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

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

#851

Post by jiofih »

gambiting wrote: post #818
lelanthran wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Exactly. The largest homes around here are barely above 200sqm, and cost 2-3 million. Most houses have two or three floors though.

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

#852

Post by sjg007 »

ed_balls wrote: post #849
rwcarlsen wrote: post #810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to build a house for myself. Going through all the hoops is not only cumbersome and expensive - but nearly impossible. I've run into legal tiff's between the county and nearby city. The city wants me to pay $40,000 for a sewer hookup for a single family dwelling when the sewer line is literally right along the road in front of where we will build the house. This is because the city has a beef to pick…

what if you just build it? What are the sanctions? Can you legalise it later?

They force you to tear it down. If you don’t they will and charge you for it.

That being said there was one guy in LA who built a massive house called the enterprise I think. Edit: he lost in court and is being forced to demolish it.

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

#853

Post by cromwellian »

adventured wrote: post #732
viscanti wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you cherry pick data during COVID that's true. But it was the first year since 1900 with any decline and state forecasters say it's more to do with over 50,000 COVID related deaths and less migration from other countries (the largest source of population growth for CA for many years now) because other countries were locked down. As far as I know, no one expect that decline to be anything more than a very temporary…

California's population expansion clearly hit a wall back in 2017-2018, pre-pandemic. 2019 saw their population expansion de facto stop. The rate of growth has been dropping rapidly toward zero for much of the past decade, and they reached that line before the pandemic hit, it's not a new trend due to Covid. This decade it'll go negative. The exodus - a desperate flight from California's particularly horrible governm…

People leave California primarily because of housing prices, or because they are in industries which are leaving California because they're not longer growth companies (e.g. HP)

First of all, the data actually shows that while 90-100k people moved from CA to TX every year since 2019, about 40-50k moved from TX to CA, and the demographics of the TX->CA move is higher income, educated earners, and the move from CA->TX is far less Silicon Valley elite, and far more from the central valley, and tends to be blue collar.

Growth follows an S-curve, and in every major successful city in the world, be it NY, London, Seoul, Shanghai, or Tokyo, eventually you run into a slowdown, as cost of living increases.

A contraction in CA's population won't be bad, because CA is still brain draining the rest of the country and still receiving a higher chunk of investment funds compared to other states.

https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2019... https://www.statista.com/statistics/424167/venture-capital-i...

Reducing the burden of non-growth industries by sending them to TX along with blue collar workers, while taking the lions share of immigration of people with advanced degrees, as well as the lionshare of VC investment, seems like a good trade.

Honestly, Arizona is looking a lot better to me than Texas over the next decade. With 6 new state of the art semiconductor fabs under construction (2 TSMC, 2 Intel, 1 Samsung, 1 NXP) totalling $50 billion, another $100 billion in investment promised by TSMC, and the recently enacted $50 billion Senate semiconductor package, if you're looking for the next Silicon Valley, the Silicon Desert looks more like an early real estate opportunity than the Silicon Hills.

I don't think California has much to worry about, everything that makes the state great: It's natural environment, weather, colleges, parks, industry nexii, it's diverse culture, food, wine country, etc is still there. I know you desparately want to run with the conservative talking points on taxes and regulations, but CA's population growth issues have little to do with "high taxes" as many conservatives claim. Median CA household income is $57k, the State effective tax rate on that income is 3.7%, which puts CA in the middle of the pack when it comes to state tax burdens. CA only really takes a big bite of you if you make a lot of money, but as I've already explained, CA has net positive migration of high income earners, and net positive business migration/creation too.

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

#854

Post by kregasaurusrex »

dvdhnt wrote: post #845
srj wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that: - Most American households own their home. - Homeowners vote at substantially higher rates than renters. - Home equity is one of the largest components of American wealth (roughly equal with retirement accounts). Taken together it's difficult to see how home values will be allowed to fall.

> Most American households own their home. Do you have a reference for that? I'm interested to see how it breaks down. I have to assume this is true because of America's aging population.

There's data released directly by the US Census Bureau for this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

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

#855

Post by joe_the_user »

jbay808 wrote: post #834
joe_the_user wrote: post #826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most places (where I live, Nevada City, for example) upzoning and reducing parking limits would just create problems. It's the actual central areas where you want to allow much greater density. A denser outlying suburb isn't a win.

Outlying suburbs should see an increase in the sorts of things that make them "places". Cafes, bakeries, bars, restaurants, offices, markets, schools, plazas, bookstores, and so on. Then they can further densify without automatically driving more commute traffic into the city.

Doesn't make sense that increasing density from very low to merely low in an outlying suburb would result in cafes and bakeries. You're talking places already oriented to the automobile, where people drive to the whatever cafe or bakery they already like in a large area.

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

#856

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.

Your payments go towards both interest and principal in a proportion that varies over the lifetime of the loan, such that your time frame is set by the terms of the loan. If you get a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, you pay it back in 30 years, regardless of the loan amount or interest rate. Look up "amortization table" if you're curious.

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

#857

Post by jonny_eh »

rcpt wrote: post #835
erentz wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prop 13 is so ridiculously unfair and distortionary. I wonder is there a way to legally challenge Prop 13 on the basis that it confers a kind of durational residency benefit (see Shapiro v. Thompson)?

Yes. https://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/11/... Norlidger v. Hahn (worth a read https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/90-1912.ZD.html ) didn't make it but also didn't address the Fair Housing Act. Prop 13, especially the extensions that preserve tax rates through bloodlines, disparately impacts minorities even though that wasn't the explicit intent of the law. Turns out that intent doesn't matte…

It's also a huge grant to older generations, which violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment, IMO. But I'm not a Supreme, so I dunno.

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

#858

Post by jonny_eh »

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.

> it was a massive windfall for buyers

It was a wealth grab. They're the ones that voted for prop 13, and they're the ones benefitting. Meanwhile it's the Millennials and all subsequent generations that are stuck paying for their social security.

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

#859

Post by epistasis »

paiute wrote: post #821
epistasis wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you are using derisive terms like "stack and pack" for apartments then you are probably precisely the investor that is manufacturing the housing crisis. Apartments create greater affordability, they allow for designing cities with lower carbon impact than single-unit homes, they allow better community, more connections, cradle-to-grave living, they allow people to survive without having to get in a car to…

try living in one. they are great maybe from age 24-29. they typically cost more than a mortgage in my area. you don't talk to people when you are that close. I find the greater the distance between neighbors the better the relationship.

I lived in a few recently, after living in a detached house, and my experience was not as you describe. The buildings housed all ages and we were all friendly with each other, and if someone was in the shared outdoor space, a neighbor would quite often come to join them. In the building before that, there was no shared space, but everyone was friendly, no different than the detached house place where I live now.

Which isn't to say anybody should be forced into a multi-unit building and mixed-use neighborhoods. But as you point out, prices for these types of settings are often higher than detached homes, indicating that they are under supplied and more people want them then are currently allowed to live in them.

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

#860

Post by scottyah »

paiute wrote: post #821
epistasis wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you are using derisive terms like "stack and pack" for apartments then you are probably precisely the investor that is manufacturing the housing crisis. Apartments create greater affordability, they allow for designing cities with lower carbon impact than single-unit homes, they allow better community, more connections, cradle-to-grave living, they allow people to survive without having to get in a car to…

try living in one. they are great maybe from age 24-29. they typically cost more than a mortgage in my area. you don't talk to people when you are that close. I find the greater the distance between neighbors the better the relationship.

I am right at the end of your range and noticing similar trends among my similar-aged peers. We all talked of condos a few years ago, but the single family home with room to breathe and quiet is overtaking our previous desires. I am still conflicted due to my hate of commuting, but the more I read about and experience the downfalls of busy-area living (noise pollution, air pollution, inability to change much about the property, etc) the more I feel the desire to buy straight up acreage in Wyoming.

I also see a lot better community with less people, and I'm sure there are many reasons for that.

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