|
pig slut lisa posted:When I explain this to people I like to That's not a good analogy. Cars depreciate very quickly, so good used cars are actually really affordable. That's not true for most houses. A house that cost $100k in 1990 is likely worth several times that now, despite the real estate crash, whereas a car that cost $20k in 1990 is worth a small fraction of that price now. Even in the worst case, it's hard to find a house that actually loses a significant fraction of its value on that timescale, which is the opposite of the car world. People aren't freaking out that poor people can't afford brand new houses, the issue is that good old houses are extremely expensive and new developments aren't ever any cheaper because there's less profit to be made in producing lower-income housing. So poor people get shafted with higher payments no matter what, because developers just want to build really expensive low-density housing, which isn't too great for the renter market.
|
#
¿
Jun 9, 2015 07:04
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 19, 2024 16:30 |
|
|
Shifty Pony posted:Actually it is true for houses. If you haven't plowed money into major renovations the house is likely worth less today than it was then. It is just that land appreciation masks it and land in desirable areas has gone way way up because cities have prevented it from being used for anything but single family homes. That may be true wherever you live (Detroit?) but it's not true in most of the country. Even after the housing bubble popped, most homes retained at least their original value, and many are worth much more. Case study: Phoenix was hit particularly hard by the housing bubble, but a house there worth $100k in 2005 is worth $200k today. Treating the land as a separate commodity in an attempt to obfuscate the point is extremely weird because usually you don't buy the land and the home separately, they come together. Most people aren't buying homes, bulldozing them, and then building new homes. Either way the car analogy is bad QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Jun 10, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Jun 10, 2015 21:34
|
|
|
pig slut lisa posted:I understand why you think land and structures are the same commodity. Nope, I never said that. What I said is that they are usually sold together. We also weren't talking about commercial properties, but rather single family houses, where it is rare to sell the land under a house and not the house itself or vice versa. The idea was that single family houses are like cars and that there are plenty of old used cars on the market that poor people can afford due to depreciation, so the question was "why aren't there plenty of old used houses on the market that poor people can afford, too?" The answer is that most houses grown in value. It's true that this includes the value of the land under the house, and that the house itself might be depreciatng, but that's a pointless distinction to draw when most sellers won't let you buy just the house and not the land under it. Even condos, which don't come with any land at all, don't depreciate nearly as fast as a car does. Often they even gain some value over time All I'm saying is that it's a bad analogy because home depreciation/appreciation is not similar to car depreciation, and car depreciation is why there is such a healthy inventory of affordable cars
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2015 01:41
|
|