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Vox Nihili posted:Mostly Fremont and thereabouts, we do work on the peninsula but the prices out there are, what, devastating? Insane? Something like that. Yes. I live on the upper peninsula, and my realtor friend just showed a loft that's 600 SF larger than my townhouse in Santa Clara, for 250k less. It's worth it to not live in Santa Clara, though.
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Jun 10, 2021 16:59
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Do you folks think this new international real estate bubble will pop or is there no bubble and housing everywhere becomes un-affordable forever?
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Jun 10, 2021 17:18
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What's wrong with Santa Clara? As someone who is potentially moving there later this year 
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Jun 10, 2021 17:18
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Just a gut check here but the local mortgage guy with $1000's in APR fees ($2300), non APR costs ($2400), and Points ($1600) is just me paying unnecessary money right? These online places that are pretty much flat fee, no points, and better rate are the way to go?
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Jun 10, 2021 17:20
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spwrozek posted:Just a gut check here but the local mortgage guy with $1000's in APR fees ($2300), non APR costs ($2400), and Points ($1600) is just me paying unnecessary money right? These online places that are pretty much flat fee, no points, and better rate are the way to go? I don't know what kind of rate you're getting, but on our 30 year fixed the only fee i am paying is $600 or so for the appraisal, and the bank is giving us a $2200 credit at closing.
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Jun 10, 2021 17:25
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Grouchio posted:Do you folks think this new international real estate bubble will pop or is there no bubble and housing everywhere becomes un-affordable forever? Either there's a bubble and values are going to drop, approaching something reasonable, or private equity--which is currently buying up all of the real estate they can get their hands on to rent out to people who can't afford the batshit insane prices we already have--is going to continue to do what they're already doing and be able to contribute driving up rent prices at breakneck speeds because they own so much of the real estate, at least until the government intervenes. Now, my crystal ball has historically been very bad, but given that we live on hellworld, I know where my money is.
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Jun 10, 2021 17:30
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Spikes32 posted:What's wrong with Santa Clara? As someone who is potentially moving there later this year Nothing really, it's...fine. It's just that that's all, it's just...fine. Strip malls, hot weather, totally flat. There are some decent locally owned restaurants, and a whole lot of chain stores. I haven't lived there in 5+ years, but if Dusita Thai is still there, that's a great place. And the farmer's market on Saturdays (I think?) is good, but teeny tiny. It's walkable, so that's nice. There's also, or used to be, a tiny Italian place on Benton Street that is really good, and a really traditional Japanese place in the same shopping center. Insist on air conditioning. People say you don't need it, but you do. For my money, if I had to live in south bay, it'd be Campbell or downtown San Jose. Both have their problems, but they have a lot of character.
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Jun 10, 2021 17:31
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Good to know! Partners job is in Santa Clara but we don't know where I'll end up yet so we might be in San Jose or somewhere in between the two jobs
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Jun 10, 2021 17:41
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Good luck! Avoid Sunnyvale and Santa Clara if you want character, but by all means look there if you want safety and ease. Both are semi-affordable by bay area standards. DTSJ is a LOT of fun, but definitely has crime issues in areas. Lots of great bars and restaurants around San Pedro Square, many are family friendly, too. Campbell is a good combination of sleepy suburb but the downtown area, albeit small, comes alive on the weekends. Are you buying? If so, welcome to the stupidity.
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Jun 10, 2021 17:43
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Renting for between 1 and 3 years before buying. Who knows if the market will cool down by then though.
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Jun 10, 2021 17:47
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spwrozek posted:Just a gut check here but the local mortgage guy with $1000's in APR fees ($2300), non APR costs ($2400), and Points ($1600) is just me paying unnecessary money right? These online places that are pretty much flat fee, no points, and better rate are the way to go?
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Jun 10, 2021 17:48
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spwrozek posted:Just a gut check here but the local mortgage guy with $1000's in APR fees ($2300), non APR costs ($2400), and Points ($1600) is just me paying unnecessary money right? These online places that are pretty much flat fee, no points, and better rate are the way to go? Basically yes. They're all idiots and are going to gently caress something up no matter what, and you don't really gain anything by having someone local to yell at. Most lenders are going to sell your loan immediately anyhow, so there's no real reason to keep it local, especially since the "local guy" is most likely a broker or a small office rep for a big national mortgage company. In other words, he'll have zero involvement with your loan after closing, so it's not like he'll be your advocate in the future if something goes sideways. His job is to generate loans, and that's it. In a year you're most likely going to forget anything bad that happened, but the cost savings and lower rate will stay with you. Only possible exception is if you have a bank that gives you some sort of recurring discount for having multiple line items with them. Theoretically our CU would have given us more dividends if we had our mortgage with them as well. But their closing costs were way high and their rate wasn't competitive. For our initial purchase we went with a local broker who blew all the other (not online) options away. For our refi we went with an online company since the original broker couldn't touch their rates/cost (despite swearing up and down that "do it now it's not going to get any better those online lenders will screw you and they're lying about costs."). Spoiler alert: he was wrong.
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Jun 10, 2021 17:54
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Edit: nevermind. I'm over 750 now apparently.
ThePopeOfFun fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Jun 10, 2021 |
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Jun 10, 2021 18:07
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Grouchio posted:housing everywhere becomes un-affordable forever? That's a bit like saying: 'nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded' It's clearly not unaffordable to those doing the buying, which, despite over-dramatized, hang-wringing articles to the contrary, is not institutional investors - not in any meaningful amounts.
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Jun 10, 2021 18:19
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Anyone have advice on choosing a title services provider over the default one that will come from my lender? The one that's currently listed is based out of a different state and has terrible reviews online. (I hope this doesn't go over like the RE lawyer question did )
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Jun 10, 2021 18:38
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B-Nasty posted:That's a bit like saying: 'nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded' I mean... I'm cherry picking a bit, but Blackstone is the second-largest property owner in Sacramento county, and they're pretty much all residential property. Kushner keeps buying all sorts of residential real estate in the Mid-Atlantic states. Berkshire Hathaway is getting all the residential real estate they can. And the thing is, even if overall, private equity's total ownership of residential real estate is small, they tend to focus on cheaper "starter" homes, which are the only way most renters break into home ownership, so they have an outsized impact on that sector of the market. Nobody works give a poo poo if they were buying up luxury homes, but the idea is to lock people into a lifetime of renting, just like with every other subscription service out there; regularly recurring revenue streams.
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Jun 10, 2021 18:41
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Tyro posted:I don't know what kind of rate you're getting, but on our 30 year fixed the only fee i am paying is $600 or so for the appraisal, and the bank is giving us a $2200 credit at closing. I have used this guy for two other properties I bought and it as more reasonable. But he is at 3% with $7K estimated at close. and other place is at 2.65% with $2200 in credits, $1300 flat fee plus appraisal. So it seems like a no brainer. DaveSauce posted:Basically yes. Yeah he works for a smaller place and they sell it immediately (at least on my last 2 properties). On my other place I own I did the refi with an online place and it was smooth as butter. Thanks for checking my thinking guys. E: probably will get out bid by $100K again so this will never actually matter...
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Jun 10, 2021 18:53
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Thanatosian posted:Either there's a bubble and values are going to drop, approaching something reasonable, or private equity--which is currently buying up all of the real estate they can get their hands on to rent out to people who can't afford the batshit insane prices we already have--is going to continue to do what they're already doing and be able to contribute driving up rent prices at breakneck speeds because they own so much of the real estate, at least until the government intervenes. I'm kind of curious, if inflation levels out, are investors/speculators going to sell out of the market, and will that cause the bubble to finally pop I've been looking at REIT ETFs (shares of real estate portfolios) on my favored stock app and they're all gaining about 5% per month right now. I'm gonna go rewatch that documentary "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" where they took a critical need of society, like power, and then made it a thing you can trade on the stock market. And then everything imploded one day and everyone lost it a ton of money, and there's a bunch of laws and regulations to prevent that from happening again now.
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Jun 10, 2021 18:54
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Thanatosian posted:And the thing is, even if overall, private equity's total ownership of residential real estate is small, they tend to focus on cheaper "starter" homes, which are the only way most renters break into home ownership, so they have an outsized impact on that sector of the market. So do small-time, mom-n-pop investors, typically. Wording it as "starter" homes is somewhat disingenuous; many of the properties owned institutionally were bought in foreclosure or needed major repairs - not properties that could be conventionally financed or attractive to families in their existing state. This sentiment has been around so long that Blackstone created a page to address the misconceptions years ago: https://www.blackstone.com/insights/article/correcting-the-record-on-blackstone-and-invitation-homes/ The average number of homes owned by investors is: one. The vast, vast majority of the 20ish% of rental properties are owned by small-time investors. Rent is not some magical figure that exists outside of market forces; if we really want to point fingers about the current mess, they should largely be directed at the entities that make new construction difficult and that provide cheap (below market) financing.
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Jun 10, 2021 19:01
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Spikes32 posted:What's wrong with Santa Clara? As someone who is potentially moving there later this year Setting aside the obvious price issues it's a really nice place to live unless you demand a big city environment, in which case you can always head up to SF on any given weekend.
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Jun 10, 2021 19:52
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Come live in Hayward. You have about 3 months before things hit the $1M+ mark.  Speaking of, that ongoing lawsuit against our condo complex's developer (KBHomes) isn't slowing down sales at all. A 1750sqft 3BR/3BA just sold for $950K last month. 
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Jun 10, 2021 19:55
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We're not big city die hards so that all sounds good then. Aside from the price issue.
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Jun 10, 2021 20:00
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There's nothing wrong with Santa Clara, it's just, if you wanted to live in a quiet boring suburb, you could move to Dallas, pick any suburb there, and buy literally 2x, maybe even 3x the house for half the money, plus have access to world class schools. And get a pool. Or most anywhere else. If you want a nice quiet suburb in south bay, there are worse choices.
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Jun 10, 2021 20:08
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Dallas ain't a 15 minute drive to Palo Alto tho Get a nice Sunnyvale rambler, throw your kids into the Pinewood private school system and call it a day!
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Jun 10, 2021 20:31
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B-Nasty posted:So do small-time, mom-n-pop investors, typically. Wording it as "starter" homes is somewhat disingenuous; many of the properties owned institutionally were bought in foreclosure or needed major repairs - not properties that could be conventionally financed or attractive to families in their existing state. This is like saying "the average number of employees a business has in Seattle is probably around 4-5, so Amazon and Boeing don't really matter." If twenty thousand investors own one property, and one investor owns ten thousand, the average number owned by an investor is one. But I also don't see why a shitload of people buying single properties to rent out and riding on the coattails of the lobbying done by private equity isn't a problem, too. Ham Equity fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Jun 10, 2021 |
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Jun 10, 2021 20:40
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Also LOL at citing investment firm's own website as proof that investment firm isn't inflicting pure evil upon humanity. Yes Mr. Blackstone, you've corrected me, please continue upping my rent.
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Jun 10, 2021 20:47
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sim posted:Also LOL at citing investment firm's own website as proof that investment firm isn't inflicting pure evil upon humanity. Yes Mr. Blackstone, you've corrected me, please continue upping my rent. We’re not evil or destroying the middle class by driving up the prices of the very homes they’re trying to buy…trust us! https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/single-family-landlords-wall-street/582394/ This is what happens when Blackstone/Wall Street is your landlord.
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Jun 10, 2021 20:55
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Thanatosian posted:This is like saying "the average number of employees a business has in Seattle is probably around 4-5, so Amazon and Boeing don't really matter." If twenty thousand investors own one property, and one investor owns ten thousand, the average number owned by an investor is one. It matters when you use realistic denominators, not random numbers. Point is, we're talking about less than 1-2% of all rental properties are owned by institutional investors. Thanatosian posted:But I also don't see why a shitload of people buying single properties to rent out and riding on the coattails of the lobbying done by private equity isn't a problem, too. As I posted elsewhere in this thread, the US owner-occupied percentage has been stable at around 65% since the 1970s. It's actually gone up over the past few years after dropping a bit after the '08 recession. Your argument seems to boil down to: owning a home is far superior (from a wealth-building perspective), so rental properties, and those that own them, are harmful. Our percentage of owner-occupied houses isn't dropping (at any perceivable rate), but even if it was, we'd just join other inequitable hellscapes like Sweden (63%), Denmark (60%), Germany (51%), or Switzerland (41%).
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Jun 10, 2021 21:37
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Bunch of houses hit the market in our area this week. Going to 6 open houses this weekend and trying to schedule about 5 others with our REA. Cautiously optimistic that I'll soon be super depressed again when we get outbid.
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Jun 10, 2021 21:40
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B-Nasty posted:So do small-time, mom-n-pop investors, typically. Wording it as "starter" homes is somewhat disingenuous; many of the properties owned institutionally were bought in foreclosure or needed major repairs - not properties that could be conventionally financed or attractive to families in their existing state. That's just bullshit. Our family has always kept an eye toward foreclosures and distressed properties. They're desirable because you can get a lot of value of that kind of purchase if you have actual experience with renovation (or are close friends with someone who does). I know many other families that have done the same thing. When an institutional investor uses massive cash reserves to buy distressed properties in an area, that still pushes up prices and it still locks out a bunch of buyers who are interested in that kind of property. That's true even if the institutional investor turns around and resell them; it's especially true when those homes are turned into rentals. Like check out this bit of propaganda: quote:Myth: Invitation Homes is crowding out first-time homebuyers. These are bald--faced lies, full stop. There is a segment of first-time home buyers who are interested in these kinds of properties, and they are pushed out by groups like Blackstone bringing cash offers and flipping these properties for profit. And it should be obvious that every purchaser makes an impact on the market, they're deliberately playing with the numbers to try and underplay their impact. And this one: quote:Invitation Homes stabilized local housing markets, spurred economic growth, and created jobs after the financial crisis. While it’s a small part of the overall market, the company is helping address the undersupply of housing in its communities – providing greater options for families who need or want to rent. This is spun bullshit. They "stabilized" local housing markets at higher price points. They "spurred economic growth" and "created jobs" in a way no different than families buying those same homes would have. They "address the undersupply of housing" by converting purchasable property into leased property and charging you for it. It is purely exploitative no matter how much sugar they try to pour onto this poo poo sandwich.
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Jun 10, 2021 21:46
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Something that keeps needing to be repeated here is that investors are buying up lovely properties for lower prices, sprucing them up slightly, and then renting them out eternally. This is true for the mom & pops as well as the big institutions. Even the algorithm using companies vacuuming poo poo up are targeting properties they can get cheap(er). That is not who is beating most of you out on your bids, or who are driving prices up. NPR's Planet Money did a recent report on homelessness and covered the real issue. The real issue is that lack of construction has forced wealthier people to start competing for homes that were once being sought by middle-class people, which spikes prices and forces the middle-class house hunters to compete for smaller homes, which spikes prices and forces people with less money to start competing for even smaller homes...and then at the bottom the people with the least just get hosed and are out on the street or hot bunking with extended family in a garage ADU. Just look at the ridiculous numbers being tossed around in this thread. Some of you guys are very wealthy to be able to even bid on million+ homes and are still losing out to people with even more money. The house I bought for my family in Riverside cost far more than what professors in my department spent 10 years ago AND it is a much smaller house than what they own. We're two middle career professionals with kids who bought a house that 10 years ago might have been good for early career couples starting a family? Where do those people go? Well looking at the people I know in Riverside, they are buying duplexes or still renting. And on it goes down the chain...
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Jun 10, 2021 21:57
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I don’t think this is particularly tenable long term. Nothing lasts forever.
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Jun 10, 2021 22:10
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Anonymous Zebra posted:NPR's Planet Money did a recent report on homelessness and covered the real issue. The real issue is that lack of construction has forced wealthier people to start competing for homes that were once being sought by middle-class people, which spikes prices and forces the middle-class house hunters to compete for smaller homes, which spikes prices and forces people with less money to start competing for even smaller homes...and then at the bottom the people with the least just get hosed and are out on the street or hot bunking with extended family in a garage ADU. Exactly. Institutional investors, landlords, overseas investors, etc. are all just red herrings; supply is simply not keeping up with demand. This is especially pronounced in prosperous areas, where you have all societal classes fighting over the same chunk of available housing. Narrow that down further, to SFH, and you have a real shortage-based explosion in prices. Attempting to lower demand is fraught with issues. You either reduce access to loans, which hurts low-income the most, or you enact laws to lower the % of rentals, which also likely impacts low-income individuals and negates property rights.
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Jun 10, 2021 22:12
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QuarkJets posted:This is spun bullshit. They "stabilized" local housing markets at higher price points. They "spurred economic growth" and "created jobs" in a way no different than families buying those same homes would have. They "address the undersupply of housing" by converting purchasable property into leased property and charging you for it. It is purely exploitative no matter how much sugar they try to pour onto this poo poo sandwich. So like, capitalism? The power these huge investment firms can exert over the process is troubling to say the least. Still, the fundamental problem is that shelter, an essential of life, is largely being controlled by people seeking to maximally profit from it. All those wall street firm's SFHs being transferred to the ownership of mom and pop landlords doesn't resolve the underlying issue. Just alleviates it a bit.
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Jun 10, 2021 22:15
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B-Nasty posted:Exactly. Institutional investors, landlords, overseas investors, etc. are all just red herrings; supply is simply not keeping up with demand. This is especially pronounced in prosperous areas, where you have all societal classes fighting over the same chunk of available housing. Narrow that down further, to SFH, and you have a real shortage-based explosion in prices. This is where I've come down on the issue. I posted it a while back, but if you look at a place's inventory by year built statistics anywhere in the bay area it will tend to look something like this:  Nationally, it looks something like this:   It was already bad prior to the financial crisis. After 2008, housing production also fell off a cliff (more charts here)
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Jun 10, 2021 23:41
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Anonymous Zebra posted:NPR's Planet Money did a recent report on homelessness and covered the real issue. The real issue is that lack of construction has forced wealthier people to start competing for homes that were once being sought by middle-class people, which spikes prices and forces the middle-class house hunters to compete for smaller homes, which spikes prices and forces people with less money to start competing for even smaller homes...and then at the bottom the people with the least just get hosed and are out on the street or hot bunking with extended family in a garage ADU. Agreed entirely. We need to simply build more homes because demand is strongly outpacing supply. While investors buying out homes and turning them into rentals is a problem it doesn't look like it's that significant and they're targeting higher priced homes for snowbirds and folks going on vacation to places like Las Vegas, Miami and Phoenix. For those that are interested, check out this report that came out today on Redfin, https://twitter.com/FairweatherPhD/status/1403063925529272321?s=20
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Jun 10, 2021 23:44
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Pollyanna posted:I don’t think this is particularly tenable long term. Nothing lasts forever. I disagree. What's happening right now has been happening for years and pre-dates the pandemic. Right now inventory is limited (in some places) so the scramble is real, but I don't think that's affecting prices nearly as much as some people here are hoping. Inventory will open up eventually, and more houses will be for sale, but I don't predict a price drop really. What will change is that buyers will be able to negotiate more contingencies and such since there won't be no other options on the market at the time, but I don't believe we'll see prices drop because honestly they were doing this before COVID in a lot of places. When I looked at homes in Riverside before moving here from Switzerland, the houses my wife and I were targeting were at high 300Ks. By the time we arrived here and started dipping our toes in open houses they were firmly in the 400Ks. By the time we bought a place it was mid-500K. That's measuring a time from mid-2015 to 2018, long before the pandemic, but the slope of the line on the Zestimates is essentially the same.
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Jun 11, 2021 00:05
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The Puppy Bowl posted:So like, capitalism? The power these huge investment firms can exert over the process is troubling to say the least. Still, the fundamental problem is that shelter, an essential of life, is largely being controlled by people seeking to maximally profit from it. All those wall street firm's SFHs being transferred to the ownership of mom and pop landlords doesn't resolve the underlying issue. Just alleviates it a bit. Yes, this is one of the predictable evils of capitalism for sure. The corporate firms are trying to spin it as altruism, as shown here, which is some mix of hilarious and utterly evil
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Jun 11, 2021 00:21
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I rescaled the bars linearly so each would cover the same number of years, instead of having 100+years/20 years / 20 years/20 years/10 years /6 years  The last bar is probably an underestimate compared to a hypothetical 2020 retrospective, since I just linearly scaled it; the economy of late 2010s was better than economy of early 2010s. Still, I think it's more accurate than having bars represent different ranges. Tunicate fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Jun 11, 2021 |
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Jun 11, 2021 00:22
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El Mero Mero posted:This is where I've come down on the issue. I posted it a while back, but if you look at a place's inventory by year built statistics anywhere in the bay area it will tend to look something like this: To top that off, about 70% of housing built 1940-1975 was built to "almost tear down, new" quality, which means a lot of what was built in that era has either fallen apart, or was later rebuilt on site There's a ton of really tragic housing in Texas that even squatters won't live in Modern building codes at least allow for 100 years of habitation before it needs to be replaced as a tear down. There's an alarming amount of housing in Austin that has no insulation. My buddy did a remodel and besides the roof framing and the foundation he built an entirely new house It's not suprising that disposable, "tiny houses" are making a come back, as it's shelter that a fry cook at McDonald's can actually afford
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Jun 11, 2021 00:28
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