6 ms·

> I had a friend who bought a house that needed a lot of work. Before he could get started on the remodel, someone broke in to the empty house, changed the lock

by diggan 2y ago

> I had a friend who bought a house that needed a lot of work. Before he could get started on the remodel, someone broke in to the empty house, changed the locks, and started occupying it. Was this the person's primary residence that they were planning to live in? Or a property that they intended to flip or rent out? Makes a big difference in how the courts would see it. > Even here on HN there are comments trying to downplay the issue by portraying the victims as mostly wealthy or landlords, which are presumably acceptable victims to people who like these kind of narratives. I mean, if you can afford to purchase more than one property in order to gain financially from that second purchase, you are wealthy by most standards in this country.

Wytwwww 2y ago
> Or a property that they intended to flip or rent out? Makes a big difference in how the courts would see it. Are you implying that there is something morally wrong about purchasing a rundown (apparently barely liveable) property, renovating it and selling or renting it? How do you expect the supply of housing to increase (and prices to go down in turn) if you disincentive such behaviour? Seems rather absurd...
- diggan 2y ago
  It's besides the point what I think is morally wrong or right. There is a legal difference between "occupying" someone's primary residence, and occupying other types of properties. The first isn't considered "occupying" here but rather "breaking and entering", and the local police are very quick at acting on those types of crimes, especially if the criminals are still inside the property.
  - toss1 2y ago
    No. It doesn't matter whether it is a primary residence, secondary residence, or an investment property. It is the property of someone else. Without permission, opening the door or window and going into it is breaking and entering. And do not try to argue that breaking, entering, and squatting somehow reduces the housing shortage — the effect is the exact opposite. With insecure property access and rights, people will be LESS likely to invest in fixing up unliveable places. Just think for a second: with solid property rights, it can be an enjoyable practice to invest in and improve a run-down property to a rent-able or sell-able state. But if you are 50% likely to lose your investment and get a massive headache, you'll just go do something else, and let it rot, so no one can use it. Multiply this 100k times, and you have 100k fewer units on the market, just falling into dust.
    - jddj 2y ago
      There is a genuine difference though, as in, the law in Spain treats the two scenarios differently. I'm not sure where the GP's situation took place but given the article is about Spain the person you're replying to could probably be forgiven for thinking it was there
      - toss1 2y ago
        Yup, if there is such a difference under Spanish law, then that law is extremely myopic, passed by a herd of idiots. It will certainly lead to LESS housing, not more. Yikes
    - petsfed 2y ago
      Or the owners of those 100k units that are just left to rot can accept that their "investment" can't (and shouldn't) make them money faster than inflation, and lower the asking price. The scenario you describe only exists because the number of "investors" buying up properties to flip and turn a profit vastly outnumbers the number people looking to buy their personal residence, and have the skills and disposition to fix it up themselves. And judging by the build quality of a lot of flipped properties, the investors don't have the skills or disposition either.
      - toss1 2y ago
        I think we are conflating Private Equity, small-time house-fixer-flippers, and vacation homes. I think we agree that the PE crowd can rot in hell — they're buying properties to standardize, corner the market, and charge extractive artificially-inflated 'market' rents. They won't be idle long, and I don't think squatting is the fix for that. I'm quite sure that the PE companies are the primary driver here, not small-time fix-and-flip investors. PE firms are taking the houses off the market for good. The small-time fix-&-flip people take houses off the market for only a short time, and upgrade the property. If they take too long, they WILL lose money, which is also why even if squatters do zero damage (never heard of it happening), the mere delay can cause it to be unprofitable. Getting PE out of the market WILL reduce the competition and bring down prices. The same is not true for small time fix-&-flip investors. The small-time fixer-flippers are taking a risk. Their properties may or may not increase in value at all, even with improvements. The goal is to add value greater than the cost of the improvements. From the people I know who have done it, this is mostly accomplished by sweat equity, i.e., they do a lot of the work themselves, hiring trades only where necessary, as if it is all full-price trade work, it will NOT be profitable. If you think that individual enterprising people adding value, including bringing non-viable housing stock back to market viability —AT THEIR OWN RISK— is somehow bad, we should make a regulatory or tax policy against it. Making random people subject to arbitrary effective confiscation at the whims of random squatters is not fair to anyone. Same for vacation homes. If you think it bad policy that they exist, then enact new tax or regulatory schemes. Making random people subject to random confiscation and expense will not get the results you want. It will get people even more strongly motivated to be angry at squatters.
- petsfed 2y ago
  By incentivizing people renovating, then living in, the rundown house they bought, instead of seeing that option as equally valuable as just selling/renting the house? Its one thing to produce more housing, its another to somehow magically produce more housing in such a way that does not devalue the other resources. Step 1 is to disincentivize speculative/rent-seeking home purchases. Its been said a couple times in sibling comments, but the problem comes down to the fact that people are buying houses as investments, and not as houses. In most of Europe, the US and Canada, the cost of home ownership grossly exceeds the median income, to the extent that lending is almost always necessary. Thus owning a second home is always the realm of the wealthy, even if they are still ultimately laborers. Buying that second home is often the first step from the labor class to the capitol-holding class. Its frustrating that the housing crisis is often described in terms of Marxist dialectic, but the crisis often feels lab-grown to illustrate the flaws of (literal) rent-seeking behavior by the capitol-holding class.
  - danlugo92 2y ago
    Work hard and get your own.
    - petsfed 2y ago
      That's how the labor class does it. My point is that investment purchasers are steadily pushing residential purchasers out of the market. What happens when its simply impossible to accrue via labor, in a single lifetime, enough wealth to buy that first home?
    - burnished 2y ago
      Hard like the people that got it cheap? Or hard like the people that inherited such things? I guess you can fuck off to the sticks, but I'm not sure that works as a defense for a society that has made an element of participation contingent on absurd expense or debt. Does 'work hard' feel good when the thing you purchase with your labor is expensive in order to service the desires of the wealthy? I'm not going to say our current setup is indentured servitude or serfdom, it clearly isn't and social mobility and changing your station are possible and even commonplace. I will say that our current system has resulted in a large class of people whose productive excess is routinely paid to a small group for the benefit of being allowed access to a residence (they don't provide other services or benefits, they don't actually labor to produce the house as a finished good).

by diggan 2y ago

Wytwwww 2y ago

> Or a property that they intended to flip or rent out? Makes a big difference in how the courts would see it. Are you implying that there is something morally wrong about purchasing a rundown (apparently barely liveable) property, renovating it and selling or renting it? How do you expect the supply of housing to increase (and prices to go down in turn) if you disincentive such behaviour? Seems rather absurd...

diggan 2y ago
It's besides the point what I think is morally wrong or right. There is a legal difference between "occupying" someone's primary residence, and occupying other types of properties. The first isn't considered "occupying" here but rather "breaking and entering", and the local police are very quick at acting on those types of crimes, especially if the criminals are still inside the property.
- toss1 2y ago
  No. It doesn't matter whether it is a primary residence, secondary residence, or an investment property. It is the property of someone else. Without permission, opening the door or window and going into it is breaking and entering. And do not try to argue that breaking, entering, and squatting somehow reduces the housing shortage — the effect is the exact opposite. With insecure property access and rights, people will be LESS likely to invest in fixing up unliveable places. Just think for a second: with solid property rights, it can be an enjoyable practice to invest in and improve a run-down property to a rent-able or sell-able state. But if you are 50% likely to lose your investment and get a massive headache, you'll just go do something else, and let it rot, so no one can use it. Multiply this 100k times, and you have 100k fewer units on the market, just falling into dust.
  - jddj 2y ago
    There is a genuine difference though, as in, the law in Spain treats the two scenarios differently. I'm not sure where the GP's situation took place but given the article is about Spain the person you're replying to could probably be forgiven for thinking it was there
    - toss1 2y ago
      Yup, if there is such a difference under Spanish law, then that law is extremely myopic, passed by a herd of idiots. It will certainly lead to LESS housing, not more. Yikes
  - petsfed 2y ago
    Or the owners of those 100k units that are just left to rot can accept that their "investment" can't (and shouldn't) make them money faster than inflation, and lower the asking price. The scenario you describe only exists because the number of "investors" buying up properties to flip and turn a profit vastly outnumbers the number people looking to buy their personal residence, and have the skills and disposition to fix it up themselves. And judging by the build quality of a lot of flipped properties, the investors don't have the skills or disposition either.
    - toss1 2y ago
      I think we are conflating Private Equity, small-time house-fixer-flippers, and vacation homes. I think we agree that the PE crowd can rot in hell — they're buying properties to standardize, corner the market, and charge extractive artificially-inflated 'market' rents. They won't be idle long, and I don't think squatting is the fix for that. I'm quite sure that the PE companies are the primary driver here, not small-time fix-and-flip investors. PE firms are taking the houses off the market for good. The small-time fix-&-flip people take houses off the market for only a short time, and upgrade the property. If they take too long, they WILL lose money, which is also why even if squatters do zero damage (never heard of it happening), the mere delay can cause it to be unprofitable. Getting PE out of the market WILL reduce the competition and bring down prices. The same is not true for small time fix-&-flip investors. The small-time fixer-flippers are taking a risk. Their properties may or may not increase in value at all, even with improvements. The goal is to add value greater than the cost of the improvements. From the people I know who have done it, this is mostly accomplished by sweat equity, i.e., they do a lot of the work themselves, hiring trades only where necessary, as if it is all full-price trade work, it will NOT be profitable. If you think that individual enterprising people adding value, including bringing non-viable housing stock back to market viability —AT THEIR OWN RISK— is somehow bad, we should make a regulatory or tax policy against it. Making random people subject to arbitrary effective confiscation at the whims of random squatters is not fair to anyone. Same for vacation homes. If you think it bad policy that they exist, then enact new tax or regulatory schemes. Making random people subject to random confiscation and expense will not get the results you want. It will get people even more strongly motivated to be angry at squatters.
petsfed 2y ago
By incentivizing people renovating, then living in, the rundown house they bought, instead of seeing that option as equally valuable as just selling/renting the house? Its one thing to produce more housing, its another to somehow magically produce more housing in such a way that does not devalue the other resources. Step 1 is to disincentivize speculative/rent-seeking home purchases. Its been said a couple times in sibling comments, but the problem comes down to the fact that people are buying houses as investments, and not as houses. In most of Europe, the US and Canada, the cost of home ownership grossly exceeds the median income, to the extent that lending is almost always necessary. Thus owning a second home is always the realm of the wealthy, even if they are still ultimately laborers. Buying that second home is often the first step from the labor class to the capitol-holding class. Its frustrating that the housing crisis is often described in terms of Marxist dialectic, but the crisis often feels lab-grown to illustrate the flaws of (literal) rent-seeking behavior by the capitol-holding class.
- danlugo92 2y ago
  Work hard and get your own.
  - petsfed 2y ago
    That's how the labor class does it. My point is that investment purchasers are steadily pushing residential purchasers out of the market. What happens when its simply impossible to accrue via labor, in a single lifetime, enough wealth to buy that first home?
  - burnished 2y ago
    Hard like the people that got it cheap? Or hard like the people that inherited such things? I guess you can fuck off to the sticks, but I'm not sure that works as a defense for a society that has made an element of participation contingent on absurd expense or debt. Does 'work hard' feel good when the thing you purchase with your labor is expensive in order to service the desires of the wealthy? I'm not going to say our current setup is indentured servitude or serfdom, it clearly isn't and social mobility and changing your station are possible and even commonplace. I will say that our current system has resulted in a large class of people whose productive excess is routinely paid to a small group for the benefit of being allowed access to a residence (they don't provide other services or benefits, they don't actually labor to produce the house as a finished good).