4 ms·

Legit thought experiment and not a troll, because I'm curious about thinking through this. What happens if legislation is passed that more or less prevents peo

• 0xffff2 11y ago
  Have you ever bought a house? I have. I do not want to go through that process every time I move. Plus, while I have purchased a house before, it ended up being foreclosed on and I certainly couldn't get a mortgage now (and I shouldn't... I can't afford a mortgage). I would be pretty SOL if owning a house was a prerequisite for not being homeless. How is commercial property treated? What prevents a company building a huge apartment building, "selling" it to an apartment manager (in the form of a very expensive mortgage) and then having the apartment manager rent out "rooms" in his very large "house" to cover his mortgage? In short, the longer I think about the idea, the less practical it becomes.
  • brk 11y ago
    I've bought a few houses, the process has generally been simple and painless (other than the physical moving of stuff part, which is the same for own vs. rent). My last few vehicles purchases have involved significantly more paperwork and signatures than my most recent property purchases. What is it about the process that you've had issues with?
    • 0xffff2 11y ago
      Our experiences differ vastly. Granted I've only bought one house and it was 8 years ago. Maybe things have gotten better in the intervening years? My experience buying cars has involved signing maybe a dozen pages, while my experience buying a house involved signing form after form after form (most of which I didn't really know the purpose of) for literally hours. I'm certain I spent more time just signing paperwork to buy my house than I've ever spent on the entire car buying process from the time I walked into the sales guy's office after the test drive to the time I drove off the lot.
  • pfooti 11y ago
    I have bought a house. I think one reason it's so painful is that it is a relatively rare occurrence which usually represents a huge transfer of wealth. If, on the other hand, home sales were more common and (presumably) for less money per transaction, you could imagine that this process would be simpler. I'm not super-interested in debating the implementational details of what's obviously a thought experiment - mostly what I'm interested in getting input on is: would home prices go down? would monthly mortgage rates go above or below current rental rates? would there be more or less pressure to build new units?
  • DrScump 11y ago
    [What prevents a company building a huge apartment building, "selling" it to an apartment manager (in the form of a very expensive mortgage) and then having the apartment manager rent out "rooms" in his very large "house" to cover his mortgage?] The law. (Zoning)
• VintageCool 11y ago
  My opinion is that San Francisco's housing problems are at root a case of demand vastly exceeding supply. The solution is to produce more housing. This would happen naturally when demand exceeds supply, except that San Francisco has an excess of regulations that prevent construction of new homes and new apartments and a strong political coalition opposed to the construction of new housing. Adding more restrictions on housing helps no one.
  • pfooti 11y ago
    I don't doubt that demand exceeds supply. San Francisco also is not really a representative sample of US (or global) home ownership vs rental and so on. All that aside, I don't really see the line of argument that links my proposed idea to "more restrictions". My initial thinking was something like (basically): current market forces (especially in SF) favor the consolidation of ownership in the hands of the few people who can afford the large capital investment required to build new housing. IOW: home prices are ridiculously high at least in part because the future value of rent extraction makes these homes good long-term investments for people who don't live there. See also: removing units from rental for AirBnB service in the long-term (sources differ on how many units in SF are lost to permanent AirBnB hotel status, but they seem to all agree that at least some are off the market for this reason). So, what happens if this element of the market is removed? I know, I know: it's central to capitalism, I'm becoming a communist, etc etc. What happens when the supply - demand relationship is between residents and other residents? Do home prices trend upwards? Does the current bloc of owners and rent-controlled residents stop acting to fight against further expansion?
    • VintageCool 11y ago
      I see your idea as a restriction that would hinder housing development because no person (or company) that owned an apartment building could construct and own a second one. They would have to sell their existing stock in order to produce more, and that seems like a disincentive.
• chimeracoder 11y ago
  > What happens if legislation is passed that more or less prevents people from owning property that's not their primary residence? Like: if you don't live in it more than 190 days a year, you pay a really high property tax on it. That already exists in a way - there's the concept of a primary residence tax deduction, which is (more or less) what the name sounds like. It varies widely by jurisdiction, (not just country, but state and local government as well), but the idea of trying to differentiate residents from landlords in tax policy is nothing new.
• AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  If you do that, you'll get more single-owner homes, and less rental units, but you'll kill the ability to have apartment buildings (or, at most, one per owner). More single dwellings and less apartment buildings doesn't sound like the path to "more affordable housing".
  • dublinben 11y ago
    You can own an apartment. It's called a condo.