2 ms·

> Putting aside rent (which should be illegal IMO outside of rent to own—it just makes no sense as a social construct if you want to fight poverty instead of cr

> Putting aside rent (which should be illegal IMO outside of rent to own—it just makes no sense as a social construct if you want to fight poverty instead of create it) Suppose housing is less than it is now, but a house is still e.g. $100,000. There will obviously be people who can't get a $100,000 loan, so where are they supposed to live? "Rent to own" is just another name for a mortgage, except that you have to pay more for the right to give back the property at any time instead of needing to find another buyer yourself. Suppose you take a two year contract job in a city where you're only going to live for the term of the contract. Should you be required to buy a house there? Why? > the idea of an affordable investment is just bonkers. Any investment market necessarily precludes the idea of affordable entry or they wouldn't make good investments—the longer term you look at, the more this is true. You can go to a brokerage right now and buy a share of stock for $10. This is clearly affordable, so now explain why it is inherently a bad investment. > We also can't force developers to build. Developers want to build. It's how they make money. The problem is we keep prohibiting them from building through single family zoning etc.

ForTheKidz 2y ago
> Rent to own" is just another name for a mortgage, except that you have to pay more for the right to give back the property at any time instead of needing to find another buyer yourself. That's not necessarily a bad thing. You can leverage whatever you're mortgagibg as an asset (or in this case, whatever portion of the property you now own). You can't leverage your rental property despite almost certainly paying more than the equivalent mortgage. As you point out, rent makes sense for transitional or temporary living. I just think you should get ownership over some portion of the assets you are de-facto paying for. > Developers want to build Well, stalled developments are a problem across basically every metro market in the country. They don't make their money by building, they make their money by waiting for the labor & materials market to make an eventual sale profitable. In some metro areas with labor-this may be sufficient for some markets, but others (like the bay area) it's clearly not going to provide the housing people expect yimby zoning policy to deliver. Like yes zoning is a major issue in the city, but it's only one of many, and it's not sufficient to explain dysfunction where development was already zoned and approved years ago. One really great way to encourage developers to perform the role they're allegedly already serving is by having public-sector competition (zero- or negative-margin development/property management) to give them an incentive to be realistic about costs and timeframe. Or just straight fine them for wasting city property on zero-or-arguably-negative-value use.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > That's not necessarily a bad thing. You can leverage whatever you're mortgagibg as an asset (or in this case, whatever portion of the property you now own). "Not necessarily a bad thing" is the argument that it could have benefits under some circumstances. It's the argument that it should be allowed, not that its alternative should be prohibited. The obvious cost is that you're paying more per month. Essentially, if you want a place to live, you're required to pay more in order to invest in real estate, even if you don't have any surplus to invest or you would rather invest in something else. > I just think you should get ownership over some portion of the assets you are de-facto paying for. When you rent, the landlord is covering the interest on the mortgage loan, property tax, maintenance, etc. The rent covers their costs and some profit to make it worth their trouble, which they often use to start paying off the mortgage. If there is no profit, there is no landlord to pay to build the building and either you can afford to buy it outright or you're homeless. So if you want to build capital, the money that goes to that capital is additional money on top of the rent, i.e. you'd be paying more per month because you'd be getting something you don't get when you rent. You're basically saying you think poor people should have higher expenses so the extra money can be used to force them to invest in real estate. > Well, stalled developments are a problem across basically every metro market in the country. They don't make their money by building, they make their money by waiting for the labor market to make an eventual sale profitable. They still make their money by building, you've just passed regulations that make building so expensive that it isn't profitable until rents are unreasonably high, e.g. by requiring them to knock down an existing multi-story building in order to add housing because most of the land is zoned exclusively for single family homes.
  - ForTheKidz 2y ago
    > you've just passed regulations that make building so expensive that it isn't profitable until rents are unreasonably high This is just demonstrably false, though. Regulation does cause large overhead especially crossing municipal boundaries, but developers aren't building even where they've been approved to build. Either they accepted the work they knew they couldn't deliver under the current regulatory burden (essentially, committing fraud) or the bottleneck isn't regulations at all, but the other costs that dominate building. Anyway, you can either pay off your investment or you can turn a profit. Doing both is just antisocial (ie malicious and harmful) behavior. If you're turning a profit, I better also get an equitable return. That would actually make sense. Of course the world doesn't work like that, but nothing you're explaining helps me understand why this behavior is legal and people don't murder more landlords. This is simply not a reasonable way to divvy up resources in a community.

ForTheKidz 2y ago

> Rent to own" is just another name for a mortgage, except that you have to pay more for the right to give back the property at any time instead of needing to find another buyer yourself. That's not necessarily a bad thing. You can leverage whatever you're mortgagibg as an asset (or in this case, whatever portion of the property you now own). You can't leverage your rental property despite almost certainly paying more than the equivalent mortgage. As you point out, rent makes sense for transitional or temporary living. I just think you should get ownership over some portion of the assets you are de-facto paying for. > Developers want to build Well, stalled developments are a problem across basically every metro market in the country. They don't make their money by building, they make their money by waiting for the labor & materials market to make an eventual sale profitable. In some metro areas with labor-this may be sufficient for some markets, but others (like the bay area) it's clearly not going to provide the housing people expect yimby zoning policy to deliver. Like yes zoning is a major issue in the city, but it's only one of many, and it's not sufficient to explain dysfunction where development was already zoned and approved years ago. One really great way to encourage developers to perform the role they're allegedly already serving is by having public-sector competition (zero- or negative-margin development/property management) to give them an incentive to be realistic about costs and timeframe. Or just straight fine them for wasting city property on zero-or-arguably-negative-value use.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> That's not necessarily a bad thing. You can leverage whatever you're mortgagibg as an asset (or in this case, whatever portion of the property you now own). "Not necessarily a bad thing" is the argument that it could have benefits under some circumstances. It's the argument that it should be allowed, not that its alternative should be prohibited. The obvious cost is that you're paying more per month. Essentially, if you want a place to live, you're required to pay more in order to invest in real estate, even if you don't have any surplus to invest or you would rather invest in something else. > I just think you should get ownership over some portion of the assets you are de-facto paying for. When you rent, the landlord is covering the interest on the mortgage loan, property tax, maintenance, etc. The rent covers their costs and some profit to make it worth their trouble, which they often use to start paying off the mortgage. If there is no profit, there is no landlord to pay to build the building and either you can afford to buy it outright or you're homeless. So if you want to build capital, the money that goes to that capital is additional money on top of the rent, i.e. you'd be paying more per month because you'd be getting something you don't get when you rent. You're basically saying you think poor people should have higher expenses so the extra money can be used to force them to invest in real estate. > Well, stalled developments are a problem across basically every metro market in the country. They don't make their money by building, they make their money by waiting for the labor market to make an eventual sale profitable. They still make their money by building, you've just passed regulations that make building so expensive that it isn't profitable until rents are unreasonably high, e.g. by requiring them to knock down an existing multi-story building in order to add housing because most of the land is zoned exclusively for single family homes.
- ForTheKidz 2y ago
  > you've just passed regulations that make building so expensive that it isn't profitable until rents are unreasonably high This is just demonstrably false, though. Regulation does cause large overhead especially crossing municipal boundaries, but developers aren't building even where they've been approved to build. Either they accepted the work they knew they couldn't deliver under the current regulatory burden (essentially, committing fraud) or the bottleneck isn't regulations at all, but the other costs that dominate building. Anyway, you can either pay off your investment or you can turn a profit. Doing both is just antisocial (ie malicious and harmful) behavior. If you're turning a profit, I better also get an equitable return. That would actually make sense. Of course the world doesn't work like that, but nothing you're explaining helps me understand why this behavior is legal and people don't murder more landlords. This is simply not a reasonable way to divvy up resources in a community.