Housing

Chew Toy McCoy

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General discussion, but I’ll start with my 3 point plan to alleviate this mess.

1. Private equity firms are only allowed to own and buy a set low percentage of houses in the market and are only allowed to buy a house after it’s been on the market for at least 3 months.

2. You can only own 2 houses in the state of your primary residency, 1 in a state that isn’t.

3. No foreign investment. If you don’t live here then you can’t buy a house. Related to that, you have to be a legal US resident for at least 2 years before you can buy a house.

This only applies to single family houses. If you want extra income property or to run a personal rental empire then you’ll have to do it with multi-family buildings – duplexes and above. If you currently fall outside these rules then you’ll be selling those houses.

There, I fixed it.
 

NT1440

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I’d like to speak to the constant talk about “nimbys” I’ve seen recently in headlines.

Corporate media will have you believe that people are against housing projects. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find they’re against the idea that “fixing” housing availability is achievable by putting up 200 luxury condos no one can afford and only having to make 10 of them “affordable housing.

I keep seeing this everywhere, the notion that building expensive homes/apartments 10:1 to “affordable” housing will fix housing availability is just plain stupid.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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I’d like to speak to the constant talk about “nimbys” I’ve seen recently in headlines.

Corporate media will have you believe that people are against housing projects. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find they’re against the idea that “fixing” housing availability is achievable by putting up 200 luxury condos no one can afford and only having to make 10 of them “affordable housing.

I keep seeing this everywhere, the notion that building expensive homes/apartments 10:1 to “affordable” housing will fix housing availability is just plain stupid.


I believe part of the theory is people will move to these new luxury condos from where they are living now which will free up where they moved from. This ignores the fact that where they were living before wasn't all that affordable and the owner of that property is just going match the "market". It's in no way freeing up affordable housing.

Here's something insane brought to you by the "work from home" movement. We had a new manager start this week who moved from Santa Cruz (semi-famous coastal college town) to SF because SF is actually cheaper now. Previously a fulltime commute from Santa Cruz to Silicon Valley wasn't appealing, but now if you only have to do it a couple times a week or not at all it's much more appealing. So now the the longer commute areas are becoming more expensive than the shorter commute.

I have a friend who lives and works in Monterey about an hour south of Silicon Valley, not really any high paying jobs to be found. The economy is mostly tourism. Now him and his wife who also works in Monterey are getting priced out because of what I just described.

And while I don't blame people for selling their house for the most they can get, house sales and the rental market is pretty much 100% greed. There's no major downstream expense increase they can blame it on.
 

NT1440

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I believe part of the theory is people will move to these new luxury condos from where they are living now which will free up where they moved from. This ignores the fact that where they were living before wasn't all that affordable and the owner of that property is just going match the "market". It's in no way freeing up affordable housing.

Here's something insane brought to you by the "work from home" movement. We had a new manager start this week who moved from Santa Cruz (semi-famous coastal college town) to SF because SF is actually cheaper now. Previously a fulltime commute from Santa Cruz to Silicon Valley wasn't appealing, but now if you only have to do it a couple times a week or not at all it's much more appealing. So now the the longer commute areas are becoming more expensive than the shorter commute.

I have a friend who lives and works in Monterey about an hour south of Silicon Valley, not really any high paying jobs to be found. The economy is mostly tourism. Now him and his wife who also works in Monterey are getting priced out because of what I just described.

And while I don't blame people for selling their house for the most they can get, house sales and the rental market is pretty much 100% greed. There's no major downstream expense increase they can blame it on.
I mean, in my lifetime, there’s no one that should honestly view a home as an investment vehicle. I’ve seen enough of this bullshit, other than the house of cards we’ve built this economy into on that basis, there is no *actual* reason housing should be a commodity.

My proposal, flip the script. If a developer wants to put up 200 luxury condos, they have to put up at least an equal amount of affordable housing.

Many countries have shown how to do public housing and make wonderful homes and apartments. The problem, like every thing else required for living in this country, is that we view human need as a profit center.
 

Yoused

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General discussion, but I’ll start with my 3 point plan to alleviate this mess.

1. Private equity firms are only allowed to own and buy a set low percentage of houses in the market and are only allowed to buy a house after it’s been on the market for at least 3 months.

2. You can only own 2 houses in the state of your primary residency, 1 in a state that isn’t.

3. No foreign investment. If you don’t live here then you can’t buy a house. Related to that, you have to be a legal US resident for at least 2 years before you can buy a house.

This only applies to single family houses. If you want extra income property or to run a personal rental empire then you’ll have to do it with multi-family buildings – duplexes and above. If you currently fall outside these rules then you’ll be selling those houses.

There, I fixed it.
No, I contend that an apartment landlord should be required to reside in one of the units. No rental empires should be allowed to exist.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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Also I don’t think the timing was intentional here, but part of it feels like “Yes, we admit historically black people have been blocked from buying houses and therefore prevented from creating generational wealth, but now nobody can afford to buy a house so that’s a moot point. But hey, we leveled the playing field. Progress!”
 

lizkat

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On the rental front, with respect to abuse of rent stabilization laws in NYC, some heartening news from Harlem about a now approved class action suit.


Hundreds of tenants across 11 Harlem buildings can now band together to challenge a landlord accused of illegally hiking rents in their stabilized apartments after a state judge approved their unique class action lawsuit last month.

The tenants say the landlord, a collection of single-entity LLCs tied to the firms Big City Properties and Magnolia Holdings, inflated rents by making phony individual apartment improvement claims, failing to register units with the state and withholding stabilized leases despite receiving city tax breaks. Following an investigation by the housing watchdog group Housing Rights Initiative (HRI), residents sued the landlord in 2016 and, after a series of court challenges, won an appeal paving the way for the class action case in 2019.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Sabrina Kraus formally certified the class on Aug. 15, writing that the landlords are accused of “systemic evasion of the rent regulations” and that tenants showed in great detail a “methodical attempt to illegally inflate rents and evade the requirements of rent-stabilization.”

She ordered the landlords to provide the tenants’ attorneys, from the firm Newman Ferrara, with current rent rolls, as well as information about former residents dating back to December 2012 so they can be added to the case. Attorney Roger Sachar said the class could include around 2,000 past and present residents of the 11 buildings who may be entitled to damages as well as new stabilized leases.
 
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