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Too Many Vacant Lots, Not Enough Housing: The U.S. Real-Estate Puzzle
- more_corn 3y agoHuh, it’s almost like some process is in place to prevent vacant lots turning into housing. Almost like people aren’t “permitted” to do so. Quite a puzzle.
- rogerkirkness 3y agoThe industry of writing thinkpieces about housing is bigger than the industry of building it.
- hgsgm 3y agoThat's what the thinkpieces are trying to tell us!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ecf 3y agoOh my lord is this really so hard to figure out? An entire generation built their retirements off of home values and will do literally anything in their power to vote down literally anything that threatens that home value. They’re going to drag down the next two or three generations with their idiocy.
- goodbyesf 3y agoExactly. The primary retirement asset of baby boomers is their house. The seconardy retirement asset is their 401k/investments. One of the reasons why housing prices and stock prices have to go up. It's a political imperative. As a corollary, population has to go up as well.
- hakfoo 3y agoI wish we could "de-dollarise" sectors of the economy. When it comes to money, we manage to miss the application problem. The classic "people don't want a drill, they want a hole." I don't want $n,000,000 net worth at age 60. I want to be assured I will have food, housing, and health care. Maybe what we need is a system where, instead of paying out Social Security in dollars, you get a ticket to a subsidized retirement community. Then you eliminate the moral hazard where if you let the stock or real estate markets fail, allowing defective assets to fail, Grandpa starves.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y agook but the other people who have enough to support themselves want $n,000,000 of net worth at age 60 and evaluate their literal worth as a person and success at life accordingly, and the people who are okay with just the safety net, I would guess, are mostly the ones who don't have the first option above
- nradov 3y agoYour "ticket" is just another form of fiat currency, a dollar by another name. And what happens if you retire only to find the retirement community is full and the government hasn't allocated sufficient subsidies to build more? Just because you have a ticket there's no guarantee you will receive the services you were promised.
- hakfoo 3y agoThe 'ticket' was poetic language. I'm pretty sure we have some snappy actuaries who can give us a pretty good estimate of how many 60-year-olds there will be in 2050. If done right, it might produce more services than just giving people bags of dollars and expecting them to fight over available retirement home space.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> I don't want $n,000,000 net worth at age 60. I want to be assured I will have food, housing, and health care. Maybe what we need is a system where, instead of paying out Social Security in dollars, you get a ticket to a subsidized retirement community. That... doesn't really help anything. > Then you eliminate the moral hazard where if you let the stock or real estate markets fail, allowing defective assets to fail, Grandpa starves. Except it doesn't. If Grandpa qualifies for social security (not everyone does) and if the benefits are sufficient to pay for necessities, ticket vs. dollars doesn't matter: stock or real estate collapse doesn’t causs starvation, because sociak security covers it. (In reality, its already a mix of dollars and tickets, since social security is dollars but medicare is more like a ticket.) OTOH, if as is generally the case now, the benefits are too low, distributing them via a subsidy for inadequate minimal support doesn’t relieve that problem any more than the dollars did.
- positr0n 3y ago> They’re going to drag down the next two or three generations with their idiocy. Or it'll last forever because when non baby boomers buy those houses, their entire retirement/net worth will be based on the same system and they will vote the same way.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> An entire generation built their retirements off of home values and will do literally anything in their power to vote down literally anything that threatens that home value. Boomer and earlier generations have been outnumbered in actual voting by Gen X and later generations since 2018. Of course, the majority of both Gen X and Millenials are also homeowners, and they are even less likely than Boomers to have pensions or strong non-housing retirement savings, so...
- eraserj 3y agoUnless they receive a compensation during this transition to a housing system without land speculation, where the value increase is fixed at a specific point in time and you get it only when you sell.
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoPart of getting rid of slavery was paying reparations to the slave owners, which is unjust but probably effective in moving faster towards a system that benefits everyone. There was also a bloody civil war though, so that's also an option.
- chung8123 3y agoI don't understand this or see any data for it. My house going up in monetary value doesn't help my retirement. Owning a place to live does.
- tstrimple 3y agoOf course your equity helps in your retirement. This seems like an absurd statement. Do you really think a 70 year old with a paid off mortgage is in no better position than one who is destitute but has a free roof over his head guaranteed? https://www.investopedia.com/articles/04/120204.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/04/120204.asp
- hgsgm 3y agoThe idiots aren't the minority getting rich.
- yellowapple 3y agoEmpty lots will continue to plague cities for as long as land is able to be treated as a speculative asset. The fix is pretty simple and obvious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
- unsubstantiated 3y ago[flagged]
- yellowapple 3y agoYep.
- kylehotchkiss 3y agoAs a normal person, how can I even go from "I like this lot" to "I just moved into my new house on this lot"? Seems like a good business opportunity.
- mouse_8b 3y agoBuy the lot and build a house? Home builders and realtors are pretty established business models. Land developers can do both.
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- positr0n 3y agoI don't know where you live, but I did that two years ago in Texas and it was... straightforward [0]. First buy the land. I didn't even use a real estate agent. Seller and I figured out the forms ourselves and went to a title company to do the deed and make sure everything was correct. Next sign a contract with a builder, get financing for the (detailed) contract, and build the house. The bank will inspect the house every time they give the builder money to make sure you and the bank are getting what you're paying for. Edit: actually other financing arrangements are more common, since most people can't afford or don't want to buy the land outright then finance construction. Usually you package the land loan and construction under the same mortgage which takes more up front work. [0] Searching for the right word here. Simple doesn't quite fit because construction is a complex industry and it is easy to over pay. The more you know and the more you can be involved in the process the better the outcome will be.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- runnerup 3y agoYou need enough cash to buy the land, you generally won’t be granted a loan for it. After that, the other comments have it pretty well explained. For a lot of people, they won’t have the 100% cash for the land + 5-20% down payment for the home construction.
- Anon_Forever 3y agoThis is paywalled.
- archo 3y agohttps://archive.is/e0yFa https://archive.is/e0yFa
- black_13 3y ago[dead]
- black_13 3y ago[dead]