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

#691

Post by offsky » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 7:20 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #485

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…

> 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. Not “never move”, just never sell . When you are ready and able to upgrade to a new home, you convert the existing one to a rental property with rents to cover costs with a suitable risk premium (but don’t worry about additional profit), and then bene…

This assumes that you don't need the equity in the first house to get the mortgage on the second house.

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

#692

Post by ipaddr » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 7:20 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #634

Telemakhos wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The social services costs will be higher than the tax base. City planning involves carefully balancing priorities. If the community is made up of 100 rural homes introducing 100 townhomes used for section 8 property incomes creates chaos.

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

#693

Post by Exuma » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 7:20 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.

Same......... I'm essentially being forced to buy as renting isn't an option and we can't move.

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

#694

Post by yawaworht1978 » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 7:21 PM UTC

Drunk_Engineer wrote: post #656

spunker540 wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

California and NYC have a declining population.

Just distorted number because of increases homelessness. Sarcasm , however, there is a bit truth to that.

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

#695

Post by igetspam » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 7:21 PM UTC

milkytron wrote: post #678

igetspam wrote: post #668

I'm about 99% sure I'll get downvoted for this but how do I sell my house a pension fund? I have a house with a renter in it and I would gladly sell it to anyone who would buy it without having to displace the renter. Right now, I'm stuck holding it for a little while longer because the renter and I have an agreement.

You could put it on the market and have contingencies that satisfy your agreement. As for selling to a pension fund specifically, I think that would be more work than it might be worth, and you'd probably be better off making it open to all types of buyers.

Private buyers are usually looking for homes to live in and the one institutional buyer I've spoken to gives any existing renters the boot as soon as they take the title. The linked story sold an entire block of rentals as one lot. Maybe I'll get lucky and someone at a fund will see this thread and be interested in the idea.

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

#696

Post by phendrenad2 » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 7:21 PM UTC

etempleton wrote: post #200

In my neighborhood the bank owns a house and has owned it since it was foreclosed upon about three years ago. The house is completely falling apart. It is unlivable. The house is tarpped. Apparently also filled with mold. The yard has rotting wood and weeds that are taller than my head. And no one will do anything about it. The city will fine the bank $100 for each infraction and that is it. The bank could care less.…

Maybe they suspect that a developer may want that land.

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

#697

Post by cletus » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 7:21 PM UTC

Here's what we need: if the beneficial owner of a property is not a resident of that state the property tax rate should be punitively high. This includes any corporations or LLCs that own property.

It's important that we have property as an investment vehicle... to a point. After all, that's where the pool of rental properties comes from. But this kind of national carpet bombing of housing supply by hedge funds is the last thing we need.

As another example of what I consider a disgusting practice: hedge funds have bought up the trailer parks and then jacking up the rent. These houses are technically "mobile" but actually have limited mobility. Each move also damages the property. These should be owned collectively by the residents of the trailer park. But hedge funds know they essentially have a captive market to prey on.

Much like when Goldman Sachs created an investment vehicle for wheat and then drove up the global cost to profit at the expense of actually killing people who couldn't afford to eat, I put this in the same category as disgusting and morally reprehensible. And while it's up to politicians to fix it, you can still hate the players.

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

#698

Post by gnopgnip » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 7:23 PM UTC

cosmojg wrote: post #32

If only so many people didn't treat land and houses like investments, there wouldn't be such a disastrous hoarding problem. Henry George's Land Value Tax [1][2] seems like an obvious economic fix that would require a large fraction of the population to change how they think about land and natural resources, but most of them are invested in such a way (i.e. owning multiple houses on multiple parcels of land, often wit…

The biggest thing preventing widespread adoption of a land value tax is the implementation. Someone still needs to decide what the land is worth, there isn't an objectively fair way to separate out the value of the land from the improvements.

Or put another way, many of the same tactics can be used to distort/contest appraisals "dark stores" and deed restrictions that prevent other uses, but without an objective way to combat them

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

#699

Post by ipaddr » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 7:24 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #561

Telemakhos wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Where do you expect poor people to live exactly?

In places that can support additional social services not available in remote communities. The poor are being kicked out of cities.

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

#700

Post by tptacek » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 7:24 PM UTC

stagger87 wrote: post #651

tptacek wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, but this doesn't change that; in fact, increased rental stock probably increases affordability, both directly and in a bunch of knock-on ways involving zoning and variance decisions.