13 ms·
I currently live in a van because I can't afford rent or a home. The past few weeks at -10 degrees has been rough. So nice to see that corporations are buying t
by nerdchum 4y ago
I currently live in a van because I can't afford rent or a home. The past few weeks at -10 degrees has been rough. So nice to see that corporations are buying the existing homes and governments are restricting the amount of homes that can be built so the corporations shareholders will have a safe place to park their money while inflation is at 10%.
Boy this version of government and capitalism is awesome. Let's do drinking water next!
- myth_drannon 4y agoWater is owned by Coca-Cola already.
- glogla 4y agoIts Nestle, actually.[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9#Water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9#Water
- throwaway6734 4y agoInvestors are chasing easy profits. The fault lies with anti- development and NIMBY forces
- thorncorona 4y agoWould be nice if our so called corporate overlords grew some morals for a change.
- javajosh 4y agoSo, yes, housing is artificially scarce because of "anti-development and NIMBY forces". But there are other forces at work, particularly good old market forces. Corpos that compete with me when I am buying housing for my family can go suck a big fat dick.
- throwaway6734 4y ago>Corpos that compete with me when I am buying housing for my family can go suck a big fat dick. Why? If they're willing to overpay for properties it will benefit the current homeowner and will encourage new development
- Jotra7 4y ago[dead]
- DangitBobby 4y agoDoes it really benefit the current homeowner if the house they buy with the money also has inflated prices?
- Valakas_ 4y agoAnd with that every single house around also increases in price, because house prices are often dictated by what comparable houses recently sold for. As if they weren't already expensive enough. Besides, I don't think lack of profit prospects is currently a bottleneck for house building. There seems to be tons of regulations and control to what is allowable to be built. And from, there it doesn't matter that building a house would be 20% profit, if it's illegal to do so.
- Aunche 4y agoMarket forces exist whether you like it or not. If you design policy pretending that they don't, the market just spills over to a closed system of exchanging political favors, AKA corruption.
- ehnto 4y agoCorporate rental housing should not be allowed. Free markets are not fair enough to make sure everyone is properly housed, and once enough of it is owned they will price gouge. There are plenty of other places for companies to make money. In my opinion, housing is the final frontier for this. If housing is bought up by corporates and rented back, we are both feet into corporate dystopia. Land should be between citizens and the states that write the titles.
- throwaway6734 4y agoWhy allow anyone to own multiple houses then? Providing rental properties is a valuable service
- wildrhythms 4y ago> Providing rental properties is a valuable service Carpenters and bricklayers provide a service. Plumbers and electricians provide a service. Simply holding a deed is not a service.
- metadat 4y agoMaintaining the property is certainly a service.
- crote 4y agoLandlords virtually always hire maintenance companies to maintain the property - and you're paying for it via your rent. You could hire the same maintenance companies if you owned it yourself.
- the_gastropod 4y agoI have been a renter my entire adult life, and over the decades have plowed several hundred thousand dollars into the pockets of the various landlords I’ve rented from. The total maintenance done during all my tenancy is: 1. A broken seal on a washing machine was replaced 2. A leaky toilet was repaired 3. A broken kitchen drawer was replaced I don’t believe my case is particularly uncommon. In ~20 years of renting, ~$500k of rent paid, the total maintenance done on the units I’ve rented probably cost under $100. Toss in the most expensive paint and cleaning regimen after I’ve vacated, and let’s call it a cool $1,000. If the value landlords are providing is “maintaining properties”, their margins here are colossal.
- HWR_14 4y agoJPM decided it was more profitable to buy single family homes instead of apartment complexes. I'm not sure it's as simple as "more apartments = more money".
- rqtwteye 4y agoThat’s the natural progression of capitalism if you don’t take measures against wealth accumulating at the top. Owners need to find ever more places where their capital can earn money.
- bombolo 4y agoYou mean feudalism where the lord owns everything and everyone else is a serf
- pocketarc 4y agoThe difference is that you can be the lord by simply buying JP Morgan shares and enjoying the profits.
- synu 4y agoHow would you practically become a lord by buying public shares on a working class salary?
- feet 4y agoThat's the trick, you won't. But they want you to think you can
- Firmwarrior 4y agoYOU can do it, since you're here and presumably have a technical skill that can pay 2-5x the median income. That opens up the door to saving and investing your way to wealth MrMoneyMustache style I agree that most people can't, and we need to do something to ward off a populist uprising
- feet 4y agoWard off a populist uprising perhaps by actually fixing the system to work for everyone instead of the few with money?
- newaccount2021 4y ago[dead]
- moneywoes 4y agoSorry to hear that. If you provide your state there may be some resources we can find
- joshuanapoli 4y agoIn this case, JPMorgan’s partnership is building new homes, not buying up existing ones. So it should work to reduce the cost of housing.
- thinkingkong 4y agoAlmost everyone has taken an econ101 class but it will not reduce the cost of housing. At all. When large corporate interests control this many resources they keep the price pinned. Simultaneously the cost of building new property has gone up especially now that the materials and the demand for housing is collectively understood. Add in inflation. The price of housing will never be reduced.
- cscurmudgeon 4y agoYou have a contradiction, basic Econ tells us it will reduce prices. https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Yes-the-laws-of-supply-and-demand-still-apply-in-15817844.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Yes-th... https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/040215/how-does-law-supply-and-demand-affect-housing-market.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/040215/how-does-law... Edit: And downvoted, follow the Science^TM except Economics, in that case follow randos
- huitzitziltzin 4y agoSince I have taken Econ 101 and taught it, it’s worth pointing out that literally no one thinks this is how housing markets work. You can draw a set of supply and demand curves which keep prices the same under a supply increase, but not bc “large corporate interests keep prices pinned.” More important is that that special case is not relevant to housing markets. There is also relevant empirical work on this issue. Increase supply and prices will fall. I’d bet you a billion dollars on that outcome.
- tedd4u 4y agoNot an expert here but one thing I've noticed is that large / corporate landlords prefer to let a property sit empty rather than reduce the rent as supply/demand theory would indicate. My understanding is that this is because there are special tax benefits like you can write off the loss to lower your tax burden. How does this factor in?
- grapheneta 4y ago> Let's do drinking water next! Come to England, we've already done that! One of only two countries in the world to completely privatise its water, the other being Chile.
- nerdchum 4y ago"By 2020 the price of water had risen by 40% in real terms since privatisation and almost a quarter of households had difficulty paying their water bills." https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj.o2076 https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj.o2076 Just wow. Also, English water is 70% foreign owned apparently. That sounds unsettling. Also, didn't Liz Truss's cabinet not have a single English man on it recently? Out of 22 spots not one English male. Also isn't London property like 40% foreign owned? Interesting times we live in.
- iso1631 4y agoThey annoying thing is that it's not even privitsed in a sensible way. A reservoir company could pay a yearly rent to the taxpayer for the amount of water it could capture, and the space the resoviors use. They could then charge for water on demand per litre to a company that distributes that water, then that company would charge per litre to the consumer Having to buy 1000l of water for £1 and sell it for £1.20 gives a major investment to not throw the stock away through leaks. Other company have incentives to do things like building more storage (to buy supply when it's cheap and sell when it's not), and the consumer gets to choose which supplier to use. Same with sewage. The main problem is the last mile would have to remain in public ownership as you couldn't have multiple companies providing pipes to each premises, and that I believe is where most of the leaks go
- nerdchum 4y agoInternet companies are a good example of how difficult it is to bring a utility to a giant metro area. I'm not sure if that's because of government barriers or because of actual physical logistics. Even Google Fiber seems to have given up. But then you look at places where internet is managed by the government like Fort Collins and you have extremely fast, extremely cheap community internet. But then again, that's a pretty small homogenous rural community. I'm not too familiar with the ins and outs of utility distribution just sporadic data points so I can't hope to get close to the truth about this. It does seem like if you have the government and industry working together on something, it's the worst of all worlds rather than just one or the other.
- grugagag 4y agoLate stage capitalism!! This is turning into a tehcnofeudalism fast. Surveillance is getting ready, facial recognition check, no location privacy check, all money in fewer hands check. It will be ugly, no pitchforks will work this time
- matheusmoreira 4y agoNo idea why you're being downvoted. Neotechnofeudalism is one of the most interesting concepts I've come across on this site and it's a very realistic vision of the future we're heading towards.
- prepend 4y agoI think futarchy is more likely than neotechnofeudalism. More Star Trek, less Star Wars.
- CyberDildonics 4y agoI don't know what "neotechnofeudalism" is, but if a bank built a single building 60 floors high with 8 condos on each floor and the condos averaged about 2 million USD each, would that then be neotechnofeudalism ?
- HarryHirsch 4y agoNo idea about that, but wasn't it Blackrock that is buying up half of Cleveland?
- pibechorro 4y agoThis isn't capitalism.
- krapp 4y agoYes it is, don't be naive.
- MerelyMortal 4y agoHN is full of some very intelligent people, but it's scary to see that even most of them are buying into the changing of the definition of "capitalism".
- rabite 4y agoI have some empty apartments in Kharkiv, Ukraine if you want to get in one. I'll let you stay for free until you get a few months revenue-positive. There's lots of opportunity due to the ongoing conflict. All sorts of moneyed interests are entering the region.
- fundad 4y agoHousing should be nationalized
- lazyeye 4y agoWhatever the situation the arguments/analysis/incentives/outcomes always seem to align with the interests of the mega-wealthy. Recently, for example, the arguments around off-shoring jobs have changed completely due to the supply-chain crisis and its impact being greater than situation previously, when the only consequence had been that the people that dont matter lost their jobs.
- dangus 4y agoI'm sorry for your situation. Did you read the article? This is not about buying existing homes. This is a joint venture to build new build-to-rent housing developments. > The build-to-rent trend initially emerged during the Great Recession as a way for homebuilders to continue adding supply at a time when consumers were not buying homes. It refers to a process where developers construct an entire community of typically detached single-family homes that are later rented out by an operating partner. In my opinion, this strategy and investment makes sense to large institutions like JPMorgan because interest rates are high while property values remain high. Building new rental housing increases overall supply, which is something that should, at least in theory, help people like you.