4 ms·

> The costs of housing, healthcare, and education This is the “list of modern miseries,” and needs child care and eldercare on it to be complete. This is the l

> The costs of housing, healthcare, and education This is the “list of modern miseries,” and needs child care and eldercare on it to be complete. This is the list of those things that, for all our prowess, we’ve broken and just can’t seem to fix. Until we manage, our system will always have the legitimacy problem whose consequences we can see all around us right now.

kubb 2y ago
How can housing prices drop if most people invest most of their wealth into their house and they expect a return on the investment?
- jermaustin1 2y ago
  Housing wasn't an investment until it was turned into an investment in the 80s. Housing was always thought of as housing before that. It is the same as renting, but at some point, you stop paying rent and instead just pay your wealth tax on it's value. In the US we treat it as not only an investment we expect to appreciate, but then turn around and treat it as a depreciating asset for taxation purposes if you are buying it to rent to people. It is a double standard that lets corporate landlords buy a property, collect rent, write off the mortgage interest, write off the "depreciation" of the property, all the while the property appreciates in value, creating multiple revenue streams (lower tax bill + higher leverage-able assets + rental income). THIS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED! You should not be allowed to "depreciate" an appreciating asset on your taxes and get to lower your bill. If you want to write off depreciation, it should be appraised at a lower value first. Otherwise its book value remains constant (or adjusts for inflation?), and then just capital gains on the sale if someone wants to pay more than book value. This would make it less attractive to investors, prices would actually fall a bit (or a lot, IDK).
  - kubb 2y ago
    Yea it shouldn’t but home owners are in the majority so what are you gonna do about it? Also both of the parties are fully behind the interests of homeowners, with one of them being really obsessed with helping high-wealth individuals not pay taxes. I wouldn’t expect anything to change.
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  Densifying can allow individual homeowners to gain wealth while housing as a whole becomes cheaper. Single family home values can increase due to the land under them at the same time as condo values go down if we just stop building single family homes and build condos instead.
  - kubb 2y ago
    Realistically, apartment prices will just scale up to whatever people can afford. So yes, house prices will go up, but apartments won’t become cheaper than the houses originally were.
    - HDThoreaun 2y ago
      Empirically I just dont think this is true. I have lived in chicago my entire life and rent prices doubled in the last decade after being stagnant for 2 decades. Its not that people are making more money, the economy here is middling. Prices are going up because we stopped building new housing. I recently bought a second home in SLC, prices there are down 10% this year even though wages in the region are up. Housing values can and do go down.

kubb 2y ago

How can housing prices drop if most people invest most of their wealth into their house and they expect a return on the investment?

jermaustin1 2y ago
Housing wasn't an investment until it was turned into an investment in the 80s. Housing was always thought of as housing before that. It is the same as renting, but at some point, you stop paying rent and instead just pay your wealth tax on it's value. In the US we treat it as not only an investment we expect to appreciate, but then turn around and treat it as a depreciating asset for taxation purposes if you are buying it to rent to people. It is a double standard that lets corporate landlords buy a property, collect rent, write off the mortgage interest, write off the "depreciation" of the property, all the while the property appreciates in value, creating multiple revenue streams (lower tax bill + higher leverage-able assets + rental income). THIS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED! You should not be allowed to "depreciate" an appreciating asset on your taxes and get to lower your bill. If you want to write off depreciation, it should be appraised at a lower value first. Otherwise its book value remains constant (or adjusts for inflation?), and then just capital gains on the sale if someone wants to pay more than book value. This would make it less attractive to investors, prices would actually fall a bit (or a lot, IDK).
- kubb 2y ago
  Yea it shouldn’t but home owners are in the majority so what are you gonna do about it? Also both of the parties are fully behind the interests of homeowners, with one of them being really obsessed with helping high-wealth individuals not pay taxes. I wouldn’t expect anything to change.
HDThoreaun 2y ago
Densifying can allow individual homeowners to gain wealth while housing as a whole becomes cheaper. Single family home values can increase due to the land under them at the same time as condo values go down if we just stop building single family homes and build condos instead.
- kubb 2y ago
  Realistically, apartment prices will just scale up to whatever people can afford. So yes, house prices will go up, but apartments won’t become cheaper than the houses originally were.
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    Empirically I just dont think this is true. I have lived in chicago my entire life and rent prices doubled in the last decade after being stagnant for 2 decades. Its not that people are making more money, the economy here is middling. Prices are going up because we stopped building new housing. I recently bought a second home in SLC, prices there are down 10% this year even though wages in the region are up. Housing values can and do go down.