4 ms·

Airbnb is what you get after 10+ years of low interest rates. You also get a template of behaviors seen amongst SF rental landlords: the professional landlords

Airbnb is what you get after 10+ years of low interest rates. You also get a template of behaviors seen amongst SF rental landlords: the professional landlords run a tightship and are reasonable to deal with, the landlords that inherited a singlefamily home or want to rent out their own place tend to be a neurotic bunch, just like airbnb hosts vs hotel managers.

dpflan 4y ago
Low Interest Rates --> capitalism applied to every possible market while in search of returns?
- CalRobert 4y ago
  Low interest rates combined with strict regulatory regimes that prevent capitalists from building more housing in response to price signals while also making it unappealing to rent to permanent tenants?
- dougSF70 4y ago
  Turns people in to rent seekers,
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- Spooky23 4y ago
  That and too much cheap capital. It was trivial to get money, which encourages businesses that shouldn’t exist.
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  I almost wonder if a "proper" capitalism should never see ultra low interest rates for greater than 1-2 years. It destroys consumer saving and savings habits, it encourages rapacious leverage acquisition behavior (which we're seeing in the fucking consumer housing market how nuts is that). The fed should have some wheel that could introduce random 4% swings every six months that would hopefully disrupt the private equity leveraged buyout schemes, but who am I kidding, it would just lead to some ridiculous speculation/betting on what the next random modifier to the base interest rate is. Perhaps, rather than offering good interest rates to large companies and hedge funds / private equity, there should be special low interest rates for single house owners, but businesses actually have to pay higher interest rates for commercial ventures. Of course someone would figure out a scheme to get individuals to overprovision their mortgages and then back-assemble the excess debt with kickbacks to route it to other uses. There has to be some way to have low interest rates to help out the "little guys" but make big biz and stock market leverage/margin buying pay a higher interest rate. If you have a high interest rate, it just benefits banks and the rich, who are the only people that have "real money", in case anyone actually does have "real money".
  - dougSF70 4y ago
    I kinda agree, low interest rates get countries into trouble that only a panademic can reset.
  - friendzis 4y ago
    > Of course someone would figure out a scheme to get individuals to overprovision their mortgages and then back-assemble the excess debt with kickbacks to route it to other uses. Legally mandated LtV < 1 based on `min(sale, appraisal)` would pretty much hinder such schemes. You can always sell your house to your child/parent and get equity back into the family anyway, but in general this would mean mortgage (real estate leveraged financing) could only be used to finance the sale.
- sfe22 4y ago
  Government imposed low interest rates are the opposite of free market capitalism.
  - throwaway049 4y ago
    Commercial lenders are free to lend at higher rates. What do you mean by 'government imposed'?
    - sfe22 4y ago
      The fed sets interest rates, not the free market.
- flashfaffe2 4y ago
  Low Interest-->Crony capitalism in a real free market loss would have occurred by the accountable people.
tschwimmer 4y ago
You have clearly never lived in a corporate owned apartment. Hidden fees, odd lease lengths that are optimized for occupancy, huge rent hikes every year and most annoying is that it's impossible to get them to do maintenance. Weeks wait for critical issues, half assed repairs or even "technician could not locate issue/access apartment."
- dougSF70 4y ago
  Fortunately I have not, it sounds like a bad experience. Unfortunately in SF post 1981 (??) apartments are not covered by rent control. I think the optimum landlord is one who owns 2-4 unit buildings that were built before 1980. My new landlord is currently trying to raise our rent by 66%. People can be greedy *&nts sometimes.
- truncate 4y ago
  It's anecdotal, but my experience with corporate owned apartments over past 6 years in Bay Area, when it comes to maintenance/rent hike has been positive. I think increment has been around 2% usually. Lease length are 11-15 month usually. And deposit is usually lower than most independent listings I see on craigslist. They can however at times be slow, and frustrating, for some random things you'd need. But I can deal with it. In contrast, my girlfriend who lived in a shared apartment with independent landlord, wouldn't fix heat, and then did a cheap replacement, which broke in few months, and refused again. And now she's out of the apartment, not giving back the amount he owes to her. I'm not sure if there any data to backup, but at-least in city, it seems like independent landlords are possibly worse.

dpflan 4y ago

Low Interest Rates --> capitalism applied to every possible market while in search of returns?

CalRobert 4y ago
Low interest rates combined with strict regulatory regimes that prevent capitalists from building more housing in response to price signals while also making it unappealing to rent to permanent tenants?
dougSF70 4y ago
Turns people in to rent seekers,
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Spooky23 4y ago
That and too much cheap capital. It was trivial to get money, which encourages businesses that shouldn’t exist.
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
I almost wonder if a "proper" capitalism should never see ultra low interest rates for greater than 1-2 years. It destroys consumer saving and savings habits, it encourages rapacious leverage acquisition behavior (which we're seeing in the fucking consumer housing market how nuts is that). The fed should have some wheel that could introduce random 4% swings every six months that would hopefully disrupt the private equity leveraged buyout schemes, but who am I kidding, it would just lead to some ridiculous speculation/betting on what the next random modifier to the base interest rate is. Perhaps, rather than offering good interest rates to large companies and hedge funds / private equity, there should be special low interest rates for single house owners, but businesses actually have to pay higher interest rates for commercial ventures. Of course someone would figure out a scheme to get individuals to overprovision their mortgages and then back-assemble the excess debt with kickbacks to route it to other uses. There has to be some way to have low interest rates to help out the "little guys" but make big biz and stock market leverage/margin buying pay a higher interest rate. If you have a high interest rate, it just benefits banks and the rich, who are the only people that have "real money", in case anyone actually does have "real money".
- dougSF70 4y ago
  I kinda agree, low interest rates get countries into trouble that only a panademic can reset.
- friendzis 4y ago
  > Of course someone would figure out a scheme to get individuals to overprovision their mortgages and then back-assemble the excess debt with kickbacks to route it to other uses. Legally mandated LtV < 1 based on `min(sale, appraisal)` would pretty much hinder such schemes. You can always sell your house to your child/parent and get equity back into the family anyway, but in general this would mean mortgage (real estate leveraged financing) could only be used to finance the sale.
sfe22 4y ago
Government imposed low interest rates are the opposite of free market capitalism.
- throwaway049 4y ago
  Commercial lenders are free to lend at higher rates. What do you mean by 'government imposed'?
  - sfe22 4y ago
    The fed sets interest rates, not the free market.
flashfaffe2 4y ago
Low Interest-->Crony capitalism in a real free market loss would have occurred by the accountable people.

tschwimmer 4y ago

You have clearly never lived in a corporate owned apartment. Hidden fees, odd lease lengths that are optimized for occupancy, huge rent hikes every year and most annoying is that it's impossible to get them to do maintenance. Weeks wait for critical issues, half assed repairs or even "technician could not locate issue/access apartment."

dougSF70 4y ago
Fortunately I have not, it sounds like a bad experience. Unfortunately in SF post 1981 (??) apartments are not covered by rent control. I think the optimum landlord is one who owns 2-4 unit buildings that were built before 1980. My new landlord is currently trying to raise our rent by 66%. People can be greedy *&nts sometimes.
truncate 4y ago
It's anecdotal, but my experience with corporate owned apartments over past 6 years in Bay Area, when it comes to maintenance/rent hike has been positive. I think increment has been around 2% usually. Lease length are 11-15 month usually. And deposit is usually lower than most independent listings I see on craigslist. They can however at times be slow, and frustrating, for some random things you'd need. But I can deal with it. In contrast, my girlfriend who lived in a shared apartment with independent landlord, wouldn't fix heat, and then did a cheap replacement, which broke in few months, and refused again. And now she's out of the apartment, not giving back the amount he owes to her. I'm not sure if there any data to backup, but at-least in city, it seems like independent landlords are possibly worse.