you ar…

If you don't understand the comment "at all," I suspect replying to you won't resolve the issue. >All you have done is said the person you are replying to is an idiot for YIMBY but the only argument is that they support Breed. That's not all I've said. Read slower.

"Read slower"

Write clearer

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

#654

Post by xapata »

poooogles wrote: post #148
xapata wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> paying double for a house Are you talking about monthly payment or lump sum? When the lump sum doubles yet the monthly payment is the same, has the cost really changed? To me, no. I was never going to buy lump sum, so I only care about monthly payment.

>When the lump sum doubles yet the monthly payment is the same, has the cost really changed? Yes of course it has. You've just over doubled (interest rates are low but they're not nil) the time it's taken to pay back that loan.

It's a 30-year mortgage either way. The time frame is exactly the same.

The only difference is the down payment, which matters because a bigger down payment means more opportunity cost of stock market gains.

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

#655

Post by Guest42 »

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…

I think also that high lumber prices combined with tariffs contribute quite a bit.

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

#656

Post by Drunk_Engineer »

spunker540 wrote: post #633
bennysomething wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

California and NYC have a declining population.

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

#657

Post by nimih »

bennysomething wrote: post #616
CodeWriter23 wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How can investors decrease the supply of housing?

By backing policies and politicians that constrain the expansion of public and affordable private housing in the face of an increasing population. Or by purchasing homes they do not intend to use as a primary residence.

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

#658

Post by dragonwriter »

JAlexoid wrote: post #650
dragonwriter wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And why would my opinion change when I get older? Prop 13 won't do shit to lower my taxes It will, in real terms, since the assessment increase limit is the lower of 2% or the rate of inflation each year, guaranteeing that over the long term the assessed value and tax go down in real terms. Which isn’t to say your opinion should change, just that the self-interest equation does.

That's BS. If I pay $10k in property taxes(excl school taxes), that means I cannot invest that money into something more tangible. Thus depriving me of working investments to subsidize wealthier individuals is worse, than steadily increasing taxes.

That taxes compete with other potential uses of money is obviously true, and equally obviously irrelevant to the discussion of whether Prop 13 will or will not lower your real tax bill over the time you own a home.

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

#659

Post by xapata »

basch wrote: post #120
xapata wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> paying double for a house Are you talking about monthly payment or lump sum? When the lump sum doubles yet the monthly payment is the same, has the cost really changed? To me, no. I was never going to buy lump sum, so I only care about monthly payment.

Presumably, owing money for 60 years instead of 30 years will cost you much more in the long run. And more baked in interest early in the loan means less recovered when you sell.

How the hell do you find a 60-year loan? Sign me up! Remember, leverage is what makes home ownership a good investment.

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

#660

Post by jxramos »

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 interesting, when supply is artificially limited so reliably you can bank long term investments on it. Pretty amazing.
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