Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020) • Hacker News Board

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

#741

Post by nullc » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 10:25 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #654

toss1 wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rebuttal by mminer237 is much closer to right [0]. Also it isn't even as good as mminer237 mentions, as many states also have a much lower exemption, and there is work in congress to get rid of the step-up in basis (a bad thing, imo) and to reduce the $12MM lifetime gift & estate exemption (a very good thing). So yes, there are some advantages, but OP is vastly exaggerating as if it is some freebie to landlords w…

It may not be a freebie for landlords, but it is much more "cost neutral" or "tax neutral" to own an investment property than to own a primary residence. Consider: Investment property: * Deduct maintenance costs * Deduct insurance costs * Deduct property taxes * Deduct mortgage closing costs * Deduct mortgage interest * Deduct HOA dues * Deduct property management fees * Take advantage of depreciation deductions * Av…

If I buy a widget for $100,000 and sell it of for $105,000 do you expect me to pay income taxes on the $105k or on just my $5k profit?

The former would be absurd and in most cases would make it impossible to be in business-- you'd take a net loss on every transaction unless your markup was greater than your tax rate. Good that went through fewer hands would be astronomically less expensive.

So why do you think that it's weird that a landlord doesn't pay taxes on the portion of his income that goes to the costs of operating the business?

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

#742

Post by BoxOfRain » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 10:38 AM UTC

kkfx wrote: post #387

BoxOfRain wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We still do not have the '30s dream of flying homes or semi-autonomous starships that can be moved easily everywhere... So far we do not even have flying cars (while they might be there technically)... There is a kind of home that can float anywhere though, I'm quite far long in my plans to move onto a sailing yacht. While my main motivation is a lifelong love of sailing and a desire for a nomadic lifestyle, I'd be…

That's was done by some, experimented on scale by very few and... well... it prove to be not really feasible: boats are expensive, far more than homes. All the efforts to made cheap and large-enough house-boat led to crappy stuff who do not last much. You need anyway much more raw materials and maintenance, most water is salty and salt corrode anything, lakes are too few and might make unpleasant drought issues and u…

I'm not claiming that my life choices would scale to be a viable option for the majority of the population but it doesn't have to scale to be an option for some people who are already interested in that kind of lifestyle. It's not a society-scale solution to the housing crisis but it's definitely an option for people in the position I'm in personally.

Also it's not necessarily correct to say you require land-based infrastructure; you can be somewhat independent from the shore for long periods on a sailing boat since people do ocean crossings all the time, you obviously don't need fuel for propulsion, you can generate electricity with various renewables like solar, wind, and the boat's motion through the water under sail, and your water supply comes from the sea via a reverse osmosis machine. Provided nothing breaks beyond your ability to repair it you're effectively limited only by what food you can carry.

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

#743

Post by lotsofpulp » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 11:46 AM UTC

kenned3 wrote: post #627

lotsofpulp wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sympathize with your younger colleague. Spending 1+ hours of your day, 5 out of 7 days per week, just to afford your own house would mean I would opt out of raising a family. Even 30+ min per day commute sounds terrible.

This is where things get even more strange. Most people who do manage to afford to live in Toronto still have to commute. you can get condo's right in the downtown core, but they are insanely expensive. So the debate he had was a ~30 min commute and a "toronto" address vs a 45-60 min commute and an address in a small city outside Toronto. I worked in toronto a very long time, dont know many people who actually lived…

> You can change industries, etc.. but those are personal choices.

Yes, I looked around see older colleagues in NYC spending 5/7 days working and traveling to and from work just to get 2/7 days to live and decided pretty quickly it was not for me. It is okay in your 20s beside you can work and then party and work and party, but if your goal is to raise kids then that 2 hours on a train commute per day is soul crushing.

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

#744

Post by presentation » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 12:03 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #540

carom wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do not need to hand over ownership to the government to build more houses. Just simplify zoning laws. Private landlords want to build. People want to maximize the value of their properties. They can't because of zoning laws that favor single family home hellscapes.

> They can't because of zoning laws that favor single family home hellscapes. This can easily go too far in the other direction though, carving up a single family sized living space into 5 tiny 400 sqft apartments. There have to be incentives for mixed sized living spaces.

There is, that is “the market is willing to buy mixed sized living spaces.” I live in Tokyo, my first apartment was shocked pikachu 230sqft! Oh, the horror!

And yet there are plenty of single family homes and 2500+ sqft apartments if you want that. Just in the USA, if you want to live small - the government forcibly tells you that you’re not welcome here.

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

#745

Post by presentation » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 12:07 PM UTC

bern4444 wrote: post #476

pdonis wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate to go all "citation needed" on you, but I'm not sure this is true. Given the number of people that rent in large cities all over the world for their entire lives, I don't know why you would find my claim doubtful. Many people seem to want to live in large, densely populated areas, and for most people that is always going to mean renting. > Much like freedom of car-free movement, housing ought to be a fundame…

Most of the people renting in a large city are doing so because buying is so expensive and unattainable. Not because they prefer renting.

I can buy a house here in Tokyo but it doesn’t make sense for me to. Partially because housing is a bad investment here and rents are very affordable (which is exactly the point of OP), and partially because I expect that my needs in my current situation will differ greatly from my future needs and don’t personally want to take on the burden of managing properties at this time to compensate for that.

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

#746

Post by ramblerman » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 12:07 PM UTC

nly wrote: post #628

aorloff wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mortgage interest deduction is for your primary home. Investment property mortgage interest is a business expense

It's wild to me that Americans can deduct mortgage interest from their tax bill ...

It's not uncommon in Europe, with the clause that it's a home you live in.

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

#747

Post by kamaal » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 12:11 PM UTC

BirdieNZ wrote: post #724

kamaal wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Most landlords I have met buy properties and then outsource their administration to property management companies. And the cost of buying a property and outsourcing its maintenance is 0 right? The landlord magically pulls a home out of thin air and some group of people maintain for them for free? >>Landlordism is parasitic in the literal sense of the word. Landlords get rent and capital appreciation for doing nothi…

> The landlord magically pulls a home out of thin air and some group of people maintain for them for free? The building-lord should receive some return for their investment, as they have created value and added to it through maintenance. The land-lord receives return for doing no work, no addition of value, and only through extracting the excess economic rent from their tenants. Unfortunately, conversations around pr…

Yeah, land, like college seats, and gym memberships come in limited quantities. There is no infinite supply of land, college seats, or gym memberships. So whoever acquires a hold on a resource of this nature stands to benefit a better return on investment. Also note the limited nature of time in these things, you are basically in a race condition.

Note these extend to things like 401k, or a retirement savings scheme in the same way.

You feel like you are salty that you couldn't get a hold on such a resource in time.

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

#748

Post by naasking » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 12:24 PM UTC

presentation wrote: post #744

naasking wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They can't because of zoning laws that favor single family home hellscapes. This can easily go too far in the other direction though, carving up a single family sized living space into 5 tiny 400 sqft apartments. There have to be incentives for mixed sized living spaces.

There is, that is “the market is willing to buy mixed sized living spaces.” I live in Tokyo, my first apartment was shocked pikachu 230sqft! Oh, the horror! And yet there are plenty of single family homes and 2500+ sqft apartments if you want that. Just in the USA, if you want to live small - the government forcibly tells you that you’re not welcome here.

The market is willing theoretically, but practically with high property values there's more incentive to build tons of smaller units since they'll sell for more in aggregate. This happened in my city, where there's a distinct lack of family-sized apartments in the downtown core. Only older buildings from the 80s prior to recent real estate booms built decent sized units suitable for families.

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

#749

Post by snarf21 » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 1:00 PM UTC

celtain wrote: post #707

snarf21 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting. I wonder if it would work to make all FHA loans be required to be NEW properties/units. So the only way to get access to the money is to expand the housing. I'm sure there are consequences but I need to think them through a bit more.

I don't know about policy consequences, but one political hurdle is that this would be attacked as "welfare for the rich" or something along those lines, since new construction is generally more expensive than existing units.

Yeah, I haven't thought everything through yet. However, the hope that this would force more of the new housing to be more affordable. A poor person isn't going to be buying a luxury condo so I was trying to think of a way to incentivize builders to increase stock and create more affordable housing. There are definitely some second order effects.

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

#750

Post by mschuster91 » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 1:05 PM UTC

seper8 wrote: post #581

mschuster91 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plot values have doubled BECAUSE OF regulations! Hard disagree here. Munich, Berlin and Hamburg simply don't have much land in their borders any more. In Munich, we only have two major unpopulated areas left - the SEM Nord (900 ha, 50.000 people) and SEM Nordost (600 ha, 30.000 people) [1], and the currently under construction projects Freiham (25.000 people) and Bayernkaserne (15.000 people). The opposition to the…

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/48.1369799,11.5756907/Bogenh... Take this area, plenty of plots now housing cows. Distance to city centre (by car!) is 20 minutes. Same thing to the North West, in between Munich, Grobenzell, Puchheim... Buddy you are buying into the horsecrap being told by current homeowners. "It's full!"... Nope, not really. Just like in the Netherlands, about 50% of land in Germany is farmland. And…

> Take this area, plenty of plots now housing cows. Distance to city centre (by car!) is 20 minutes.

That area is precisely the site of the SEM Nordost [0], one of the two major remaining new construction areas. And as you can see on that newspaper map, it's the border of the city - the area to the east is already Aschheim territory. Munich cannot build outside of its borders, no matter how much farmland there is.

> Just like in the Netherlands, about 50% of land in Germany is farmland.

Uh, yeah, we have to grow the food we eat somewhere, Germany has over 80 million people to feed. We already import way too much food from elsewhere, especially the Amazon rainforest where beef for export to Europe is made on burned down rainforest area.

The territory of the city of Munich is already full, and you completely ignored my last point above, that a city also needs green areas for fresh wind to come into the city, recreational areas for the people, and that high-rises and other highly dense developments bring their own problems with them.

[0] https://www.hallo-muenchen.de/muenchen/suedost/muenchen-boge...