23 ms·

The problem is housing being treated as an investment, resulting in artificially high prices and limited supply for the people who need to live in it. We shoul

The problem is housing being treated as an investment, resulting in artificially high prices and limited supply for the people who need to live in it. We should buy housing to live in, not to extract rent from the suckers that were too late. A land value tax would help lower prices and remove the incentive to treat housing as an income source.

almost_usual 8y ago
So how does this argument convince the population who has invested into their homes to suddenly want to devalue their property?
- bendmorris 8y ago
  It doesn't. It requires building political will in the group that's been left out to override them.
- epistasis 8y ago
  I'm not sure why we need to convince those people, as we don't require consensus. We enact policy as a whole. Also, I'm not sure what "devaluing" is going on; by pure financial value there's almost no way to build enough to actually drive down the price of any individual home; more likely as zoning increases the home will go up in value, but individual condos or townhouses will be available for much less than a single family home. If you mean "devaluing" by "I now have apartments on the block," there's absolutely no right whatsoever for somebody to control the use of that other property.
- kamaal 8y ago
  Anybody who thinks they can drop $1.5 million+ into an asset without risk needs reality check on how entitlements don't work. Besides the world doesn't owe any one an insurance for stupid ideas.
  - almost_usual 8y ago
    Once again how does this argument convince the voters and home owners to change their mind?
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Eventually an alternate location breaks out which offers amore compelling economic option for employees and employers, and the entire regional market implodes. This ... kind of ... happened in Southern California in the early 1990s when the defence industry retrenched. SoCal housing prices had long led NoCal, and in the aftermath the south's values fell by a third or so. They've never really caught up. A different dynamic but similar result. Oddly, a consequence has been somewhat greater densification of the LA basin. You could look at real estate in other and earlier times, especially industrial or extractive areas after the boom has passed.
tathougies 8y ago
> We should buy housing to live in, not to extract rent from the suckers that were too late This is a really biased view of what landlords do. A landlord takes on all the risk of maintaining the home, staying in the home long-term, fixing things when things break, etc. As a renter, being able to just tell my landlord when things break means that much more convenience for myself. Moreover, as a renter, having no incentive to be gentle on my appliances, my landlord actually does quite a bit of stuff (Or pays a lot to have someone else do my stuff, hence creating a job) to make my life pretty darn easy.

almost_usual 8y ago

So how does this argument convince the population who has invested into their homes to suddenly want to devalue their property?

bendmorris 8y ago
It doesn't. It requires building political will in the group that's been left out to override them.
epistasis 8y ago
I'm not sure why we need to convince those people, as we don't require consensus. We enact policy as a whole. Also, I'm not sure what "devaluing" is going on; by pure financial value there's almost no way to build enough to actually drive down the price of any individual home; more likely as zoning increases the home will go up in value, but individual condos or townhouses will be available for much less than a single family home. If you mean "devaluing" by "I now have apartments on the block," there's absolutely no right whatsoever for somebody to control the use of that other property.
kamaal 8y ago
Anybody who thinks they can drop $1.5 million+ into an asset without risk needs reality check on how entitlements don't work. Besides the world doesn't owe any one an insurance for stupid ideas.
- almost_usual 8y ago
  Once again how does this argument convince the voters and home owners to change their mind?
dredmorbius 8y ago
Eventually an alternate location breaks out which offers amore compelling economic option for employees and employers, and the entire regional market implodes. This ... kind of ... happened in Southern California in the early 1990s when the defence industry retrenched. SoCal housing prices had long led NoCal, and in the aftermath the south's values fell by a third or so. They've never really caught up. A different dynamic but similar result. Oddly, a consequence has been somewhat greater densification of the LA basin. You could look at real estate in other and earlier times, especially industrial or extractive areas after the boom has passed.

tathougies 8y ago

> We should buy housing to live in, not to extract rent from the suckers that were too late This is a really biased view of what landlords do. A landlord takes on all the risk of maintaining the home, staying in the home long-term, fixing things when things break, etc. As a renter, being able to just tell my landlord when things break means that much more convenience for myself. Moreover, as a renter, having no incentive to be gentle on my appliances, my landlord actually does quite a bit of stuff (Or pays a lot to have someone else do my stuff, hence creating a job) to make my life pretty darn easy.