7 ms·

Not true in many, many cases. HOAs, condo boards, zoning laws, and historical societies can control homeowners pretty well.

Frozenlock 12y ago
And you still need to pay taxes (rent) to your municipality (landlord). So if I summarize, you can't do what you want with it and you need to pay your landlord. Why are people calling this 'owning' a house?
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  There are countries that lack property taxes, but they tend to be communist (china) and you are only buying a 99 year lease. Also, the lack of property taxes doesn't work very well, as it encourages speculation and then sitting on then property doing much with it waiting for values to rise. Property taxes enforces mandatory deprecation (you have to make it productive enough to at least pay the tax) and also funds things like roads, infrastructure and schools without shady corrupt deals.
  - Frozenlock 12y ago
    I didn't say anything about the good or bad of taxes, just asking why people are using a word when it shouldn't be. Historical reasons? Delusions? Sales tactics?
    - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
      The right to property has never been without responsibility. I can own a house but then I'm responsible for sharing the costs of infrastructure around the house. You would find lower property taxes in the states in areas with little infrastructure (I.e. the bush in Alaska). Even the city state kings of the first communities needed to provide defense and such, taxation is the obvious way to do that. Taxation of property is quite reasonable compared to head taxes.
  - humannature 12y ago
    For someone who lives in China I thought you would be more informed, anyway the house leases in China are 70 years, and also some big cities in China (Chongqing and Shanghai) have already started implementing property taxes.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    humannature, you are probably hellbanned, so I can't reply to your comment directly. Ok, yes, you are right...70 years, not 99; though there is some suspicion/optimism that the government will extend the leases indefinitely. The property tax in CQ/SH is only on second properties and easily avoided right now through transfers or sham divorces. It will be interesting to see if the gov is really serious about property taxes.
  - crimsonalucard 12y ago
    The 99 year lease is basically identical to ownership as people are exchanging the "lease agreements" like property titles. China hasn't decided what to do when the lease is up but in general it is highly unlikely they'd make you renew the full lease. Most likely they're going to start charging property tax.
- bane 12y ago
  You seem to think that the landlord in a regular rental situation is making you pay their taxes as well.
- lmm 12y ago
  Because there's no value in having a word for a situation that basically no-one is in? Because despite your sophist argument there are huge practical differences between what normal people call "renting" and what normal people call "owning"?
  - Frozenlock 12y ago
    Don't you have clothes that you own? Don't you own your food before you eat it? If I buy a computer, I own it. Far from a 'situation that basically no-one is in' I would say. I suppose what you meant is that basically no one really own their house. Well if it's the case, why use the word anyway? Words have meaning. You can't just decide to apply a word to a situation where it doesn't apply and call it a day.
    - lmm 12y ago
      I own those things but that doesn't mean I have unlimited freedom to do whatever I want with them. I own my food but I couldn't sell it (I don't have the right licenses). I own my clothes but I still have to comply with the law when I do things with them. That laws/HOAs/etc. regulate what I can do with my flat does not feel substantially different. Taxes too are orthogonal to ownership; where I live people treat the local government tax as another utility bill, like water or electricity (so when renting sometimes the landlord pays or sometimes the tenant does). If I owned a car I'd pay tax on it - but if I leased a car I'd also pay tax on it in the same way. Words have meanings but are necessarily simplifications (just as a map cannot capture every detail of the territory). In legalese I lease my flat - but in English I own it, because how I use it and what I can and can't do with it has much more in common with something that I own than with something that I rent or lease.
segmondy 12y ago
So don't buy where there's HOA, Condo Boards or Historical Districts. That leaves you with a lot of options.
- nsxwolf 12y ago
  That's getting harder and harder to do in many places. If you like the neighborhood and the house, sometimes you just have to suck it up. On the plus side, single family homes tend to have far less restrictive HOAs than condos.
- jonnathanson 12y ago
  That pretty much eliminates a lot of the big cities in the US, and a fair amount of the suburbs and smaller cities. Basically, anywhere where you'd be living in a building and not a single-family home. (Though a lot of single-family homes are coming under the purview of various associations and societies these days). HOAs are a plague on humanity, but they're very hard to avoid in many circumstances.
  - Lost_BiomedE 12y ago
    Agreed. I like the idea of disallowing pig farms, rooster farms, dog breeding, etc. But much beyond that, no thanks.
hkmurakami 12y ago
I remember reading about one Arizona neighborhood which had restrictions on having a desert style front yard landscape and had an implicit mandate on having a front lawn and a specific kind of front door. The implicitness was the difficulty in getting a fair refinancing deal from the bank, and a devaluation of the home for not being in sync with the neighborhood's uniform appearance.
Dystopian 12y ago
THIS. One of my co-workers bought a condo recently and remodelled the interior. Got a great gas grill island - with it, he needed an exhaust fan above. During the reno he got handshake approval from the board president, and ended up having a really inconspicuous grate installed above one of his windows. Long-story-short, a board member complained, they voted, and he ended up paying $5K to have it removed, and now has an exhaust fan inside that isn't hooked up to anything. If you're going to buy, make sure you check out all this kind of stuff before-hand (especially with condos).
- LandoCalrissian 12y ago
  Condos are a complete nightmare, I don't know why people go for them. It's like having none of the benefits of home ownership with all the downsides of renting. Then you have HOA's on top of that. Also I hope no one on the board is crazy! No thank you.
sbov 12y ago
Yeah, this. I recently moved to the Los Angeles area. Even many houses have HOAs. One of the HOAs we looked at had the rule that your garage door was not allowed to be open unless your car was entering or exiting the garage. Ultimately we found a place without one. But all newer construction (1990 or later) we looked at had an HOA.
marknutter 12y ago
I spent 30 years of my life living in a Townhouse with an HOA, so I understand the restrictions they can apply. I now own a single family home and trust me, freedom is a relative term - I'm drunk with the notion I can do nearly anything I want to do to or around my house within the limit of the law.

Frozenlock 12y ago

And you still need to pay taxes (rent) to your municipality (landlord). So if I summarize, you can't do what you want with it and you need to pay your landlord. Why are people calling this 'owning' a house?

seanmcdirmid 12y ago
There are countries that lack property taxes, but they tend to be communist (china) and you are only buying a 99 year lease. Also, the lack of property taxes doesn't work very well, as it encourages speculation and then sitting on then property doing much with it waiting for values to rise. Property taxes enforces mandatory deprecation (you have to make it productive enough to at least pay the tax) and also funds things like roads, infrastructure and schools without shady corrupt deals.
- Frozenlock 12y ago
  I didn't say anything about the good or bad of taxes, just asking why people are using a word when it shouldn't be. Historical reasons? Delusions? Sales tactics?
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    The right to property has never been without responsibility. I can own a house but then I'm responsible for sharing the costs of infrastructure around the house. You would find lower property taxes in the states in areas with little infrastructure (I.e. the bush in Alaska). Even the city state kings of the first communities needed to provide defense and such, taxation is the obvious way to do that. Taxation of property is quite reasonable compared to head taxes.
- humannature 12y ago
  For someone who lives in China I thought you would be more informed, anyway the house leases in China are 70 years, and also some big cities in China (Chongqing and Shanghai) have already started implementing property taxes.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  humannature, you are probably hellbanned, so I can't reply to your comment directly. Ok, yes, you are right...70 years, not 99; though there is some suspicion/optimism that the government will extend the leases indefinitely. The property tax in CQ/SH is only on second properties and easily avoided right now through transfers or sham divorces. It will be interesting to see if the gov is really serious about property taxes.
- crimsonalucard 12y ago
  The 99 year lease is basically identical to ownership as people are exchanging the "lease agreements" like property titles. China hasn't decided what to do when the lease is up but in general it is highly unlikely they'd make you renew the full lease. Most likely they're going to start charging property tax.
bane 12y ago
You seem to think that the landlord in a regular rental situation is making you pay their taxes as well.
lmm 12y ago
Because there's no value in having a word for a situation that basically no-one is in? Because despite your sophist argument there are huge practical differences between what normal people call "renting" and what normal people call "owning"?
- Frozenlock 12y ago
  Don't you have clothes that you own? Don't you own your food before you eat it? If I buy a computer, I own it. Far from a 'situation that basically no-one is in' I would say. I suppose what you meant is that basically no one really own their house. Well if it's the case, why use the word anyway? Words have meaning. You can't just decide to apply a word to a situation where it doesn't apply and call it a day.
  - lmm 12y ago
    I own those things but that doesn't mean I have unlimited freedom to do whatever I want with them. I own my food but I couldn't sell it (I don't have the right licenses). I own my clothes but I still have to comply with the law when I do things with them. That laws/HOAs/etc. regulate what I can do with my flat does not feel substantially different. Taxes too are orthogonal to ownership; where I live people treat the local government tax as another utility bill, like water or electricity (so when renting sometimes the landlord pays or sometimes the tenant does). If I owned a car I'd pay tax on it - but if I leased a car I'd also pay tax on it in the same way. Words have meanings but are necessarily simplifications (just as a map cannot capture every detail of the territory). In legalese I lease my flat - but in English I own it, because how I use it and what I can and can't do with it has much more in common with something that I own than with something that I rent or lease.

segmondy 12y ago

So don't buy where there's HOA, Condo Boards or Historical Districts. That leaves you with a lot of options.

nsxwolf 12y ago
That's getting harder and harder to do in many places. If you like the neighborhood and the house, sometimes you just have to suck it up. On the plus side, single family homes tend to have far less restrictive HOAs than condos.
jonnathanson 12y ago
That pretty much eliminates a lot of the big cities in the US, and a fair amount of the suburbs and smaller cities. Basically, anywhere where you'd be living in a building and not a single-family home. (Though a lot of single-family homes are coming under the purview of various associations and societies these days). HOAs are a plague on humanity, but they're very hard to avoid in many circumstances.
- Lost_BiomedE 12y ago
  Agreed. I like the idea of disallowing pig farms, rooster farms, dog breeding, etc. But much beyond that, no thanks.

hkmurakami 12y ago

I remember reading about one Arizona neighborhood which had restrictions on having a desert style front yard landscape and had an implicit mandate on having a front lawn and a specific kind of front door. The implicitness was the difficulty in getting a fair refinancing deal from the bank, and a devaluation of the home for not being in sync with the neighborhood's uniform appearance.

Dystopian 12y ago

THIS. One of my co-workers bought a condo recently and remodelled the interior. Got a great gas grill island - with it, he needed an exhaust fan above. During the reno he got handshake approval from the board president, and ended up having a really inconspicuous grate installed above one of his windows. Long-story-short, a board member complained, they voted, and he ended up paying $5K to have it removed, and now has an exhaust fan inside that isn't hooked up to anything. If you're going to buy, make sure you check out all this kind of stuff before-hand (especially with condos).

LandoCalrissian 12y ago
Condos are a complete nightmare, I don't know why people go for them. It's like having none of the benefits of home ownership with all the downsides of renting. Then you have HOA's on top of that. Also I hope no one on the board is crazy! No thank you.

sbov 12y ago

Yeah, this. I recently moved to the Los Angeles area. Even many houses have HOAs. One of the HOAs we looked at had the rule that your garage door was not allowed to be open unless your car was entering or exiting the garage. Ultimately we found a place without one. But all newer construction (1990 or later) we looked at had an HOA.

marknutter 12y ago

I spent 30 years of my life living in a Townhouse with an HOA, so I understand the restrictions they can apply. I now own a single family home and trust me, freedom is a relative term - I'm drunk with the notion I can do nearly anything I want to do to or around my house within the limit of the law.