6 ms·

Houses and rent are expensive because there's not enough houses in the places people want houses. You're not paying for the house, you're paying for someone els

Houses and rent are expensive because there's not enough houses in the places people want houses. You're not paying for the house, you're paying for someone else not to live there. Governments further subsidising homeownership will only make them more expensive.

andrewstuart 6y ago
There's enough houses. There just shouldn't be people owning more than 2.
- yardstick 6y ago
  I agree with the sentiment but disagree with the 2 house limit. For example a family holiday house should be ok. I would put the limit around 10 homes, and if any are rentals then any capital gains should be taxed more harshly unless sold to someone who will owner occupy for at least say 3 years. Yes I’m sure there are loopholes in what I’m describing but it’s the general concept I’m trying to show.
- adrianN 6y ago
  I'm sure that there are not enough houses in central Tokyo for everyone who wants to live in central Tokyo.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  Without landlords, how would I be able to rent a house? Would I have to get loans whenever I moved, even if temporarily? All that would do is replace a mix of landlords and bankers with bankers. Renting money to buy something that you later sell to return the money is the same as renting the thing directly, except you're dealing with a huge bank instead of a midsize management company / wealthy owner-manager.
  - jjav 6y ago
    > Renting money to buy something that you later sell to return the money is the same as renting the thing directly Largely true, except that by renting it directly you're also paying the additional profit margin for the middleman who took out the mortgage (rented the money) for you to be able to rent it directly.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- epistasis 6y ago
  That's ridiculous, limiting people to owning one house wouldn't be nearly enough homes. But, let's say that were the case, somehow. Why is your solution to stop people from owning more homes, rather than letting more homes be built? Why choose austerity over abundance? There's a clear reason to choose austerity: it always, literally always, privileges existing power over those with less. However, most people who want to entrench existing power and oppress those with less don't admit it openly, instead they couch this undesirable anti-egalitarianism in obscure arguments to hide their true motives. This is the stage we are at in California. People who have gained enormous real estate wealth through luck, which has let them exploit an entire class of extremely productive workers, know they can not create abundance on their own, but must instead farm workers like cattle. So they embrace this austerity couched in other terms. Limiting people from owning more than one home will not actually produce enough for everyone that wants to live in highly desirable areas. But forwarding unworkable proposals will continue to create luxury goods (housing near food jobs) as luxury, rather than opening them up to more people.
  - chadcmulligan 6y ago
    >Why choose austerity over abundance? Indeed, abundance is the way to go, then why bother investing? An anecdote - There was an oversupply of apartments in my city a few years ago, prices were dropping - oh no! So the response? Developers stopped building, there are foundations sitting around in a number of places that were planned to be built, but apartment development has basically stopped in the city. In a few years there'll be a shortage and no doubt the developers will start up again. The incentives are all screwed up, if they kept building then prices would drop, but the profit isn't there at the moment so they sit idle.
    - whatshisface 6y ago
      Isn't that the system working? If a house costs more to build than anyone would pay for it, wouldn't it would be a bad idea to build it?
      - chadcmulligan 6y ago
- mjevans 6y ago
  You should have to live in a house for at least 35% of the year to not pay EXTREME taxes on it. Notably that's 70% among two houses and 30% in slack that can go where-ever. However we also still need __way__ more housing to get out of the 2 generation debt in many places and 3-5 in E.G. major Californian cities.
  - jjav 6y ago
    > You should have to live in a house for at least 35% of the year to not pay EXTREME taxes on it. This would incentivize ownership since renting out would be prohibitive. But for anyone who'd like to rent, those extreme taxes will just be passed on to them.
pdonis 6y ago
> there's not enough houses in the places people want houses I think a possible solution to a lot of that problem is one that, by a tragic irony, we have COVID-19 to thank for making mainstream: remote work. If people's housing locations weren't tightly coupled to their job locations, there would be a lot more freedom for people to choose a place to live and places to live would be forced to compete on a more level playing field.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Unless you want to video-only the rest of your life too, remote work isn't good enough. We need to decrease distances for all purposes of transportation period for environmental, social, and economic reasons. Dense development with public transportation does for society what increasing the component density and shortening wire length does for integrate circuits. There is no substitute.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > We need to decrease distances for all purposes of transportation period for environmental, social, and economic reasons. "We" have all kinds of different needs and desires. Not everyone wants to live in a densely populated area. In any case, uncoupling the location of your home from the location of your job should improve your ability to live closer to the people and places you want to be close to in your personal life. That would go for everyone, those who want to live in densely populated areas and those who don't.
    - Ericson2314 6y ago
      I don't want to subsidize other people's suburban and rural decadence. It's not a personal choice that doesn't effect others. Development is a collective choice no matter how much American ideology wants to obfuscate that.
      - pdonis 6y ago
        > I don't want to subsidize other people's suburban and rural decadence. You don't get to decide what counts as "decadence". Nor are cities subsidizing suburban and rural areas; in most cases it's the other way around, it's the cities that continually get themselves into financial trouble and have to be bailed out, and the suburban and rural areas that are fiscally responsible. > It's not a personal choice that doesn't effect others Neither is your personal choice to live in densely populated cities. > Development is a collective choice And when there are significant sub-populations with widely different preferences, the right collective choice is to separate the sub-populations so each can have their own areas where they can implement their preferences, not for one sub-population to force its preferences on everyone else.

andrewstuart 6y ago

There's enough houses. There just shouldn't be people owning more than 2.

yardstick 6y ago
I agree with the sentiment but disagree with the 2 house limit. For example a family holiday house should be ok. I would put the limit around 10 homes, and if any are rentals then any capital gains should be taxed more harshly unless sold to someone who will owner occupy for at least say 3 years. Yes I’m sure there are loopholes in what I’m describing but it’s the general concept I’m trying to show.
adrianN 6y ago
I'm sure that there are not enough houses in central Tokyo for everyone who wants to live in central Tokyo.
whatshisface 6y ago
Without landlords, how would I be able to rent a house? Would I have to get loans whenever I moved, even if temporarily? All that would do is replace a mix of landlords and bankers with bankers. Renting money to buy something that you later sell to return the money is the same as renting the thing directly, except you're dealing with a huge bank instead of a midsize management company / wealthy owner-manager.
- jjav 6y ago
  > Renting money to buy something that you later sell to return the money is the same as renting the thing directly Largely true, except that by renting it directly you're also paying the additional profit margin for the middleman who took out the mortgage (rented the money) for you to be able to rent it directly.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
epistasis 6y ago
That's ridiculous, limiting people to owning one house wouldn't be nearly enough homes. But, let's say that were the case, somehow. Why is your solution to stop people from owning more homes, rather than letting more homes be built? Why choose austerity over abundance? There's a clear reason to choose austerity: it always, literally always, privileges existing power over those with less. However, most people who want to entrench existing power and oppress those with less don't admit it openly, instead they couch this undesirable anti-egalitarianism in obscure arguments to hide their true motives. This is the stage we are at in California. People who have gained enormous real estate wealth through luck, which has let them exploit an entire class of extremely productive workers, know they can not create abundance on their own, but must instead farm workers like cattle. So they embrace this austerity couched in other terms. Limiting people from owning more than one home will not actually produce enough for everyone that wants to live in highly desirable areas. But forwarding unworkable proposals will continue to create luxury goods (housing near food jobs) as luxury, rather than opening them up to more people.
- chadcmulligan 6y ago
  >Why choose austerity over abundance? Indeed, abundance is the way to go, then why bother investing? An anecdote - There was an oversupply of apartments in my city a few years ago, prices were dropping - oh no! So the response? Developers stopped building, there are foundations sitting around in a number of places that were planned to be built, but apartment development has basically stopped in the city. In a few years there'll be a shortage and no doubt the developers will start up again. The incentives are all screwed up, if they kept building then prices would drop, but the profit isn't there at the moment so they sit idle.
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    Isn't that the system working? If a house costs more to build than anyone would pay for it, wouldn't it would be a bad idea to build it?
    - chadcmulligan 6y ago
mjevans 6y ago
You should have to live in a house for at least 35% of the year to not pay EXTREME taxes on it. Notably that's 70% among two houses and 30% in slack that can go where-ever. However we also still need __way__ more housing to get out of the 2 generation debt in many places and 3-5 in E.G. major Californian cities.
- jjav 6y ago
  > You should have to live in a house for at least 35% of the year to not pay EXTREME taxes on it. This would incentivize ownership since renting out would be prohibitive. But for anyone who'd like to rent, those extreme taxes will just be passed on to them.

pdonis 6y ago

> there's not enough houses in the places people want houses I think a possible solution to a lot of that problem is one that, by a tragic irony, we have COVID-19 to thank for making mainstream: remote work. If people's housing locations weren't tightly coupled to their job locations, there would be a lot more freedom for people to choose a place to live and places to live would be forced to compete on a more level playing field.

Ericson2314 6y ago
Unless you want to video-only the rest of your life too, remote work isn't good enough. We need to decrease distances for all purposes of transportation period for environmental, social, and economic reasons. Dense development with public transportation does for society what increasing the component density and shortening wire length does for integrate circuits. There is no substitute.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > We need to decrease distances for all purposes of transportation period for environmental, social, and economic reasons. "We" have all kinds of different needs and desires. Not everyone wants to live in a densely populated area. In any case, uncoupling the location of your home from the location of your job should improve your ability to live closer to the people and places you want to be close to in your personal life. That would go for everyone, those who want to live in densely populated areas and those who don't.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    I don't want to subsidize other people's suburban and rural decadence. It's not a personal choice that doesn't effect others. Development is a collective choice no matter how much American ideology wants to obfuscate that.
    - pdonis 6y ago
      > I don't want to subsidize other people's suburban and rural decadence. You don't get to decide what counts as "decadence". Nor are cities subsidizing suburban and rural areas; in most cases it's the other way around, it's the cities that continually get themselves into financial trouble and have to be bailed out, and the suburban and rural areas that are fiscally responsible. > It's not a personal choice that doesn't effect others Neither is your personal choice to live in densely populated cities. > Development is a collective choice And when there are significant sub-populations with widely different preferences, the right collective choice is to separate the sub-populations so each can have their own areas where they can implement their preferences, not for one sub-population to force its preferences on everyone else.