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I agree that a necessity such as housing being treated as an investment is insane. I usually bring this up to people whenever housing is discussed. Most peopl

I agree that a necessity such as housing being treated as an investment is insane. I usually bring this up to people whenever housing is discussed. Most people I talk to are more concerned with eventually renting out their homes they bought decades ago and using that to buy another house, though. I'm really inclined to believe renting homes shouldn't be legal, perhaps, because eventually you wind up with a situation where no one even has the option of buying their own house.

neltnerb 7y ago
The population is getting older. Right now those homes are being rented out, inevitably raising prices since some portion of the rent is profit. This is likely not a long term situation, making investing in houses seem very risky indeed. It's probably priced in though.
djakjxnanjak 7y ago
By renting a home, I can let somebody else tie up a million dollars in capital and all I have to pay them is a few thousand a month. This seems like a great deal for me, why do you want to ban me from engaging in this transaction?
- MagicPropmaker 7y ago
  It his gateway to having the Government own all property and no private ownership of land.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    Having the option to rent is a gateway to having the government own all property? You're going to have to explain your logic a bit, because so far your position sounds ridiculously wrong.
    - dgzl 7y ago
      I think they were talking about the GP's hypothetical scenario, where renting would be llegal.
      - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        So the claim is that verisimilitude's suggestion, that renting would be illegal, is a gateway the government owning all property and private ownership being illegal? I don't see how it's reasonable to suppose that would be the result. I also don't see how MagicPropmaker thinks that's what verisimilitude was thinking. Am I missing something? [Edit: I mean, I can see that renting being illegal is a restriction on use of property. That's a long distance from private property itself being illegal, though, and I don't see any reason to suppose that would be the end result - either the desired end result or the actual one.]
- petra 7y ago
  Housing is such a big problem. And a collective thing. The key to solving it is to make sure everyone is focused on affordable housing. Once you got a impactful part of society focused on something else, for example extracting rent - you've lost. That's why Germany managed to create a working, affordable housing system after ww2. And that's why Israel, in it's early years, managed to do the same, and offer affordable housing to everyone,while working under dire economic situation.
  - thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
    we need housing to be affordable (for everyone), not affordable housing.
  - djakjxnanjak 7y ago
    I think the solution is clear. Legalize tall buildings. Requiring someone to own or rent thousands of square feet of land to get access to hundreds of square feet of housing is guaranteed to lead to shortages.
    - thatfrenchguy 7y ago
      And abolish prop 13 in California and other tax pyramid schemes ? Especially for entities that are not people.
      - r00fus 7y ago
        I wonder why even with a super majority, Dems still haven’t raised split-roll for removing prop13 for corporations.
        Ericson2314 7y ago
        A very good question!
    - zzzzzzzza 7y ago
      Land value taxes. What's better than legalizing tall buildings, is incentivizing tall buildings.
- LetItSnow 7y ago
  In steeply appreciating markets, those people didn't tie up a million dollars. Just five or so years ago, a million dollar house sold for $500,000 (in some markets).
  - zxcmx 7y ago
    And maybe only put $25,000 down....
  - munk-a 7y ago
    A steeply appreciating market is either an indication of a bubble or that the previous valuation of assets was highly inaccurate. They're market inefficiencies that, sure, people will try and arbitrage, but they're not the norm... except that the housing market is really weird due to the incredible illiquidity and non-divisibility of assets.
- wonthegame 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking may help you understand the parent comments train of thought
- jlokier 7y ago
  So I pay a few thousand a month; it's cheaper than the few thousand the owner paid back when that was the price (it's only a notional "million" in capital because they bought it decades ago for a few low thousands.) In exchange for my illusory benefit of paying "only" a few thousand every month, I get: - To keep the remaining 30% of my salary (as ever rising rents creep past 70% of take-home). - Enjoy the 10% yearly rent raise. - No security, can be kicked out any time (it happens every few years, sometimes a week before Christmas). - No permission to paint anything. - Forbidden to have pets of any kind. Could move, but can't find anywhere within commuting distance that allows pets and is in the same price bracket. - Can't change anything structural, like a window for a nicer one. - Can't change the locks to something I'd like. - Can't try out the fancy new home control tech (Nest etc) - Can't fit solar panels, even if subsidised by a power company, as the offer is only to homeowners. - Forbidden to "run a business" from home (it says in the contract), and forbidden to register a company at my home address. - No guests allowed to stay over longer than X days. - When I hit retirement age and soon after that run out of money, I'll be evicted and homeless, because pension isn't enough to pay the rent, and rent is rising faster than inflation anyway. State benefits exist for pensioners, but the housing component intended to cover rent is widely known to be less than real rents. So fair enough, I avoid buying somewhere with a million in capital. Instead I spend more than a million in rent over a working lifetime. Sure would have been nice to live in a stable home during it, to enjoy the freedom to do what I want in the home, and to stay there at the end.
  - castlecrasher2 7y ago
    I guess the question is are you willing to concede that you owning a home is incompatible with you living in SV?
    - urda 7y ago
      That's odd, because I know many (including myself) that own property in SV and other high-expense cities on the West Coast. So I don't think that's true.
      - 7y ago
- elyobo 7y ago
  I think GP meant letting (although that would have the same effect).
pathseeker 7y ago
>because eventually you wind up with a situation where no one even has the option of buying their own house. How did you make it do this conclusion? Renting is legal all over the place and that scenario has happened literally nowhere.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- yeahitslikethat 7y ago
  Except nyc, sf, LA, seattle, vancouver, ... etc where home affordability means multiple families in one condo.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    While true, that's completely orthogonal to pathseeker's point, which is about legality rather than affordability.
    - yeahitslikethat 7y ago
      Because no one in those areas can buy their own house. I'm supporting the point pathseeker was arguing against.
AznHisoka 7y ago
If nobody rented their house, wouldnt that reduce the supply of inexpensive housing? Now you are left with renting from mostly apartment buildings, and rents will probably go up due to the shorter supply.
- zanny 7y ago
  Probably the greatest lie of the boomer generation was the presumption that quarter acre single family stick homes were ever going to be, in the long run, "inexpensive". The externalities have come back to bite society at large in numerous forms. The unmanageable maintenance debt on the infrastructure to support them. The dependence on private enterprise storefronts to supply developments that can close up shop at any point and leave whole regions without access to a proper grocery store. The ongoing maintenance cost upkeeping all the land and structures. The time lost commuting around areas of extraordinarily low population density. The structural macroeconomic expenses in building supply chains to support such a spread out population. The social isolation and resulting depression that plagues the society as people silo themselves off behind their picket fences. The broader trend must be towards density. That doesn't mean to compromise privacy, or even necessarily individual usable space - but it does mean a move away from stick houses with 4 lanes in between towards 4+ stories with bus and train access.
  - esotericn 7y ago
    Why a a dichotomy between a decent house, and a 'stack em high' mindset? Terraced housing as seen all over Europe could house single families without issue. London is full of these things. 100sqm is really quite a decently sized home with gardens front and back. That's already a 10x density improvement. Not everyone wants to live in an apartment surrounded by other people on all sides with no control over the place they live in (because it's all outsourced to a "management company" e.g. nonsense bureaucracy). As far as I can tell all you're going to do by building tons of flats is entrench some sort of class system. Outside of elite city center locations only proles will be living in apartments.
    - fjsolwmv 7y ago
max76 7y ago
> I'm really inclined to believe renting homes shouldn't be legal Either own a home or be homeless. That's more humane. /s
- drb91 7y ago
  Housing doesn’t have to be a commodity at all. It can easily be an unconditional human right.
  - max76 7y ago
    Is there a practical example of a housing not being a commodity that results in favorable housing conditions?
    - drb91 7y ago
      I do not, but I know for sure commodifying housing doesn’t create favorable housing conditions.
      - closeparen 7y ago
        So if we look at places in the US with more favorable housing conditions, we should find housing allocation done primarily by the state?
        drb91 7y ago
        Where do you claim there are favorable conditions? As far as I am aware the homeless are everywhere; some places are simply impossible to live without shelter due to exposure.
        closeparen 7y ago
        Housing affordability and degree of government involvement are both on a spectrum; you don't need extremes to see if there is a relationship or which way it runs.
scarface74 7y ago
So if renting shouldn’t be legal, what do people do who can’t afford a home or who don’t want to buy one?
- yeahitslikethat 7y ago
  Prices will decline until sellers find buyers just like every other market.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    And you still need a down payment. Are you suggesting that everyone should either own a home or be homeless? What about college students? Should they also buy houses just for the amount of times they are in college? If I move for a job, should I immediately buy a house? On the other hand what if I know I don’t plan to be in an area for long? Should I buy a house for a year or two? What happens when I am ready to move and can’t find a seller?
    - yeahitslikethat 7y ago
      You only need a down payment because houses are not affordable. I've bought all my houses with cash.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        The average American can’t handle a $400 emergency. How cheap does a house have to be to make it affordable for most Americans?
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    Not if you take property off the market when it goes down. >"The property developer behind the conversion of central London’s Centre Point office skyscraper into multimillion-pound luxury apartments has given up trying to sell the flats after receiving too many “detached from reality” lowball offers. >Mike Hussey, chief executive of the developer Almacantar, said the company had decided to halt formal sales of the flats in the 1960s brutalist tower, now called Centre Point Residences, rather than slash prices. >The company said concerns about Brexit and possible tax increases on overseas investors were encouraging potential buyers to make offers well below the asking price. The reception at the redeveloped Centre Point building in London’s West End. >The decision to halt sales means about half of the tower’s 82 flats, which range from £1.8m for a small one-bedroom apartment to £55m for the two-storey five-bedroom penthouse, will now lie empty, adding to a glut of unsold ultra-luxury property across London." https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/oct/31/brutalist-market-flats-at-londons-centre-point-taken-off-market https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/oct/31/brutalist-m...
Zimahl 7y ago
In most cases, a home isn't going to be rented forever. At some point properties get liquidated by the owner. If it's an individual, most likely at retirement or when they don't feel like managing the properties anymore. For a company, it's when it no longer profitable or when the company goes under. My point is that properties, even rental houses, turn over at some point and there is typically enough turnover that it's probably not going to tie up affect the long term percentage of homes for sale.
skybrian 7y ago
Renting or owning doesn't matter. The house is occupied. Other people have to live somewhere else. As I've written elsewhere, a housing market has much in common with a traffic jam or a crowded bus. Everyone takes up space, so everyone is part of the problem, based on how much space they take up. The only way to fix it is to make more space or convince people to go elsewhere.
test6554 7y ago
People should be able to do as they please with their property. - capitalism
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Broken_Hippo 7y ago
I'm really inclined to believe renting homes shouldn't be legal, perhaps, because eventually you wind up with a situation where no one even has the option of buying their own house. I disagree. Home renting has all sorts of societal benefits and allows folks to be mobile when needed. Perhaps you are just going to be in the area for a couple of years, yet would like to have space for your dog to run, for example. Or need to divide your large, old house up so you don't have to move. It also means young folks can move out of the house and that everyone gets the choice of sharing walls with a neighbor. Money and income is a much bigger indicator of whether or not someone can buy a house. If slews of people cannot save up money for a down payment, these folks cannot do such a thing. Bad zoning laws and other such things naturally influence it as well.

neltnerb 7y ago

The population is getting older. Right now those homes are being rented out, inevitably raising prices since some portion of the rent is profit. This is likely not a long term situation, making investing in houses seem very risky indeed. It's probably priced in though.

djakjxnanjak 7y ago

By renting a home, I can let somebody else tie up a million dollars in capital and all I have to pay them is a few thousand a month. This seems like a great deal for me, why do you want to ban me from engaging in this transaction?

MagicPropmaker 7y ago
It his gateway to having the Government own all property and no private ownership of land.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  Having the option to rent is a gateway to having the government own all property? You're going to have to explain your logic a bit, because so far your position sounds ridiculously wrong.
  - dgzl 7y ago
    I think they were talking about the GP's hypothetical scenario, where renting would be llegal.
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      So the claim is that verisimilitude's suggestion, that renting would be illegal, is a gateway the government owning all property and private ownership being illegal? I don't see how it's reasonable to suppose that would be the result. I also don't see how MagicPropmaker thinks that's what verisimilitude was thinking. Am I missing something? [Edit: I mean, I can see that renting being illegal is a restriction on use of property. That's a long distance from private property itself being illegal, though, and I don't see any reason to suppose that would be the end result - either the desired end result or the actual one.]
petra 7y ago
Housing is such a big problem. And a collective thing. The key to solving it is to make sure everyone is focused on affordable housing. Once you got a impactful part of society focused on something else, for example extracting rent - you've lost. That's why Germany managed to create a working, affordable housing system after ww2. And that's why Israel, in it's early years, managed to do the same, and offer affordable housing to everyone,while working under dire economic situation.
- thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
  we need housing to be affordable (for everyone), not affordable housing.
- djakjxnanjak 7y ago
  I think the solution is clear. Legalize tall buildings. Requiring someone to own or rent thousands of square feet of land to get access to hundreds of square feet of housing is guaranteed to lead to shortages.
  - thatfrenchguy 7y ago
    And abolish prop 13 in California and other tax pyramid schemes ? Especially for entities that are not people.
    - r00fus 7y ago
      I wonder why even with a super majority, Dems still haven’t raised split-roll for removing prop13 for corporations.
      - Ericson2314 7y ago
        A very good question!
  - zzzzzzzza 7y ago
    Land value taxes. What's better than legalizing tall buildings, is incentivizing tall buildings.
LetItSnow 7y ago
In steeply appreciating markets, those people didn't tie up a million dollars. Just five or so years ago, a million dollar house sold for $500,000 (in some markets).
- zxcmx 7y ago
  And maybe only put $25,000 down....
- munk-a 7y ago
  A steeply appreciating market is either an indication of a bubble or that the previous valuation of assets was highly inaccurate. They're market inefficiencies that, sure, people will try and arbitrage, but they're not the norm... except that the housing market is really weird due to the incredible illiquidity and non-divisibility of assets.
wonthegame 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking may help you understand the parent comments train of thought
jlokier 7y ago
So I pay a few thousand a month; it's cheaper than the few thousand the owner paid back when that was the price (it's only a notional "million" in capital because they bought it decades ago for a few low thousands.) In exchange for my illusory benefit of paying "only" a few thousand every month, I get: - To keep the remaining 30% of my salary (as ever rising rents creep past 70% of take-home). - Enjoy the 10% yearly rent raise. - No security, can be kicked out any time (it happens every few years, sometimes a week before Christmas). - No permission to paint anything. - Forbidden to have pets of any kind. Could move, but can't find anywhere within commuting distance that allows pets and is in the same price bracket. - Can't change anything structural, like a window for a nicer one. - Can't change the locks to something I'd like. - Can't try out the fancy new home control tech (Nest etc) - Can't fit solar panels, even if subsidised by a power company, as the offer is only to homeowners. - Forbidden to "run a business" from home (it says in the contract), and forbidden to register a company at my home address. - No guests allowed to stay over longer than X days. - When I hit retirement age and soon after that run out of money, I'll be evicted and homeless, because pension isn't enough to pay the rent, and rent is rising faster than inflation anyway. State benefits exist for pensioners, but the housing component intended to cover rent is widely known to be less than real rents. So fair enough, I avoid buying somewhere with a million in capital. Instead I spend more than a million in rent over a working lifetime. Sure would have been nice to live in a stable home during it, to enjoy the freedom to do what I want in the home, and to stay there at the end.
- castlecrasher2 7y ago
  I guess the question is are you willing to concede that you owning a home is incompatible with you living in SV?
  - urda 7y ago
    That's odd, because I know many (including myself) that own property in SV and other high-expense cities on the West Coast. So I don't think that's true.
    - 7y ago
elyobo 7y ago
I think GP meant letting (although that would have the same effect).

pathseeker 7y ago

>because eventually you wind up with a situation where no one even has the option of buying their own house. How did you make it do this conclusion? Renting is legal all over the place and that scenario has happened literally nowhere.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
yeahitslikethat 7y ago
Except nyc, sf, LA, seattle, vancouver, ... etc where home affordability means multiple families in one condo.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  While true, that's completely orthogonal to pathseeker's point, which is about legality rather than affordability.
  - yeahitslikethat 7y ago
    Because no one in those areas can buy their own house. I'm supporting the point pathseeker was arguing against.

AznHisoka 7y ago

If nobody rented their house, wouldnt that reduce the supply of inexpensive housing? Now you are left with renting from mostly apartment buildings, and rents will probably go up due to the shorter supply.

zanny 7y ago
Probably the greatest lie of the boomer generation was the presumption that quarter acre single family stick homes were ever going to be, in the long run, "inexpensive". The externalities have come back to bite society at large in numerous forms. The unmanageable maintenance debt on the infrastructure to support them. The dependence on private enterprise storefronts to supply developments that can close up shop at any point and leave whole regions without access to a proper grocery store. The ongoing maintenance cost upkeeping all the land and structures. The time lost commuting around areas of extraordinarily low population density. The structural macroeconomic expenses in building supply chains to support such a spread out population. The social isolation and resulting depression that plagues the society as people silo themselves off behind their picket fences. The broader trend must be towards density. That doesn't mean to compromise privacy, or even necessarily individual usable space - but it does mean a move away from stick houses with 4 lanes in between towards 4+ stories with bus and train access.
- esotericn 7y ago
  Why a a dichotomy between a decent house, and a 'stack em high' mindset? Terraced housing as seen all over Europe could house single families without issue. London is full of these things. 100sqm is really quite a decently sized home with gardens front and back. That's already a 10x density improvement. Not everyone wants to live in an apartment surrounded by other people on all sides with no control over the place they live in (because it's all outsourced to a "management company" e.g. nonsense bureaucracy). As far as I can tell all you're going to do by building tons of flats is entrench some sort of class system. Outside of elite city center locations only proles will be living in apartments.
  - fjsolwmv 7y ago

max76 7y ago

> I'm really inclined to believe renting homes shouldn't be legal Either own a home or be homeless. That's more humane. /s

drb91 7y ago
Housing doesn’t have to be a commodity at all. It can easily be an unconditional human right.
- max76 7y ago
  Is there a practical example of a housing not being a commodity that results in favorable housing conditions?
  - drb91 7y ago
    I do not, but I know for sure commodifying housing doesn’t create favorable housing conditions.
    - closeparen 7y ago
      So if we look at places in the US with more favorable housing conditions, we should find housing allocation done primarily by the state?
      - drb91 7y ago
        Where do you claim there are favorable conditions? As far as I am aware the homeless are everywhere; some places are simply impossible to live without shelter due to exposure.
        closeparen 7y ago
        Housing affordability and degree of government involvement are both on a spectrum; you don't need extremes to see if there is a relationship or which way it runs.

scarface74 7y ago

So if renting shouldn’t be legal, what do people do who can’t afford a home or who don’t want to buy one?

yeahitslikethat 7y ago
Prices will decline until sellers find buyers just like every other market.
- scarface74 7y ago
  And you still need a down payment. Are you suggesting that everyone should either own a home or be homeless? What about college students? Should they also buy houses just for the amount of times they are in college? If I move for a job, should I immediately buy a house? On the other hand what if I know I don’t plan to be in an area for long? Should I buy a house for a year or two? What happens when I am ready to move and can’t find a seller?
  - yeahitslikethat 7y ago
    You only need a down payment because houses are not affordable. I've bought all my houses with cash.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      The average American can’t handle a $400 emergency. How cheap does a house have to be to make it affordable for most Americans?
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  Not if you take property off the market when it goes down. >"The property developer behind the conversion of central London’s Centre Point office skyscraper into multimillion-pound luxury apartments has given up trying to sell the flats after receiving too many “detached from reality” lowball offers. >Mike Hussey, chief executive of the developer Almacantar, said the company had decided to halt formal sales of the flats in the 1960s brutalist tower, now called Centre Point Residences, rather than slash prices. >The company said concerns about Brexit and possible tax increases on overseas investors were encouraging potential buyers to make offers well below the asking price. The reception at the redeveloped Centre Point building in London’s West End. >The decision to halt sales means about half of the tower’s 82 flats, which range from £1.8m for a small one-bedroom apartment to £55m for the two-storey five-bedroom penthouse, will now lie empty, adding to a glut of unsold ultra-luxury property across London." https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/oct/31/brutalist-market-flats-at-londons-centre-point-taken-off-market https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/oct/31/brutalist-m...

Zimahl 7y ago

In most cases, a home isn't going to be rented forever. At some point properties get liquidated by the owner. If it's an individual, most likely at retirement or when they don't feel like managing the properties anymore. For a company, it's when it no longer profitable or when the company goes under. My point is that properties, even rental houses, turn over at some point and there is typically enough turnover that it's probably not going to tie up affect the long term percentage of homes for sale.

skybrian 7y ago

Renting or owning doesn't matter. The house is occupied. Other people have to live somewhere else. As I've written elsewhere, a housing market has much in common with a traffic jam or a crowded bus. Everyone takes up space, so everyone is part of the problem, based on how much space they take up. The only way to fix it is to make more space or convince people to go elsewhere.

test6554 7y ago

People should be able to do as they please with their property. - capitalism

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Broken_Hippo 7y ago

I'm really inclined to believe renting homes shouldn't be legal, perhaps, because eventually you wind up with a situation where no one even has the option of buying their own house. I disagree. Home renting has all sorts of societal benefits and allows folks to be mobile when needed. Perhaps you are just going to be in the area for a couple of years, yet would like to have space for your dog to run, for example. Or need to divide your large, old house up so you don't have to move. It also means young folks can move out of the house and that everyone gets the choice of sharing walls with a neighbor. Money and income is a much bigger indicator of whether or not someone can buy a house. If slews of people cannot save up money for a down payment, these folks cannot do such a thing. Bad zoning laws and other such things naturally influence it as well.