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

#811

Post by hilbertseries » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #777

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…

If you could unravel all perverse effects of American localist planning and regulation, it would be great. But if the idea is just "let the developers build where they want and that solves everything", that idea is wrong. Developers don't want to build the dense, affordable house that's needed. Developers want to take advantage of the existing housing and housing expectation and build one bigger house or bigger devel…

What is this nonsense? Yimbys are support upzoning property, so denser housing can be built. They support removing parking minimums so denser housing can be built.

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

#812

Post by alasdair_ » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

kaibee wrote: post #360

tachyonbeam wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that we need to stop treating houses as investments, because they're a basic fundamental need everyone has. IMO, the problem could be fixed by having stricter laws prohibiting people who aren't residents from owning homes in another country. The requirement to become a resident is only to live in a country for over 6 months out of the year. Before that, you can just rent. We could also do things like limit th…

> but we probably don't want to live in a communist country where the government owns every home and everyone is renting either. Yes, like the famously communist state of, checks notes , Singapore. Sorry for the snarky reply, but I don't think calling the breaking of monopoly power/taxing unearned rents is communism.

The most objectionable part of real-world communism is the authoritarianism that goes along with it. Singapore is extremely authoritarian.

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

#813

Post by mixmastamyk » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #783

mixmastamyk wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False, false, and false. True, financialisation is a factor, combating that must be part of the solution.

"False" is a hell of an elaborate argument, very convincing when placed against 50 years of data across 5 countries, all leading to same skyrocketing housing prices.

Nothing more needed to refute an argument of said quality. If I delivered one million finished apartments to your city anywhere in the world today, the average price would go down. How about ten or a hundred million? Q.E.D.

Housing scarcity is real, whether you believe it or not.

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

#814

Post by andrepd » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 9:43 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…

Georgism in general, that is not only LVT but also analogous concepts for anything which ought to be commons (natural resources, pollution, etc) would go a long way into solving a significant amount of issues.

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

#815

Post by AndrewUnmuted » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 9:50 PM UTC

TheCowboy wrote: post #458

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, have you listened to their podcast? [0] The discussion of the great reset is not rooted in conspiracy theories, but rather direct quotations uttered by extremely problematic individuals who have a broad history of sketchiness, corruption, and warmongering. I take strong issue with your careful labeling of those with whom you disagree as all leaning in one direction politically. [0] https://pod.link/1517364006

The Great Reset is predominantly used by conspiracy Twitter and it isn't close. It is blown out of proportion relative to its original context, and amounts to sloppy punditry trying overfit an interpretation of the world. One of its least helpful usages is as a weapon against debate/policies that attempt to address collective action problems such as climate change. It kind of reminds me of what was done with "New Wor…

You keep changing your terms. First it was right-wingers, now it's conspiracy Twitter. What is "conspiracy Twitter," and what does it have to do with the right wing of US political discourse? Why are we conflating these terms so willingly?

I made direct reference to "The Great Reset," itself, from the very purveyors of it - the WEF. There's no need, nor any value, in trying to conflate my response to you with this strawman group you're forming.

> (e.g. no world authoritarian government yet)

Your interpretation of the world is highly specious. Have you been in a coma for these past 1.5 years?

> One of its least helpful usages

Very interesting choice of words, least helpful. Seems to me like you have a strong ideological alignment with the goals of the World Economic Forum.

See, it's so easy to flip your entire script and end up presenting the exact case being made by the conspiracy theory people. The New World Order fanatics could see the WEF as their fictitious enemies moving on to a new strategy, specifically because there is now an authoritarian government established. And it could be seen as a sloppy form of punditry, overfit atop a very specific and narrowly-targeted interpretation of the world, making the conspiracy people all the more mad that more people don't see things their way. Because there could be "real collective action," if more people did see it their way.

Under those considerations, I would be naive to be any less skeptical of your position, than I am of the conspiracy theory strawmen you're establishing here.

The actual "The Great Reset," pursued by the WEF is concerning specifically because it seeks to align economic interests globally, forcing them into a densely-regulated system through negative incentives. It forgoes and utterly mocks the notion that knowledge ought to be distributed, decentralized, and localized. There are not just huge economic concerns here, but ethical ones as well. Wars will be fought over the disagreements spawned from the aims of these zealots.

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

#816

Post by scotuswroteus » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #653

scotuswroteus wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

More clearly?

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

#817

Post by scotuswroteus » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #437

scotuswroteus wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since your reading comprehension is so high, you'll agree then that supporting yimby groups won't be sufficient to generate the credible threat that the original comment suggests will be sufficient to dissuade investors

Since yours is, you'll see that the original comment didn't say it would be sufficient. Those were two separate sentences.

This is one sentence: "Support groups like https://yimbyaction.org/ if you want to 'stick it to the investors'."

I'm done here. Feel free to defend bad activism or advance whatever incorrect semantic interpretation you have of our exchange.

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

#818

Post by gambiting » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 9:53 PM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #744

jiofih wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to laugh at “the most dense development”. 400sqm is absolute luxury in Europe, and plenty of space for a massive detached house with a garden and garage. A house on the high end here sits on less than 150m2 (northern europe).

> 400sqm is absolute luxury in Europe, and plenty of space for a massive detached house with a garden and garage. A house on the high end here sits on less than 150m2 (northern europe). Just how "massive" can that house be with a garden (say, 35sqm) and a garage (36sqm)? You can probably build a fine house in the remaining 330sqm, no doubt, but I'd hardly call it "massive". Maybe "generous". OTOH, it might be a point…

It's definitely a point of view problem. We currently own a 90sqm, 3-bed house in the UK and it's not small by any measure here. On this street there are definitely smaller houses than this and people live here with families just fine. Also quite a wealthy area not a dump.

From that point of view, 400sqm sounds positively like a mansion to me. Sure, would love that much space, but I have no idea if houses this large even exist anywhere nearby to buy, I've certainly haven't seen any.

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

#819

Post by zbrozek » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

mercutio2 wrote: post #306

no-dr-onboard wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange argument considering public schools (and in general _many_ public services) in CA are in terrible condition. Maybe I'm missing the point though.

Huh? He’s making the argument that what you observe is a direct effect of Prop 13. You may disagree, but it’s very much not a strange argument. Prop 13 kneecapped the ability for municipalities to fund themselves in the way they traditionally do in the US, and public services got vastly worse.

Yet somehow total tax burden for those in the state is well above other places, including those with functional public services. I wish it were easier to figure out where the money goes.

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

#820

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 10:01 PM UTC

Sadly, archive.is is blocked in some countries

For a smaller, simpler, Javascript-free, ad-free page

   curl https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/if-you-sell-a-house-these-days-the-buyer-might-be-a-pension-fund-11617544801 \
   |grep -Eo "()|()|()" \
   |tr -cd '[ -~]' > 1.htm
   firefox ./1.htm