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Leperflesh posted:I've just reviewed the last page to be sure: no posters put value judgements like "good" and "bad" there. Yeah that's true, I took the distinction that was being drawn as implying that small investors don't matter as much to the overall problem but no one actually came right out and said that. However this: quote:e. to answer your other question, it was already mentioned before: exactly how different investors buy can matter. A small-time investor with 1-9 properties seems unlikely to make "sight-unseen" offers on properties: one bad purchase can sink them. This just seems wrong in my experience, but ymmv
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Apr 13, 2024 22:47
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The challenge is that there is right now at least multiple trillions of dollars of money seeking safe harbor. It doesn't like the high inflation, it is not loving low yields of bonds, apparently overbought stocks, and shaky economies globally. Houses seem safe and can give a high return. I think short of banning investment in property, we have to do things that reduce its attractiveness as an investment. One thing to do is heavily tax vacant property, which at least tends to force those investors to rent the properties they buy out. The cost of running them as rentals balanced against the cost of a vacancy tax would mean the overall return of investing in homes would drop, and that in turn should reduce somewhat its attractiveness as a speculative asset. The other seemingly-obvious thing to do is flood the market with inventory.
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Apr 13, 2024 22:49
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QuarkJets posted:This just seems wrong in my experience, but ymmv Can you expound on this because a mom and pop LLC with 4 properties in their portfolio seem unlikely to buy houses not in their geographic location without seeing them. The iBuy metrics posted earlier back this up, the number of houses purchased that way is not a substantial portion of houses bought. Keep in mind, rent supply is also low, that's why rent prices are also increasing. Shifting that supply from rentals to private sales would help home buyers but hurt renters. Moving the other way would just move the pain. You also need a certain amount of vacant (if nothing is vacant your going to have upward pressure on rent and asking prices again). This is an extremely complex problem.
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Apr 14, 2024 00:30
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Trying to solve this problem on the demand side is ineffective at best.
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Apr 14, 2024 12:00
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The only way out of this is new construction, and the only way out of THAT in a lot of areas is getting rid of restrictive zoning that prevents high density housing from being built. Want cheaper housing in SF? Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you're going to have to bulldoze some charming older neighborhoods and build big 'ol loving apartment buildings that are going to block some people's view of the bay. Yes, the skyline is going to change. Given the way things work I can also pretty much guarantee that low and middle income people will be disproportionately affected by this, because the people who have been NIMBY'ing the gently caress out of everything for the last fifty years will still have the money and connections to make sure it's not THEIR block that gets redeveloped or THEIR view that gets wrecked.
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Apr 14, 2024 12:38
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To put things into perspective, here are some pictures of New York City around the time of the Civil War:   It's a whole city of ~4-6 story brick buildings that in a lot of ways looks like parts of Boston and Baltimore that still survive from that period. I'm not going to bother posting pics of what it looks like today, everyone knows that. Huge chunks of the city - minus a few churches and other random buildings - was demolished and rebuilt between the Civil War and WW2. Some of that was to house commercial stuff, but a fair bit of it was to create taller, bigger buildings to cram people into. And it worked. The city had a recorded population of a bit over 950,000 in 1870 (likely higher due to immigrants not getting picked up by the census) and 7.4 million by 1940. Want bigger cities? You've got two choices on where to put all the people - build outward or build upward. We've long since exhausted the ability to build outward in a lot of areas, either because of the harsh realities of geography or because there's just an upper limit on how many hours you can make someone commute to work. So the only real option is building upward, and to build upward you've got to gently caress some people's day up. Sometimes it's going to be a rich person who's very expensive view gets ruined. Sometimes it's going to be a historically important minority neighborhood that gets bulldozed. Ideally you fairly compensate everyone and make sure the process doesn't unfairly do the latter in favor of the former, but we also live in a society that runs on money and influence so I doubt we're going to be any better at not loving the poor than we have been at any other point in our history. Still, that's how you fix this problem. It's a pretty obvious solution that is the only one that has historically worked, and has been demonstrated to do so many times around the globe. But it's a bitter pill that a lot of people don't want to swallow.
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Apr 14, 2024 12:50
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Cyrano4747 posted:. Why not... downward!?!? 
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Apr 14, 2024 17:17
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Cyrano4747 posted:To put things into perspective, here are some pictures of New York City around the time of the Civil War: But you'll ruin the character and charm of the neighborhood!!!
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Apr 14, 2024 18:16
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Who would like some artifical intelligent concept? I bet you would. I'm too lazy to strip out the images, rehost and post them at the moment but I also don't want to not post this. https://www.redfin.com/VT/Waitsfield/North-Rd-05673/home/185289039 I do think Vermont could use a castle. I also found the effort of this listing to be much higher than most even ignoring the dumb AI concepts. Showing the boundaries (well not legally exactly but close enough)? Showing the road?! Incredible. Duck and Cover fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Apr 14, 2024 |
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Apr 14, 2024 19:17
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QuarkJets posted:But you'll ruin the character and charm of the neighborhood!!! The character will be 15 story soviet style apartment blocks with paper thin walls and you'll like it 
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Apr 14, 2024 19:33
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"Partially Finished Driveway" and "Expensive and Likely Unpermittable Reason Driveway is only Partially Finished and there is no house here" 
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Apr 14, 2024 21:00
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Motronic posted:"Partially Finished Driveway" and "Expensive and Likely Unpermittable Reason Driveway is only Partially Finished and there is no house here" Possibly but you could get a castle! A CASTLE or maybe a log cabin, imagine! I'm liking the use of papyrus. quote:Current owners have installed a partially completed Mike Marino crafted driveway that, if completed, would cross the stream and some wetlands back to a cleared house site. Mike Marino? OH my GOD thee Mike Marino? Wait what's this about wetlands? Duck and Cover fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Apr 14, 2024 |
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Apr 14, 2024 21:32
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Motronic posted:"Partially Finished Driveway" and "Expensive and Likely Unpermittable Reason Driveway is only Partially Finished and there is no house here" You are definitely going to get ambushed by goblins
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Apr 15, 2024 03:01
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Cyrano4747 posted:The only way out of this is new construction, and the only way out of THAT in a lot of areas is getting rid of restrictive zoning that prevents high density housing from being built. One thing that really strikes me is just how hosed zoning is in some areas. The little city north of Dallas where I spend a lot of time now has something like half the city in "Special Zoning" because the standard zonings are so restrictive no one can build anything meaningful. The "Future City Development" plan they published basically puts 90% of the city into Special Zoning because any sort of mixed use even just co-located uses are not allowed in the standard zoning codes. Having to create a special zoning code for every new construction also adds a lot of cost to development projects.
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Apr 15, 2024 04:08
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Far north Dallas suburbs are a lot like California: gently caress you if you want to build anything other than very low density mcmansion suburbs. I'll die before I let you put townhomes, let alone apartment buildings within a mile of my house 
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Apr 15, 2024 04:18
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Hadlock posted:Far north Dallas suburbs are a lot like California: gently caress you if you want to build anything other than very low density mcmansion suburbs. I'll die before I let you put townhomes, let alone apartment buildings within a mile of my house I mean......people often buy homes in the suburbs to escape the rental apartment building dynamic so I get it. I don't know how to fix it, but I get it. Even people in townhouse developments often use their HOA to restrict the number of units that are rentals. There is no nice way to put it that's not going to hurt feeling and ruffle feathers, but I can bring you around to a few townhouse mills and ask you if you think they are primarily owner occupied or not and you would be able to accurately identify each situation. I can do this where I live now, I can do the same in every other place I've lived. It's a thing.
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Apr 15, 2024 13:51
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The junk collector posted:One thing that really strikes me is just how hosed zoning is in some areas. The little city north of Dallas where I spend a lot of time now has something like half the city in "Special Zoning" because the standard zonings are so restrictive no one can build anything meaningful. A past coworker of mine made a Twitter bot that tweeted every single residential lot in Boston, as well as how it violated the building / zoning rules, because practically all of them did. Mostly through inadequate setbacks. Actually building a new house that adhered to all the rules would have been practically impossible and financially infeasible.
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Apr 15, 2024 14:02
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:A past coworker of mine made a Twitter bot that tweeted every single residential lot in Boston, as well as how it violated the building / zoning rules, because practically all of them did. Mostly through inadequate setbacks. Actually building a new house that adhered to all the rules would have been practically impossible and financially infeasible. Yes, this is typical in a lot of places. It's a great money maker for the city and its real estate lawyers and architects because everyone has to sit in front of a zoning hearing board with elevations and plot plans to even have a shot at building anything meaningful. Just as intended: the zoning laws aren't the law, they are the excuse for the ZHB to get to decide individually on each lot based on who wants to build what. It is a favorite of NIMBYs because not only can they stack the ZHB there are typically public comment (read: grievance) periods for all of this that can require more studies, more money from the applicant for those studies, and general delays ad nauseum.
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Apr 15, 2024 14:06
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Add in various flavors of privately-run but publicly-funded neighborhood organizations which just serve to gather and amplify the voices of retired home owners against change before proposals even make it to official city meetings and you have a recipe for exacerbating the housing crisis. I was on mine for a little bit where I last lived as part of a YIMBY pushback, but, looking at Google Maps, only one of the multifamily buildings along the light rail that was raised got built... so many empty lots and single-story commercial in an area theoretically rezoned for medium-density, mixed-use development. e: New, giant mansions along the river right in the middle of the city? Flew through without objection from anyone but us urbanists. Cugel the Clever fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Apr 15, 2024 |
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Apr 15, 2024 15:48
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Motronic posted:I mean...... Yeah I'm not disagreeing with you on why it happens If you look at all the "master planned" suburbs of Dallas, Plano and Frisco in particular, it's ALL SFH and these are not small cities, Plano is very roughly 15x15 miles, roughly 4.5 times the land area of San Francisco, and 350,000 people almost half the population. But it's all SFH and the rare apartment complexes sit next to the highways at the literal edge of town. The justification given in the 70s for those at all to be built was to allow school teachers to live in the community they serve The city plan is giant megablocks 1x1 mile wide with an elementary school at the center of each and SFH inside, with strip malls at the outside corners. There was recently a push to allow those underutilized strip malls with too much parking into 4 over 1 combo retail with apartments. This was roundly rejected by city hall as "would ruin neighborhood character" and citing increase in population density would increase crime in those areas  hmm where have I heard these arguments before
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Apr 15, 2024 17:56
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Hadlock posted:There was recently a push to allow those underutilized strip malls with too much parking into 4 over 1 combo retail with apartments. This was roundly rejected by city hall as "would ruin neighborhood character" and citing increase in population density would increase crime in those areas If your "neighborhood character" is a strip mall aestetic it probably needs to be ruined.
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Apr 15, 2024 18:53
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The neighborhood/city is still in the "everyone in this city are the original occupants of the homes" phase. The school district is actually closing several schools (not for lack of money) because all their kids grew up and moved away and nobody is moving out but they're all getting older. They don't want to see any kind of change at all. Classic California boomer, just time shifted 15 years and 1000 miles
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Apr 15, 2024 19:00
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Trying to solve this problem on the demand side is ineffective at best. If population less than housing stock than problem solved.
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Apr 15, 2024 20:50
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Motronic posted:Even people in townhouse developments often use their HOA to restrict the number of units that are rentals.. From what I understand this is still driven by lenders. A high rental rate can prevent someone from getting a conventional conforming mortgage. So you need to restrict it or ir can be a pain to sell, all things being equal the new owner can end up with a higher rate making the property less attractive or priced lower. How true this is and how it plays out I am not sure, seems like the threat from lenders is enough to make it a reality. E: I do see conflicting info on the web about it though. spwrozek fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Apr 15, 2024 |
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Apr 15, 2024 20:54
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spwrozek posted:From what I understand this is still driven by lenders. A high rental rate can prevent someone from getting a conventional conforming mortgage. So you need to restrict it or ir can be a pain to sell, all things being equal the new owner can end up with a higher rate making the property less attractive or priced lower. How true this is and how it plays out I am not sure, seems like the threat from lenders is enough to make it a reality. I've heard that before but never from a credible source nor with any sort of reasoning for how renters make an owner occupied mortage in the same area more risky.
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Apr 15, 2024 21:30
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When we bought our condo I don't recall disclosing the rental rate in our building to the lender
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Apr 15, 2024 21:35
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Hadlock posted:When we bought our condo I don't recall disclosing the rental rate in our building to the lender Ours required the HOA to provide documentation providing the maximum renter percentage. It's all lies and horseshit and there are WAY more rented units than the 12% cap listed in the docs, but Rocket Mortgage definitely asked for it.
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Apr 15, 2024 21:40
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Sundae posted:Ours required the HOA to provide documentation providing the maximum renter percentage. It's all lies and horseshit and there are WAY more rented units than the 12% cap listed in the docs, but Rocket Mortgage definitely asked for it. It can also gently caress stuff up for the owners. A friend is currently dealing with a good chunk of his condo being airbnb and it loving sucks.
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Apr 15, 2024 21:49
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I remember Rocket Mortgage wanting the rental rate of some townhomes we looked at recently, and in the distant past we had a mortgage broker who said that it only matters if it's greater than 50%. It probably varies by region
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Apr 15, 2024 22:43
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Cyrano4747 posted:It can also gently caress stuff up for the owners. A friend is currently dealing with a good chunk of his condo being airbnb and it loving sucks. Yeah......average renters dont have much "skin in the game" but that pales in comparison to AirBnB/short term rentals. That would truly suck to live full time in a place that turned into mostly that.
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Apr 15, 2024 22:51
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The constantly churning cast of characters kinda sucks, but on the other hand airbnb operators have more incentive to keep the place looking reasonably nice (ongoing marketing) than renters do.
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Apr 15, 2024 22:57
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Eric the Mauve posted:The constantly churning cast of characters kinda sucks, but on the other hand airbnb operators have more incentive to keep the place looking reasonably nice (ongoing marketing) than renters do. His specific problem is that he’s nearish a sports venue and he’s dealing with people partying loudly and coming back even louder on nights he needs to sleep.
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Apr 15, 2024 22:59
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Oh yeah that is a loving nightmare and I would never in a million years live within 5 miles of a major sports/concert venue.
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Apr 15, 2024 22:59
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Motronic posted:Yeah......average renters dont have much "skin in the game" but that pales in comparison to AirBnB/short term rentals. That would truly suck to live full time in a place that turned into mostly that. It’s not only condos. My in laws next door neighbor bought during the pandemic and turned it into a rental property when they left rather than give up that sweet sweet pandemic era mortgage rate. The house is across the street from the development’s pool. There is just a never ending parade of complaints about how the air bnb crowd is treating that amenity. HOA is worthless of course.
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Apr 15, 2024 23:01
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Eric the Mauve posted:Oh yeah that is a loving nightmare and I would never in a million years live within 5 miles of a major sports/concert venue. I live a few blocks from an NFL stadium and it really isn't a big deal. NFL it's probably the best to be near though (it gets used about 15 days a year). I am 1 mile from NBA/NHL and you wouldn't even know it is there. 2 miles from the MLB stadium. 5 miles is a long, long way. The city doesn't allow Airbnb unless you actually live there do we don't run into that party issue. I also love being in the city though.
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Apr 15, 2024 23:15
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Eric the Mauve posted:The constantly churning cast of characters kinda sucks, but on the other hand airbnb operators have more incentive to keep the place looking reasonably nice (ongoing marketing) than renters do. I've had several friends seek out and move into condo buildings with no rental caps with the explicit intention of buying elsewhere in five years and leaving the condo as an AirBnB. I'm deeply skeptical, so it'll be interesting to see how things are looking come 2029.
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Apr 16, 2024 01:59
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We are moving because our landlord is selling the house. Our upstairs neighbor (who is a friend) is buying the house. On Friday, her realtor approached us and said they needed us to sign paperwork terminating our lease (they’d give us a new lease with identical terms to the end of June when our current lease ends) because our below market rent was impacting her lender’s analysis so the lender needed our current lease to officially be gone so they could evaluate on market rent not actual rent. This was delivered in a long wordy email that admitted that technically they couldn’t ask us about this. We asked the realtor to send us what she actually wanted signed. Saturday, she sent over a perfectly standard tenant’s estoppel that confirmed the dates and terms of our current lease, security deposit etc. We pointed out that this didn’t seem to do what she said it would do. She said she wanted to go ahead with signing it. We spent a bunch of time reviewing the tenancy laws. We asked around and though everyone we spoke with (our closing attorney for our own deal and our realtor) agreed that this made no sense, there was no harm in signing confirmation of our current lease terms. Sunday, we said we’d be willing to sign the estoppel. Monday, the realtor sent us a Dotloop version of the estoppel with the lease termination date altered from June 30 to April 22 (the closing date) saying that our landlord had already signed. We were like “loving, no.” Then we spoke to our closing attorney who was like, “absolutely not,” and “don’t talk to her anymore,” and “estoppels can’t do this,” and “why didn’t she do these other much simpler things?” Then we spoke to our landlord’s realtor and his closing attorney wife who (after some confusion) told us that the estoppel that the buying realtor had sent them had the correct June 30 date. They were like, “absolutely not,” and “don’t talk to her anymore,” and “why didn’t she do these other much simpler things?” So I guess now the sellers are going to try to salvage the deal. We have no idea what she is telling our neighbor/friend and every step of this has been unnecessarily shifty and uncomfortable.
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Apr 16, 2024 11:33
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I mean unless I'm missing something it looks straightforward, they tried to pull a fast one on you and failed? "Don't talk to her anymore" is excellent advice and you should follow it. Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 16, 2024 14:10
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We are following the HELL out of it.
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Apr 16, 2024 16:50
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today I learned the word "estoppel"
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