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

#941

Post by KirillPanov » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 3:35 AM UTC

jjeaff wrote: post #903

nibles_and_bits wrote: post #895

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you buy a lot zoned ag when you clearly wanted one zoned residential? A little due diligence before purchasing the lot and you would either know what you in for and still buy or decide it's too much of a hassle and walk.

They probably bought a lot smaller than 40 acres and assumed that logically, a single dwelling would be allowed since otherwise a dwelling would be impossible.

That is not a logical assumption.

If "a dwelling would be impossible", the logical conclusion is that zero dwellings would be allowed.

This situation is the norm in US unincorporated zoning. I have never heard of any unincorporated jurisdiction with a "minimum residences per parcel regardless of parcel size" exception. If there is such a jurisdiction, it's the exception not the rule.

There is a limit to how many dwellings an area can support without major infrastructure upgrades (sewerage, water lines, new roads, additional sheriff's deputies). This limit has to be divided among the parcels. The fairest way to do it is by acreage. "Minimum acres per dwelling" is just the reciprocal expression of "maximum dwellings per acre" and more well-behaved since fractional acres make sense but fractional dwellings do not.

Giving tiny postage-stamp parcels the right to build one dwelling would be a windfall for all the kooky "sliver parcels" created by things like railroads and surveyors' errors. Those obnoxious error parcels are made undevelopable in order to encourage that they be merged into a neighboring parcel.

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

#942

Post by chrismcb » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 3:37 AM UTC

opportune wrote: post #406

iso1210 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

49 parking spaces for 49 houses seems like a disaster in anywhere other than the densest of US cities. Surely most houses have at least 2 drivers? 5 Acres is 2 Hectares, so that's about 25 houses per hectare. Typical new housing estates in the UK is about 25 hours per hectare, with minimum of 3 parking spaces (including a garage if given) for a 4 bed, and 2 for a 3 bed. Even that number of spaces is too low - especia…

What if I told you that in many areas households don’t even need a single car? If you require large amounts of parking everywhere and commensurately large roads, everything ends up so spread out that car based transportation seems like a necessity. It’s a self perpetuating cycle. If you don’t require so much land to be dedicated to cars you can build things denser and lower or even remove the need for personal cars.…

> What if I told you that in many areas households don’t even need a single car?

Sure, if they live near public transportation. I would vote down a dense housing development of it didn't have access to public transportation

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

#943

Post by Sophistifunk » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 3:45 AM UTC

kelp wrote: post #864

masklinn wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously some of that is to be expected of an island nation versus a continent-spanning one. It has little to do with "island nation", most nations use mixed zoning, it's certainly the standard in europe (and recent developments are gravitating towards more mixed zoning e.g. Amsterdam's eastern docklands). It could have to do with being an old nation, but even then that's not actually true, the US existed for a wh…

In the US, we invented zoning, mostly to exclude black people from white neighborhoods. And now we use it to prop up property values and continue to keep poor people out of wealthy neighborhoods. Now I'm speculating, but I wonder if Japan, being mostly Japanese people, didn't have such a large group to exclude from certain neighborhoods? So they didn't entrench the institution of local control and exclusionary zoning…

It's my understanding that Japan's housing regulations are mostly driven by a long history of all their buildings falling over in an earthquake every couple of decades.

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

#944

Post by dd36 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 3:46 AM UTC

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…

It’s low rates and the realization that they can artificially constrict supply. It’s rent seeking and until a decade ago, it was absent in SFR.

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

#945

Post by KirillPanov » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 3:49 AM UTC

ta1234567890 wrote: post #540

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…

And, at least in California, realtors will always push prices up. It’s pretty much never in their best interest to lower the price. Even the buyer’s agent gets paid a percentage of the sale price, so if they try to lower it they’d be essentially working against themselves. And this is without even accounting for all the schemes realtors create (like listing below market to get a lot of offers and create artificially…

> Even the buyer’s agent gets paid a percentage of the sale price, so if they try to lower it they’d be essentially working against themselves.

This makes me hopping mad. On what crazy world can they be considered the "buyer's" agent when their incentives are exactly opposite to those of the buyer?

It's like if defense attorneys were expected to argue for the prosecution, and everybody was okay with this.

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

#946

Post by KirillPanov » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 3:51 AM UTC

milkytron wrote: post #674

pwinnski wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This depends heavily on the market at the time, since there are pressures from multiple directions. All else being equal, 6% of a higher price beats 6% of a lower price. But 6% of a lower price today in exchange for an hour of work beats $0 if the buyer walks and is not so easily replaced, and it might even beat 6% of a higher price if the higher price comes after many additional hours of work. Over a long enough tim…

> Over a long enough timeframe, the trend is toward higher prices, but it's not clear how much of a factor agents are in that, compared to many other factors. I can't imagine agents would have much of an impact when compared to other causes of rising house prices. The way I see it, is that they are more of a kind of facilitator to increase the efficiency of the market, and don't have as much of a role in market behav…

There is a half-open set of prices the buyer will pay: [0..max).

There is a half-open set of prices the seller will accept: (min..$\infty$]

If these sets do not intersect, there's no deal no matter what the agents do.

If the sets do intersect, the agents collude to ensure that the sale closes at the HIGHEST price in the intersection.

That is why realtors are such a big factor in the housing crisis. They collude to push all of the transactional surplus to the seller, because both agents work for the seller.

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

#947

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 3:56 AM UTC

abeppu wrote: post #899

ta1234567890 wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, at least in California, realtors will always push prices up. It’s pretty much never in their best interest to lower the price. Even the buyer’s agent gets paid a percentage of the sale price, so if they try to lower it they’d be essentially working against themselves. And this is without even accounting for all the schemes realtors create (like listing below market to get a lot of offers and create artificially…

> Even the buyer’s agent gets paid a percentage of the sale price, so if they try to lower it they’d be essentially working against themselves. Yeah, I really wish we normalized fee-for-service for buyer's agents. Agree on a fair hourly rate for their time, plus some constant fee for actually closing. The agent can have more consistent income over time, and the buyer can know that the agent's incentives are not misal…

[deleted]

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

#948

Post by gscott » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 3:57 AM UTC

rwcarlsen wrote: post #810

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'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…

I would suggest subdividing the parcel.

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

#949

Post by jlawson » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 3:58 AM UTC

jimrandomh wrote: post #423

an_opabinia wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Support groups like https://yimbyaction.org/ if you want to 'stick it to the investors'. I’m pretty sure you’re not sticking it to investors if you support development. You might be sticking it to different investors.

The word "investor" is conflating two things. On one hand you've got "investment" where someone pays up front for materials, construction workers, and equipment, producing a building, and then makes money by selling or renting that building. This is good, because it resulted in a building that people can live in. On the other hand you've got "investment" where someone purchased a preexisting building, in a way that's…

A major reason the first investor built the building is because he/she knew someone else would buy it later.

Otherwise people can only invest things they're ready to run themselves basically forever. This would destroy the economy.

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

#950

Post by plattenbau » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 3:59 AM UTC

jsmcgd wrote: post #62

adflux wrote: post #26

I really wish we'd get some innovation in the housing market. 3D printing of houses or something could be epic. "Just" disrupt the current construction companies... It's clear they can't keep up with the demand right now.

Lack of housing is not a technology or industrial problem. New homes can be made easily and relatively cheaply if given the go ahead. Lack of housing is by policy. By ensuring there are not enough houses ensures there is more demand than supply, which means higher housing prices, which means higher mortgages. The mortgage market is based on rising house prices. The banking industry is based on the mortgage industry.…

How can you be SO certain that it isn't a technological problem?

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plattenbau