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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

#971

Post by mixmastamyk »

nmfisher wrote: post #917
mixmastamyk wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm really not sure that's true. I don't know exactly how many were built, but Melbourne (Australia) added a lot of CBD apartments and the price continued to shoot up. Those were overwhelmingly tiny/cheap/low-quality/investor-bought apartments, but the fact is they were still there.

That there are places where foreign buyers outnumber locals ten to one, or other govt interference happens, do not refute basics of economics. Australian cities are tiny compared to Asia or even LA, and certainly units built were not in the millions.

i.e. if your locality has additional issues, the solution is to fix them. Don't use them as excuses to build less housing for folks that need it.

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

#972

Post by mixmastamyk »

zamfi wrote: post #923
mixmastamyk wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of renters are nimbys as well, due to misconceptions, or other factors such as rent-control affecting their outlook.

Err…no one wants their neighborhood to suddenly have a bunch of new unknown people in it, right? You don’t have to be a nimby to be concerned about who you live next to. It’s not a “misconception” in that sense, especially if moving is impossible because of rent control, as you mention. Perhaps we need better protections around dealing with insufferable neighbors and other neighborhood changes’ negative impacts, and…

I live in a big city, and currently know maybe 1% of the neighbors if lucky. Unknown folks are not a concern.

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

#973

Post by iso1210 »

helen___keller wrote: post #758
ivalm wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there are external costs. The “consenting adults” narrative is false. Not enough parking means people living there will use street parking in nearby areas affecting the residents of those communities. This happens all the time.

This line of dialogue is a very strong demonstration of how car-centric transportation model leads to a perverse anti-social urban development mindset. Unused parking is quite literally the least productive and least attractive use of land, I simply can't fathom seeing it as attractive.

If the discussion was about high density living then sure. It's not, it's about 10 houses per acre, that's decidedly low density - lower than the tipping point where people don't own cars.

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

#974

Post by iso1210 »

dcolkitt wrote: post #609
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…

So, what? What business is it of the local government? Why can't we just let consenting adults make their own personal decisions about the details of the housing and parking they choose to live in? Some people may only need limited parking. Some people may not need any parking. Maybe they're making a mistake and will regret it. Maybe not. Maybe nobody wants that, in which case the developer will pay the cost. Who car…

The market doesn't decide, and everyone suffers. Ban people from storing their vehicles on public property and you're fine, but until that happens you're stuck with the externalities.

Oh and stop low density housing like this being built in cities.

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

#975

Post by iso1210 »

aggronn wrote: post #521
mattmcknight wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really market oriented, it's tragedy of the commons oriented, as developers will build the cheapest thing they can on the premise that new residents can use existing parking, resulting in a reduction of value for others utilizing those commons. By not having parking minimums, it allows developers to pass those costs onto surrounding residents. There are townhouse neighborhoods near me with nearly impassable…

The solution isn't to build more parking, its to reduce the need for car trips. Improve transit and support commercial development in the neighborhood. The fact is that we're in a housing affordability crisis. We need builders to build "cheapest thing they can" right now because housing is insanely expensive in most urban areas. Parking minimums make housing more expensive, and the fact that people are buying these h…

You can't improve the transport until you start building high density housing, that's not 10 units per acre.

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

#976

Post by iso1210 »

groone wrote: post #793
mattmcknight wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really market oriented, it's tragedy of the commons oriented, as developers will build the cheapest thing they can on the premise that new residents can use existing parking, resulting in a reduction of value for others utilizing those commons. By not having parking minimums, it allows developers to pass those costs onto surrounding residents. There are townhouse neighborhoods near me with nearly impassable…

Another solution is robotaxis. If ridehailing becomes easily affordable You will have your nice neighborhood back. Robotaxis can pick you up in a minute and go to park and recharge in some distant multi story parking.

If you have an area dense enough to have reliable uber then perhaps it works, but uber (and taxis in general) fall down with families with young children - the kind of people buying low density housing being suggested

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

#977

Post by urbankris »

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 developers building the complex are going to be insulated from having low-income housing in their vicinity.

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

#978

Post by iso1210 »

vladgur wrote: post #638
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 that development was walking distance to transit? I live in SF Bayarea suburb in a SFH with a wife and a elementary school aged kid. We have 1 car that is parked in our driveway(on our property). For everything else there is a commuter train within 10-15minute walk and uber within reach. Limited parking does incentivize non-car-oriented lifestyle. Im all for it.

> Limited parking does incentivize non-car-oriented lifestyle. Im all for it.

No it doesn't, it incentivizes parking arguments and a tragedy of the commons, and creates people who will vote for policies that will convert public land into parking spaces.

I would prefer to reduce on street parking, and increase on street cycle lanes. It sounds like you would too.

By only providing 1 parking space per dwelling you end up with an increased demand for on street parking.

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

#979

Post by [deleted] »

srj wrote: post #837
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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#980

Post by mkr-hn »

autocorr wrote: post #938
neartheplain wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

States with this amount of obstructive ossification, such as the Byzantine Empire or Austria-Hungary, don't generally stand the test of time. Just before Austria-Hungary's collapse following WWI, the collection of taxes in Dalmatia (now Croatia) cost twice as much as it raised [0]. We still use the word Byzantine today to describe systems that are "complicated, secret and difficult to change" [1]. I don't know what t…

While I totally agree with the point you're trying to make, to be fair to the Byzantines, having a continuous state structure for a near millennium (500-1200 CE) is actually the near opposite of ossification leading to speedy collapse. To Western Europeans coming from the very loose state structure of feudalism, the fact that the Byzantine Empire was effectively a modern state (similar to ancient China) was practical…

This is one reason I'm wary of any big structural changes to the US tripartite system. "Abolish the Senate!" or "abolish the Supreme court!" sounds like a fun adventure in governance but, regardless of personal political tilt, the system gives people time to organize against bad policy. It's hard to get policy I like, but the same processes slow policy I don't like down enough to organize against it.

Even the most blatantly tyrannical presidents through history hit a wall of bureaucracy. It's slow, but people like me tend to get murdered when tyrants take over, so I'll take it over a quick changing system that can easily turn against me.

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