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Shooting Blanks posted:Isn't commercial real estate - and I mean primarily primarily Class A and Class B office space - still in dire straits? Not everywhere - excepting SF and DC, maybe NYC. Even the partial returns to office, hybrid environments, etc. aren't filling it back up to pre-pandemic levels. I haven't seen anything on it in awhile, and the only person I know who deals in commercial mostly does industrial. According to the brokers I've talked to, there's a huge amount of "ghost" inventory out there. Full floors that are leased with long term contracts (think companies with multiple floors, but only need 1 or 2 now), but available at a moment's notice if you are willing to sub or take over the lease, but not officially on the market. Landlords are not letting anyone break their leases early for any reason. So if you're a company that needs a floor worth of space, there's a huge amount of inventory available right now.
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Jun 27, 2023 00:47
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Celexi posted:You can have room to do things. There are public parks! You do have to share them with other people though. As for the American idea of building wealth, home maintenance, taxes and so on actually mean you lose wealth. You can build way more wealth while renting if you know what to do unless you bought your home cash. . In the US home ownership is unquestionably better than renting as far as building up wealth is concerned. In the couple of years since I got my place my mortgage has barely budged due to taxes (and home maintenance has been negligible) meanwhile the apartment complex I was living in has raised rent by about 35% since 2020.
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Jun 27, 2023 01:06
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Maybe it works out if you lock into a rent controlled place but otherwise yea, rents are way up.
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Jun 27, 2023 01:52
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Seems like that would be highly dependent on population growth where you buy. Every abandoned ruin is someone who gave up selling and eventually wrote it off.
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Jun 27, 2023 02:10
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Rent control should be everywhere in america and housing a right so americans don't waste their life building up wealth and making themselves tethered for life to an ever-increasing liability.
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Jun 27, 2023 03:53
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Celexi posted:Rent control should be everywhere in america and housing a right so americans don't waste their life building up wealth and making themselves tethered for life to an ever-increasing liability. Yes but then number go not up, especially for the olds that reliably vote.
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Jun 27, 2023 05:07
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:America is the only country with government subsidized fixed-rate 30-year mortgages. Question - how are they subsidized? VVV Thanks! mmkay fucked around with this message at 13:00 on Jun 27, 2023 |
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Jun 27, 2023 09:54
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mmkay posted:Question - how are they subsidized? There's a lot of ways, but the tl;dr version is: Indirectly: - The federal government acts as a guarantor or direct issuer of most mortgages (FHA, VA, AG, etc.), which lowers interest rates. - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created by the government to stabilize interest rates and provide liquidity for mortgages. - Through those two mechanisms, they fix the mortgage rates for 30-year periods. Whereas, most other countries have shorter periods or variable rate mortgages who have their interest rate and payments change every X years. Directly: - Mortgage interest payments are tax-deductible. - The first half a million dollars in capital gains on your home is exempt from taxes. - State and local home-ownership taxes are deductible from your federal taxes.
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Jun 27, 2023 12:50
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Shooting Blanks posted:Isn't commercial real estate - and I mean primarily primarily Class A and Class B office space - still in dire straits? Not everywhere - excepting SF and DC, maybe NYC. Even the partial returns to office, hybrid environments, etc. aren't filling it back up to pre-pandemic levels. I haven't seen anything on it in awhile, and the only person I know who deals in commercial mostly does industrial. Near where I live the old town district finally took some steps to start dealing with this. My GF worked in an office complex that took up a whole city block. Pre-pandemic it was full, the atrium always bustling during lunch, the lunch deli's doing well, etc. In 2022, when they finally "got back" into the office, it was a ghost town. loving eerie as hell. Aside from the 3 employees that opted to return to her office (GF included in that), they'd see maybe one person every couple of days walking around who wasn't the janitor. This is like a 4-5 story building taking up a whole block. The township/city government finally, as of this summer, finally said "enough of that poo poo" and forced the building owner to disclose occupancy rates, space usage, and active lease terms. Similar to what Unknown said, they were playing games with "Ghost" inventory and leases by inventing leases that ultimately traced back to themselves or subsidiaries, but weren't listed at all. The door and badge swipe records showed that the building was like 99.99% empty, It was rated for something like 5000 workers and had something like 150 individual offices ranging in size from 5-10 person small offices to 50+ person suites. 14 unique people actively worked there and had swiped in over the last year. Only 7 had swiped in more than 3 times in the last year. So they held a public vote to reclaim the building and rezone it for mixed use purposes. It thankfully passed and now is slated to be turned into one of those 4 over 1 style buildings. Still not sure if they're going to fully demo the place and rebuild or just retrofit it (if you can even do that with a building like that). But at least they took steps to fix the problem instead of just letting some landlord play gently caress-gently caress games with a massive empty space in an otherwise active city area. My GF's new office though, it's exactly the same. It's off on it's own little section though next to overpriced condos and townhouses, but the whole thing is a cul de sac of empty office buildings that's supposed to be a commercial district. Everything is empty, the only food shop nearby closed the other week because the rent is still crazy high and there are no workers around. You'd think, with there being condos/townhouses within walking distance that there would be more foot traffic, but there's something about a totally empty office complex that just repels people. So once again it's just her and her two office mates, with the random Exec or whoever stopping in for a day because they're on travel. It's so infuriating.
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Jun 27, 2023 14:25
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Foxfire_ posted:At $300k/year it is pretty trivial to find someplace nice to buy in San Francisco. 2-3 bedroom places in the western half of the city are $1-2m. $300k is enough to cover a mortgage on that without going over the traditional "don't spend more than 28% of your income on mortgage payments rule". What it won't do is pay for a giant mansion with a big yard (which mostly don't exist inside the city anyway) The X% of income is for housing costs, not just a mortgage. You need to include insurance, taxes, utilities and maintenance in that.
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Jun 27, 2023 15:14
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I don't even know what the gently caress I would do with $300,000 a year from work.
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Jun 27, 2023 16:30
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Neo Rasa posted:I don't even know what the gently caress I would do with $300,000 a year from work. Complain about getting “only” $300k of course.
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Jun 27, 2023 16:31
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Neo Rasa posted:I don't even know what the gently caress I would do with $300,000 a year from work. I'd get a new GPU and finally pick up a PS5. I would probably also splurge and get a second fancy cocktail at happy hour.
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Jun 27, 2023 16:35
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Neo Rasa posted:I don't even know what the gently caress I would do with $300,000 a year from work. A "baseline" Disney World trip without any extra or nice stuff costs about $7,000 for a family: https://www.mousehacking.com/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-go-to-disney-world That's for two adults, one young child, one older one.
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Jun 27, 2023 16:52
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Professor Beetus posted:I'd get a new GPU and finally pick up a PS5. I would probably also splurge and get a second fancy cocktail at happy hour. I went from being a grad student researcher to getting a tech job, and my income septupled overnight. This is literally exactly how I reacted (minus the GPU). I would also like to point out how dumb it is that my income shifted like that; the work I was doing as a grad student was objectively more useful to humanity than what I was doing at my tech job. My theory is that people are paid inversely to their contribution to society, which is why artists and teachers are paid peanuts and MBAs get infinite money.
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Jun 27, 2023 16:54
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cat botherer posted:I long for the days when drivers merely talked on their phones. I dread to ask: what do they do now? Watch Netflix?
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Jun 27, 2023 18:11
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Mourning Due posted:I dread to ask: what do they do now? Watch Netflix?
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Jun 27, 2023 18:46
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This is quite amazing https://twitter.com/stacyking/status/1673460209568677888 If I understand correctly, they create fake books and than have it "read" thousands of times by click farms to get the kindle unlimited money from amazon, and its only becoming visible because some of those books ended up in bestselling books lists I dont understand why it would screwing real authors, though.
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Jun 27, 2023 19:58
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Elias_Maluco posted:I dont understand why it would screwing real authors, though.
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Jun 27, 2023 20:08
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It screws real authors presumably because they get bumped down in the lists, which is a major source of customer discovery. The problem here is really about clickfarms rather than AI generated books, though.
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Jun 27, 2023 20:08
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Elias_Maluco posted:I dont understand why it would screwing real authors, though. They get paid a percentage froma money pool, and it's based on pages read iirc. Lemme try to find the article
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Jun 27, 2023 20:09
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Because being on the Amazon bestselling lists is how you make money on your ebook. Ah yes, makes sense Vegetable posted:It screws real authors presumably because they get bumped down in the lists, which is a major source of customer discovery. Yes, the AI part is the least important thing in the whole thing
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Jun 27, 2023 20:11
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From seven years ago, but now imagine AI are both the writers, AND creating fake clicks/page reads: https://observer.com/2016/04/how-amazon-kindle-unlimited-scammers-wring-big-money-from-phony-books/
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Jun 27, 2023 20:17
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Behind the Bastards just covered a bit of this. They had been paying people to crank out book like writing but thanks to chatgpt and the like they can skip that step and list their garbage faster. Robert's focus is on children's books since the sales there are aimed more at tricking parents. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-ai-is-coming-for-117712422/
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Jun 27, 2023 21:42
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duz posted:Behind the Bastards just covered a bit of this. They had been paying people to crank out book like writing but thanks to chatgpt and the like they can skip that step and list their garbage faster. Robert's focus is on children's books since the sales there are aimed more at tricking parents. Yeah, that's where i remember it.
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Jun 27, 2023 21:57
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Neo Rasa posted:I don't even know what the gently caress I would do with $300,000 a year from work. Dump 2/3 to 3/4 of it into long term investments and retire after a couple of years because just the RoI alone would be enough to live comfortably off of by that point, let alone spending any of the actual principal.
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Jun 28, 2023 00:05
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Neo Rasa posted:I don't even know what the gently caress I would do with $300,000 a year from work. Live what the previous generation would refer to as a normal middle class life.
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Jun 28, 2023 00:08
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cat botherer posted:Anything. Everything. Texting itself is worse than driving drunk, when you're doing it. But people also play games, read crap, yeah probably watch Netflix too. I saw a woman driving like poo poo yesterday and assumed she was texting but was actually doing her makeup with the visor mirror,
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Jun 28, 2023 00:28
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Elias_Maluco posted:This is quite amazing I believe Kindle unlimited is a pool of subscription fees and authors get paid from that pool according to how much their book was read relative to others. So, the fake books are draining the pool and real authors who have real people reading their books aren't getting anything.
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Jun 28, 2023 02:23
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Professor Beetus posted:I'd get a new GPU and finally pick up a PS5. I would probably also splurge and get a second fancy cocktail at happy hour. If I got paid 300K I would even actually be happy at happy hour!
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Jun 28, 2023 03:10
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I don't think my life would change very much, I'd have a modestly bigger apartment and more stupid poo poo I don't need.
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Jun 28, 2023 03:49
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I'd sooner read URGENT CHARACTER NAME or 'wait you love me' with the seagull, than whatever is human produced in the Young Adult Contemporary Romance category. But seriously, it's depressing to see one of the most powerful companies in the world, with its owner literally the richest person alive, to serve this crap to customers, while simultaneously hurting its partners. I've been working with ACX (they are the publisher support behind Audible, so another Amazon company) and they have the least competent support people I ever had business with. Some of them don't understand the basics of email messaging, attachments, file sizes, to say nothing of their language skills. I can only imagine how little they're paid. Why does Amazon get away with this grrr
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Jun 28, 2023 10:10
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Doctor Malaver posted:Why does Amazon get away with this grrr Everyone is too overworked and poor. We all know Amazon is poo poo, evil, and treats its employees, customers, and partners like garbage.... but most people are just too tired and poor to not use the most convenient options available.
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Jun 28, 2023 13:36
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I wouldn't even know where to go to get mainstream audiobooks that isn't audible. They made themselves so ubiquitous in the audiobook space they drove off any major competition.
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Jun 28, 2023 13:54
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Everyone is too overworked and poor. We all know Amazon is poo poo, evil, and treats its employees, customers, and partners like garbage.... but most people are just too tired and poor to not use the most convenient options available. Nah, people just like convenience and low prices over almost anything else.
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Jun 28, 2023 13:55
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Kwyndig posted:I wouldn't even know where to go to get mainstream audiobooks that isn't audible. They made themselves so ubiquitous in the audiobook space they drove off any major competition. The library. Libby/Overdrive/Hoopla.
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Jun 28, 2023 13:55
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withoutclass posted:The library. Libby/Overdrive/Hoopla.
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Jun 28, 2023 14:00
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Jose Valasquez posted:Live what the previous generation would refer to as a normal middle class life. By "normal middle class life," you of course mean "lifestyle out of reach of all but the top-earning 5% of households."
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Jun 28, 2023 14:30
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withoutclass posted:The library. Libby/Overdrive/Hoopla. This a thousand times over. I live overseas and my library card in the states still works and there’s a pretty solid selection all the time (Libby’s UI is a bit odd in spots)
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Jun 28, 2023 14:39
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Tuxedo Gin posted:I believe Kindle unlimited is a pool of subscription fees and authors get paid from that pool according to how much their book was read relative to others. So, the fake books are draining the pool and real authors who have real people reading their books aren't getting anything. Thats seems pretty unfair to the authors
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Jun 28, 2023 16:46
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