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So I think folks overlook just how wealthy certain investors are when they propose the fix is to just build new properties. Those will also get snapped up by in

So I think folks overlook just how wealthy certain investors are when they propose the fix is to just build new properties. Those will also get snapped up by investors. To fix the problem, investing in housing needs to be either banned or made very unattractive. You only need one house to live in.

datacruncher01 4y ago
I agree with you, that's a whole other problem. But housing like many goods is still subject to supply and demand. The investors buy the properties because they are actually good investments in situations where housing is in demand, and that's true in all the major cities where we're not building enough housing and appropriately sized housing. If we increase the supply, if we make smaller housing units so there are also affordable units for poorer renters. The investors will move on to more lucrative investments. They can only extract so much wealth from housing before people move for alternatives.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Everybody has a place to live. Housing isn't scarce. When housing is scarce, people are homeless or living in extremely tiny spaces. They are not. The problem is that people wouldn't be able to afford to own the places where they live. Housing is only "scarce" in desirable places, and that's simply tautological. The sum of unfulfilled desires is the contrapositive of scarcity. Housing is a market in which a very tiny percentage of goods are up for sale at any particular time, and the projected prices of those goods are heavily shared among a huge network of people who profit when the prices are high. The owners of those goods are often heavily leveraged, and can't afford to lower the price significantly, and the transaction and mortgage costs push them to raise the price to cover those costs at the next place they buy. > They can only extract so much wealth from housing before people move for alternatives. No such alternative, which is why the market is as lucrative to exploit as health care. Finding an "alternative" to health care is just to find another type of health care, and if you find an alternative to being housed, you've just found a new kind of house.
  - bobkazamakis 4y ago
    Ah yes, everyone without a home is simply a lazy poor who should just move to Mississipi where the land is cheap and the jobs are abundant.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      > everyone without a home I guarantee you're not talking about homeless people here, but people who live in a home that they are renting, reasonably near the place they work. edit: also, somehow these so-called poors are always wealthy programmers trying to buy million-dollar houses.
    - ROTMetro 4y ago
      I left California because I couldn't afford to own a home there.
      - namlem 4y ago
        Which is why California needs to fix the policies that led to its housing shortage. There is no inherent reason for California to be so expensive, it is a deliberate policy choice driven by local governments.
        supertrope 4y ago
        Maintaining the character of a neighborhood as single family houses. Even as prices exceed $1,000,000.
        jjav 4y ago
        > Which is why California needs to fix the policies that led to its housing shortage. There is no inherent reason for California to be so expensive, it is a deliberate policy choice driven by local governments. There's a lot of truth in that, but it's also an oversimplification. There is plenty of cheap land in California, here, have a quarter acre lot for $15K: https://www.redfin.com/CA/California-City/Princeton-Ave-93505/home/22160714 https://www.redfin.com/CA/California-City/Princeton-Ave-9350... Of course it's cheap since nobody wants to live there. If everyone wants to live in San Francisco, it's going to be much more expensive. Building more helps but in the end there's only so much that can realistically be built in 50 square miles. Some people will always be left out so there will always be some unmet demand, so it'll never be dirt-cheap. So yes policy obstruction is a thing, but there are also inherent reasons why popular places will never be cheap.
pdonis 4y ago
> You only need one house to live in. Many people do not want to own a home, they would rather rent. Someone has to be the landlord for all those people, and to all those someones, the home is an investment. You can only get rid of homes as investments if you get rid of renting.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  This line of reasoning is flawed. The government can build housing so that people have places to rent, in a way that isn’t “an investment” in the profit-seeking sense. That’s what they do in Vienna and it seems to work great. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_011314.html https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_articl... And then in Singapore they have very high home ownership rates, so we could also be dramatically reducing the number of people who actually need to rent, reducing the need for private investment: https://charterforcompassion.org/shareable-community-ideas/public-housing-works-lessons-from-vienna-and-singapore https://charterforcompassion.org/shareable-community-ideas/p...
  - dionidium 4y ago
    I rented (by choice) for many years. I never once thought, "I wish the government were my landlord." The arrangement actually works pretty great just how it is. I was very happy to write that rent check every month and always felt like I got a good deal for my money, even when I lived in a very expensive market (NYC). In every case, I desired something that was very important to me and for which there's a lot of demand. I was happy, therefore, to pay for it.
    - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
      That the fact has not occurred to you personally does not mean such an arrangement in aggregate would not help solve the problem of housing as a profitable investment. Maybe you didn't think of this on your own accord, but I bet you WOULD have appreciated if the same unit was cheaper, and this would be the case if 50% of the housing in your market was public housing as is the case in Vienna, even if your unit was privately owned. Plus your single example of being satisfied with your landlord is not evidence that we should accept landlords across the board. My own landlord sucks at repairing things that need repair, and I find it very frustrating.
lifeplusplus 4y ago
Yes zero to low tax for primary residence. 10x tax for all secondary houses
colinmhayes 4y ago
If there's enough housing it doesn't matter who owns it. Unless units are being held vacant by landlords (they're not atm) housing prices will reach an equilibrium that represents the value they provide. Landlords can't just unilaterally raise prices without lowering supply levels.
pas 4y ago
Vacancy rates are low, investors don't just sit on the units.
- fezfight 4y ago
  They had to add a tax to empty homes in Vancouver to try and recover some of the units lost to investors just sitting on them.
  - pas 4y ago
    [citation needed] A tax was established, yes, but was it reasonable to do so (was it reasonable to expect that it will do much) and did it do anything? It seems the answers are no to both those questions. I think it's a good signaling tax though. (I'm 50-50 on the extra tax for foreign buyers. Ethically there shouldn't be any difference based on where one's passport is from, but practically of course there is.) Anyway, the real problem is constrained supply. Vancouver is still a fucking suburb compared to dense cities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evYOhpjMql0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evYOhpjMql0 https://www.statista.com/statistics/960174/vacancy-rates-residential-real-estate-vancouver-canada/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/960174/vacancy-rates-res... https://www.cbre.nl/-/media/cbre/countrycanada/images/insights-blog/2022/vancouver-vacancy-rates/metro-vancouver-vacancy-chart.jpg https://www.cbre.nl/-/media/cbre/countrycanada/images/insigh... https://vancouversun.com/business/real-estate/three-years-in-has-b-c-s-speculation-and-vacancy-tax-made-a-difference https://vancouversun.com/business/real-estate/three-years-in...
ChrisLomont 4y ago
>Those will also get snapped up by investors. Investors buy around 10-20% (depending on quarter) of all new properties (and likely because they paid to build most of that share). That's a far cry from 100%.

datacruncher01 4y ago

I agree with you, that's a whole other problem. But housing like many goods is still subject to supply and demand. The investors buy the properties because they are actually good investments in situations where housing is in demand, and that's true in all the major cities where we're not building enough housing and appropriately sized housing. If we increase the supply, if we make smaller housing units so there are also affordable units for poorer renters. The investors will move on to more lucrative investments. They can only extract so much wealth from housing before people move for alternatives.

pessimizer 4y ago
Everybody has a place to live. Housing isn't scarce. When housing is scarce, people are homeless or living in extremely tiny spaces. They are not. The problem is that people wouldn't be able to afford to own the places where they live. Housing is only "scarce" in desirable places, and that's simply tautological. The sum of unfulfilled desires is the contrapositive of scarcity. Housing is a market in which a very tiny percentage of goods are up for sale at any particular time, and the projected prices of those goods are heavily shared among a huge network of people who profit when the prices are high. The owners of those goods are often heavily leveraged, and can't afford to lower the price significantly, and the transaction and mortgage costs push them to raise the price to cover those costs at the next place they buy. > They can only extract so much wealth from housing before people move for alternatives. No such alternative, which is why the market is as lucrative to exploit as health care. Finding an "alternative" to health care is just to find another type of health care, and if you find an alternative to being housed, you've just found a new kind of house.
- bobkazamakis 4y ago
  Ah yes, everyone without a home is simply a lazy poor who should just move to Mississipi where the land is cheap and the jobs are abundant.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    > everyone without a home I guarantee you're not talking about homeless people here, but people who live in a home that they are renting, reasonably near the place they work. edit: also, somehow these so-called poors are always wealthy programmers trying to buy million-dollar houses.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    I left California because I couldn't afford to own a home there.
    - namlem 4y ago
      Which is why California needs to fix the policies that led to its housing shortage. There is no inherent reason for California to be so expensive, it is a deliberate policy choice driven by local governments.
      - supertrope 4y ago
        Maintaining the character of a neighborhood as single family houses. Even as prices exceed $1,000,000.
      - jjav 4y ago
        > Which is why California needs to fix the policies that led to its housing shortage. There is no inherent reason for California to be so expensive, it is a deliberate policy choice driven by local governments. There's a lot of truth in that, but it's also an oversimplification. There is plenty of cheap land in California, here, have a quarter acre lot for $15K: https://www.redfin.com/CA/California-City/Princeton-Ave-93505/home/22160714 https://www.redfin.com/CA/California-City/Princeton-Ave-9350... Of course it's cheap since nobody wants to live there. If everyone wants to live in San Francisco, it's going to be much more expensive. Building more helps but in the end there's only so much that can realistically be built in 50 square miles. Some people will always be left out so there will always be some unmet demand, so it'll never be dirt-cheap. So yes policy obstruction is a thing, but there are also inherent reasons why popular places will never be cheap.

pdonis 4y ago

> You only need one house to live in. Many people do not want to own a home, they would rather rent. Someone has to be the landlord for all those people, and to all those someones, the home is an investment. You can only get rid of homes as investments if you get rid of renting.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
This line of reasoning is flawed. The government can build housing so that people have places to rent, in a way that isn’t “an investment” in the profit-seeking sense. That’s what they do in Vienna and it seems to work great. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_011314.html https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_articl... And then in Singapore they have very high home ownership rates, so we could also be dramatically reducing the number of people who actually need to rent, reducing the need for private investment: https://charterforcompassion.org/shareable-community-ideas/public-housing-works-lessons-from-vienna-and-singapore https://charterforcompassion.org/shareable-community-ideas/p...
- dionidium 4y ago
  I rented (by choice) for many years. I never once thought, "I wish the government were my landlord." The arrangement actually works pretty great just how it is. I was very happy to write that rent check every month and always felt like I got a good deal for my money, even when I lived in a very expensive market (NYC). In every case, I desired something that was very important to me and for which there's a lot of demand. I was happy, therefore, to pay for it.
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    That the fact has not occurred to you personally does not mean such an arrangement in aggregate would not help solve the problem of housing as a profitable investment. Maybe you didn't think of this on your own accord, but I bet you WOULD have appreciated if the same unit was cheaper, and this would be the case if 50% of the housing in your market was public housing as is the case in Vienna, even if your unit was privately owned. Plus your single example of being satisfied with your landlord is not evidence that we should accept landlords across the board. My own landlord sucks at repairing things that need repair, and I find it very frustrating.

lifeplusplus 4y ago

Yes zero to low tax for primary residence. 10x tax for all secondary houses

colinmhayes 4y ago

If there's enough housing it doesn't matter who owns it. Unless units are being held vacant by landlords (they're not atm) housing prices will reach an equilibrium that represents the value they provide. Landlords can't just unilaterally raise prices without lowering supply levels.

pas 4y ago

Vacancy rates are low, investors don't just sit on the units.

fezfight 4y ago
They had to add a tax to empty homes in Vancouver to try and recover some of the units lost to investors just sitting on them.
- pas 4y ago
  [citation needed] A tax was established, yes, but was it reasonable to do so (was it reasonable to expect that it will do much) and did it do anything? It seems the answers are no to both those questions. I think it's a good signaling tax though. (I'm 50-50 on the extra tax for foreign buyers. Ethically there shouldn't be any difference based on where one's passport is from, but practically of course there is.) Anyway, the real problem is constrained supply. Vancouver is still a fucking suburb compared to dense cities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evYOhpjMql0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evYOhpjMql0 https://www.statista.com/statistics/960174/vacancy-rates-residential-real-estate-vancouver-canada/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/960174/vacancy-rates-res... https://www.cbre.nl/-/media/cbre/countrycanada/images/insights-blog/2022/vancouver-vacancy-rates/metro-vancouver-vacancy-chart.jpg https://www.cbre.nl/-/media/cbre/countrycanada/images/insigh... https://vancouversun.com/business/real-estate/three-years-in-has-b-c-s-speculation-and-vacancy-tax-made-a-difference https://vancouversun.com/business/real-estate/three-years-in...

ChrisLomont 4y ago

>Those will also get snapped up by investors. Investors buy around 10-20% (depending on quarter) of all new properties (and likely because they paid to build most of that share). That's a far cry from 100%.