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comment by steve
steve  ·  2518 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Homelessness up 26% in LA YoY, 10% in Seattle , *61%* among LA youth

maybe I'm on a raging rant or something...

1. housing is expensive.

2. some people can't afford to finance/buy it.

3. people lose housing.

4. some people can afford to buy housing with cash as an investment and charge "market rate"

5. some people can afford to buy housing on credit and HAVE TO charge "market rate" to make the inflated mortgage (see point 1)

6. some people think they can afford to do point 5, but really can't and since they leveraged too steep - they find themselves at point 3.

I know I'm stating the obvious - but I'm trying to work it out on paper...

The only people who win in this whole situation are the people with capital already.

Compensation isn't keeping up with housing costs (anecdotally anyway)

Fewer people will be able to afford housing.

.

.

people with capital win





kleinbl00  ·  2518 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Blow it out to a thousand pages, add a shit-ton of references and a couple hundred pages of graphs and you have yourself a best-seller.

steve  ·  2518 days ago  ·  link  ·  

remove some of the science, add a little more salt and I could have had this:

kleinbl00  ·  2518 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think Das Kapital says a bit more about how the system is inherently flawed and will collapse in upon itself. Piketty mostly says that if you don't protect the middle class it'll disappear.

dublinben  ·  2518 days ago  ·  link  ·  

There simply isn't enough housing being built in population centers. The price of real estate housing shouldn't be increasing at double digits compared to wages or the rest of the economy.

steve  ·  2518 days ago  ·  link  ·  

there is ZERO incentive to build affordable housing.

b_b  ·  2518 days ago  ·  link  ·  
kleinbl00  ·  2518 days ago  ·  link  ·  

This played out in my old neighborhood.

1) Build high-rise partially funded by tax incentives for section 8 housing

2) Fail to sell condos

3) Argue that the business model didn't work, everything needs to be apartments (no section 8)

4) City refuses to give occupancy

5) Developers sue city

6) City settles, condo becomes apartments, no affordable housing.

kleinbl00  ·  2518 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's almost like we need to tax capital gains more aggressively or something.

OftenBen  ·  2518 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    tax capital gains more aggressively

Fukkin' death-taxin' commie.

kleinbl00  ·  2518 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Inheritance tax is not capital gains. Inheritance tax you only get when someone dies. Capital gains you get whenever property is bought or sold.

You wanna cool a housing market, suck the profit out of speculation. And then get voted immediately out of office.

user-inactivated  ·  2518 days ago  ·  link  ·  

My wife and I have been house hunting for a few years now. There's a lot of things that have held us back from purchasing, mostly in that the houses we want we can't afford and the houses we can afford, we don't want. But I digress.

Two years ago, we would choose a neighborhood, put in our price range, and probably get about 20-30 results. Today? Same neighborhoods, same price range, and the number of results are less than half that, if not lower. To make matters worse, the turn around time here is ridiculous. Shit literally goes on the real estate site one day and by the time I have time to show it to Dala sales are already pending. It's fucking dumb. Two years ago it was hard. Now? It's feeling fucking impossible.

kleinbl00  ·  2518 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I was looking at apartment buildings in '08. Friend of mine owns 5 units and it works out nicely for him. The GRM (Gross Rent Multiplier - literally the purchase price to the rental income) back then was like 6,7. It's 14-18 now. I checked out a big ol' $6m apartment complex yesterday; for that $6m investment your net income is $240k a year.

In order to break even on that $6m building you need to make a $5m downpayment. So the people who are investing in that market right now are the ones that have $5m or more in cash.

steve  ·  2518 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    the turn around time here is ridiculous

Same here... cash is king. We're competing against people who are trying to shield their marijuana profits through real estate. People are literally laundering money through real estate. Guess who wins between me with great credit and a contract on my house - or a dude who literally has a briefcase of cash.

kleinbl00  ·  2518 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Four years ago it was Chinese. Now it's Chinese and dope barons.

Dumb thing is Real Estate is a shitty investment right now but so's everything else. Funny what happens when interest rates scrape the bottom of the barrel.