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I wish the government would do more to control this terrible situation. If you can't afford a home with a 40 hour job, something is sick in this country. Even a

I wish the government would do more to control this terrible situation. If you can't afford a home with a 40 hour job, something is sick in this country. Even an apartment is beyond reach. Blackrock and Vanguard are blights on this planet.

mensetmanusman 3y ago
The only thing America could do is attempt to fund the growth of new cities are invest majorly in second tier cities to support competition.
dehrmann 3y ago
> Blackrock and Vanguard are blights on this planet. Corporate landlords weren't the ones saying "you can't build here because it ruins the neighborhood's 'character.'"
- klabb3 3y ago
  Both can be true. You can have cancer and bubonic plague at the same time.
- sublinear 3y ago
  So much this. It's illegal to build higher density housing in so many residential zones.
- HarryHirsch 3y ago
  Housing as an investment vehicle is government policy - if the oligarchy insisted on a different policy it would be implemented.
  - dehrmann 3y ago
    There might be some corporate actors in favor of this, but housing as an investment is wildly popular among most Americans. I wouldn't be surprised if most renters support it because they see it as a vehicle to wealth rather than what prices them out of the market.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  Yep, as usual, people keep whining about "the corporations!" and "the billionaires!" and blaming them for America's problems. The problem isn't them so much, it's the regular middle-class voter. The NIMBYs aren't billionaires or big corporations, though some corporations (not most) have been taking advantage of the situation. The problem is that regular, everyday Americans are greedy assholes, and expect (no, demand!) to make a huge profit after buying a house and owning it for a couple of years, and will do whatever they can to ensure this, no matter how it hurts the rest of society.
  - piva00 3y ago
    Housing affordability is not an American issue though, it's happening in any major developed city across the globe. There is something else to it that isn't purely zoning laws, building codes or whatever. My personal opinion is that it's the culmination of policies incentivising housing as an investment vehicle, I know plenty of people who bought a first house when interest rates were low (or negative like here in Sweden), taking a loan as large as possible, which in turn pushed prices up, with the assumption that house prices always grow in value. When they grow in value the plan is to sell the first house, use the gains as a down payment springboard for their next loan on a larger house, rinse and repeat until you've built wealth. Cheap loans inflated the price of housing very fast, building new housing got anchored on that price point, and now loans are not that cheap and developers don't want to build more if prices are crashing. I have no idea how to break this cycle without a crash/bubble popping. If a government intervenes to create cheap housing (such as Sweden's Miljonprogrammet in the 60s-70s [0]) it will crash prices. It's a massive political issue because no one who has bought on inflated prices want to see their assets devalue, no politicians would survive in their career by implementing policies that would crash house prices. Corporate landlords are just another facet of this imbalance, they can play around with their stock of vacant homes to keep inflated prices (something that a private landlord with a few units on mortgage really can't afford to do for long), they have money to scoop up houses selling below their target price, etc. It's happening everywhere I see, everywhere where my friends and family live at, in multiple continents... There's something broken, and the correction is going to be very painful. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Programme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Programme
nancyhn 3y ago
Completely agree about Blackrock and Vanguard. But didn't the government create this situation by making it hard to build, thus keeping supply down? While at the same time near 0 interest rates to boost demand. While at the same time inflating the supply of money.
- hnburnsy 3y ago
  What do you agree with on Vanguard, what are they doing?
- midoridensha 3y ago
  "The government" isn't to blame for making it hard to build; that's the fault of countless local governments run by a bunch of NIMBYs. The national government has nothing to do with it, and the US is set up to give way too much power to state and local governments, so the federal government is mostly powerless to improve the situation.
throwawaysleep 3y ago
> If you can't afford a home with a 40 hour job, something is sick in this country. I don't think this has ever really been true with any inclusive definition (white men used to, but nobody else). I would be curious where in the world that does not have a declining population that it is true. This article suggests that there has been a small decline in home buying age, but it is not a big one. https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/21/gen-z-ahead-of-millennials-and-their-parents-in-owning-their-own-homes/?sh=109c170a7d0e https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/21/ge...
rcpt 3y ago
1031 exchange Capital gains exemption Mortgage interest deduction 30 year fixed rate mortgages Depreciation deduction Opportunity zones The list seems to go on forever. The government uses tax cuts to juice real estate investment at everyone else's expense.
- dehrmann 3y ago
  Don't some of these benefit individuals more than companies? Loans aren't as subsidized as they are for individuals.
- mostlyreadertom 3y ago
  If all these goes away, would there be more supplies of housing or less? Does the person who take advantage of all these more likely to leave a housing unit vacant or make it available for other to rent?
hnburnsy 3y ago
What is the recent hit on Vanguard I have seen going around? Aren't they mostly investing in indexs which would necessitate blindly buying stock in companies and of course they do it on a massive scale due to their size? Is Vanguard in some way encouraging companies to do evil things?
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  > Is Vanguard in some way encouraging companies to do evil things? I wouldn't be surprised. They do wield a lot of corporate voting power on behalf of their index investors.
- zerbinxx 3y ago
  It has to do with their investment in RE/RBMS as an asset class, outside of their usual purview of asset management in traditional securities (though Blackrock is much more known/hated/publicized for it)
  - hnburnsy 3y ago
    Thx still not understanding. Some Google Fu is telling me people aren't happy with Vanguard because they invest in fossil fuel industry and they don't vote enough for social based shareholder resolutions. Sorry but that is how passive investing works.
nomel 3y ago
> If you can't afford a home with a 40 hour job I think this has always been the difference between a "job" and a "career". My first full time job was making pizzas. I worked 40 hours a week, dropping sauce and toppings onto squished bread. Nobody would have been able to afford a pizza if I would have been able to afford a home, in my state.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mapt 3y ago
  Have you actually examined that math? At say, 15 pizzas per person per hour, increasing your wages to $15/hour above where it was before (netting you $2500/mo for housing on top of previous wages before considering taxes/assistance) would add $1 to each pizza. There are countries that have decent access to housing for the working class which aren't somehow impossible to dine in.
  - jabbany 3y ago
    I'm assuming OP means a pizza restaurant not a factory? Not a restaurant owner but I'm curious how a pizza place consistently sells 15 pizzas/hour @ 8 hours a day... let alone more More likely what's going to happen is you have "bursty" rush times where you need more people to scale up and dead times where you have minimal sales?
    - mapt 3y ago
      Pizza places are the factories of foodservice; Competitive, assembly line operations, feed a lot of people every night from a shoebox form factor with little or no seating, very low margin by comparison to other foodservice sectors. The cheese is most of the cost of your slice, and you'll have a hard time beating these prices at home. https://thinktank.pmq.com/t/how-many-pizzas-per-labour-hour/17897/14 https://thinktank.pmq.com/t/how-many-pizzas-per-labour-hour/... "With 2 Edge60 ovens and the right 4 people in the kitchen our best production has been 120 pizzas per hour." "On my best night with 4 people putting them in and 2 taking them out I can do 60 an hour. Granted, we have 4 different sauces and some of our toppings get put on after they come out of the oven, but I’m certain we can improve that number. What more can you tell us about your set up?" "We can get about 250 pizzas per hour done in a triple stack. It takes about 12 Insiders to make this happen. Drivers will also help out while they are waiting for deliveries." "We can get 120 large (16 in) pies per hr using 4 marsal and sons deck ovens. Each oven can hold 6 16 inch pies. We sell smaller sizes too, so we can do a little bit more than 120 including those. ... We do that with 4 people (2 makers, 1 tender, 1 cutter)."
davidw 3y ago
Big investors are not helping the housing market. But after years of telling people that 'housing is a great investment' and enacting all kinds of policies to jack up prices... are we surprised they piled in? They're kind of scapegoats though: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/housing-crisis-hedge-funds-private-equity-scapegoat/672839/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/housing-cr... They even come right out and say this stuff in their SEC filings, that if markets stop being supply constrained it'll negatively impact their investments.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

The only thing America could do is attempt to fund the growth of new cities are invest majorly in second tier cities to support competition.

dehrmann 3y ago

> Blackrock and Vanguard are blights on this planet. Corporate landlords weren't the ones saying "you can't build here because it ruins the neighborhood's 'character.'"

klabb3 3y ago
Both can be true. You can have cancer and bubonic plague at the same time.
sublinear 3y ago
So much this. It's illegal to build higher density housing in so many residential zones.
HarryHirsch 3y ago
Housing as an investment vehicle is government policy - if the oligarchy insisted on a different policy it would be implemented.
- dehrmann 3y ago
  There might be some corporate actors in favor of this, but housing as an investment is wildly popular among most Americans. I wouldn't be surprised if most renters support it because they see it as a vehicle to wealth rather than what prices them out of the market.
midoridensha 3y ago
Yep, as usual, people keep whining about "the corporations!" and "the billionaires!" and blaming them for America's problems. The problem isn't them so much, it's the regular middle-class voter. The NIMBYs aren't billionaires or big corporations, though some corporations (not most) have been taking advantage of the situation. The problem is that regular, everyday Americans are greedy assholes, and expect (no, demand!) to make a huge profit after buying a house and owning it for a couple of years, and will do whatever they can to ensure this, no matter how it hurts the rest of society.
- piva00 3y ago
  Housing affordability is not an American issue though, it's happening in any major developed city across the globe. There is something else to it that isn't purely zoning laws, building codes or whatever. My personal opinion is that it's the culmination of policies incentivising housing as an investment vehicle, I know plenty of people who bought a first house when interest rates were low (or negative like here in Sweden), taking a loan as large as possible, which in turn pushed prices up, with the assumption that house prices always grow in value. When they grow in value the plan is to sell the first house, use the gains as a down payment springboard for their next loan on a larger house, rinse and repeat until you've built wealth. Cheap loans inflated the price of housing very fast, building new housing got anchored on that price point, and now loans are not that cheap and developers don't want to build more if prices are crashing. I have no idea how to break this cycle without a crash/bubble popping. If a government intervenes to create cheap housing (such as Sweden's Miljonprogrammet in the 60s-70s [0]) it will crash prices. It's a massive political issue because no one who has bought on inflated prices want to see their assets devalue, no politicians would survive in their career by implementing policies that would crash house prices. Corporate landlords are just another facet of this imbalance, they can play around with their stock of vacant homes to keep inflated prices (something that a private landlord with a few units on mortgage really can't afford to do for long), they have money to scoop up houses selling below their target price, etc. It's happening everywhere I see, everywhere where my friends and family live at, in multiple continents... There's something broken, and the correction is going to be very painful. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Programme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Programme

nancyhn 3y ago

Completely agree about Blackrock and Vanguard. But didn't the government create this situation by making it hard to build, thus keeping supply down? While at the same time near 0 interest rates to boost demand. While at the same time inflating the supply of money.

hnburnsy 3y ago
What do you agree with on Vanguard, what are they doing?
midoridensha 3y ago
"The government" isn't to blame for making it hard to build; that's the fault of countless local governments run by a bunch of NIMBYs. The national government has nothing to do with it, and the US is set up to give way too much power to state and local governments, so the federal government is mostly powerless to improve the situation.

throwawaysleep 3y ago

> If you can't afford a home with a 40 hour job, something is sick in this country. I don't think this has ever really been true with any inclusive definition (white men used to, but nobody else). I would be curious where in the world that does not have a declining population that it is true. This article suggests that there has been a small decline in home buying age, but it is not a big one. https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/21/gen-z-ahead-of-millennials-and-their-parents-in-owning-their-own-homes/?sh=109c170a7d0e https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/21/ge...

rcpt 3y ago

1031 exchange Capital gains exemption Mortgage interest deduction 30 year fixed rate mortgages Depreciation deduction Opportunity zones The list seems to go on forever. The government uses tax cuts to juice real estate investment at everyone else's expense.

dehrmann 3y ago
Don't some of these benefit individuals more than companies? Loans aren't as subsidized as they are for individuals.
mostlyreadertom 3y ago
If all these goes away, would there be more supplies of housing or less? Does the person who take advantage of all these more likely to leave a housing unit vacant or make it available for other to rent?

hnburnsy 3y ago

What is the recent hit on Vanguard I have seen going around? Aren't they mostly investing in indexs which would necessitate blindly buying stock in companies and of course they do it on a massive scale due to their size? Is Vanguard in some way encouraging companies to do evil things?

mitthrowaway2 3y ago
> Is Vanguard in some way encouraging companies to do evil things? I wouldn't be surprised. They do wield a lot of corporate voting power on behalf of their index investors.
zerbinxx 3y ago
It has to do with their investment in RE/RBMS as an asset class, outside of their usual purview of asset management in traditional securities (though Blackrock is much more known/hated/publicized for it)
- hnburnsy 3y ago
  Thx still not understanding. Some Google Fu is telling me people aren't happy with Vanguard because they invest in fossil fuel industry and they don't vote enough for social based shareholder resolutions. Sorry but that is how passive investing works.

nomel 3y ago

> If you can't afford a home with a 40 hour job I think this has always been the difference between a "job" and a "career". My first full time job was making pizzas. I worked 40 hours a week, dropping sauce and toppings onto squished bread. Nobody would have been able to afford a pizza if I would have been able to afford a home, in my state.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mapt 3y ago
Have you actually examined that math? At say, 15 pizzas per person per hour, increasing your wages to $15/hour above where it was before (netting you $2500/mo for housing on top of previous wages before considering taxes/assistance) would add $1 to each pizza. There are countries that have decent access to housing for the working class which aren't somehow impossible to dine in.
- jabbany 3y ago
  I'm assuming OP means a pizza restaurant not a factory? Not a restaurant owner but I'm curious how a pizza place consistently sells 15 pizzas/hour @ 8 hours a day... let alone more More likely what's going to happen is you have "bursty" rush times where you need more people to scale up and dead times where you have minimal sales?
  - mapt 3y ago
    Pizza places are the factories of foodservice; Competitive, assembly line operations, feed a lot of people every night from a shoebox form factor with little or no seating, very low margin by comparison to other foodservice sectors. The cheese is most of the cost of your slice, and you'll have a hard time beating these prices at home. https://thinktank.pmq.com/t/how-many-pizzas-per-labour-hour/17897/14 https://thinktank.pmq.com/t/how-many-pizzas-per-labour-hour/... "With 2 Edge60 ovens and the right 4 people in the kitchen our best production has been 120 pizzas per hour." "On my best night with 4 people putting them in and 2 taking them out I can do 60 an hour. Granted, we have 4 different sauces and some of our toppings get put on after they come out of the oven, but I’m certain we can improve that number. What more can you tell us about your set up?" "We can get about 250 pizzas per hour done in a triple stack. It takes about 12 Insiders to make this happen. Drivers will also help out while they are waiting for deliveries." "We can get 120 large (16 in) pies per hr using 4 marsal and sons deck ovens. Each oven can hold 6 16 inch pies. We sell smaller sizes too, so we can do a little bit more than 120 including those. ... We do that with 4 people (2 makers, 1 tender, 1 cutter)."

davidw 3y ago

Big investors are not helping the housing market. But after years of telling people that 'housing is a great investment' and enacting all kinds of policies to jack up prices... are we surprised they piled in? They're kind of scapegoats though: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/housing-crisis-hedge-funds-private-equity-scapegoat/672839/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/housing-cr... They even come right out and say this stuff in their SEC filings, that if markets stop being supply constrained it'll negatively impact their investments.