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Post by Marshall on Oct 18, 2021 23:10:50 GMT -5
Strangely enough, the good old American work ethic has always been seen most strong amongst the newest most have-not peoples in the land. Maybe it’s been the immigrant pulling himself up by his/her boot straps that has made this nation as great as it is.
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Post by millring on Oct 19, 2021 4:34:24 GMT -5
Strangely enough, the good old American work ethic has always been seen most strong amongst the newest most have-not peoples in the land. Maybe it’s been the immigrant pulling himself up by his/her boot straps that has made this nation as great as it is. That seems to be the case around Warsaw.
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Post by robjh22 on Oct 19, 2021 8:36:49 GMT -5
Here is one way to fix the housing situation. It won't work, of course. Nothing in America works: The government will need to buy or use its existing land to build small houses that cost, say, $125k, and sell them to individuals or married couples only, not corporations. Only U.S. citizens may buy.
The sale will be conditioned on this: you can't rent out the property, and you cannot flip it for a profit. You can at any time convey it back to the government for the sales price plus some adjustment for inflation. You can build equity and take that equity and do whatever you want, or stay there forever. but neither you nor your heirs or assigns are going to rent it out or sell it some mysterious Chinese or Russian conglomerate or an American hedgefund, no matter what they offer.
Obviously this can't work because everyone will find something in it to object to, probably on constitutional grounds.
"Married? We have to be married??"
"If you want the house, yes, you do."
"We don't need no piece of paper from the city hall and you can't make us!!!"
"Then don't get one."
"Fascism!! And what's this about being an 'American'?"
"It's a condition of the sale"
"Racist!!"
[Mobs with bullhorns assemble. Lawsuits are filed. Project abandoned. And back to the free market we go.]
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Post by howard lee on Oct 19, 2021 8:45:33 GMT -5
Abandoned shopping malls could be retrofitted to accommodate apartments, laundries, classrooms, libraries, communal kitchens/dining rooms, gyms, etc. The structures are already there, many sitting empty. Why not utilize them instead of starting from scratch?
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Post by majorminor on Oct 19, 2021 9:18:40 GMT -5
Yeah if it craters housing will be the driver. It's gotten out of hand. In our little valley the filming crew of that show Yellowstone has locked up a majority of the available rentals and the California Exodus® has blown up housing pricing so even your basic old 1200 sq ft home on a small lot in town is 450K. Want 10 acres with a basic 3/2 house and room for a f*****g horse and few chickens? That's a 800K - million bucks now. Crazy.
So what you see now is the seasonal campgrounds, and every little flat spot on a canyon creek filling with RV's with working class people living in them year round. Also seeing kids and parents combining cash and income to buy a home and both living in it. Lots of young people flopping here and there for short bits of time who are one broken fan belt from losing a crappy job. This real estate boom comes up in most social conversation these days and either you already got yours and are making bank or you are pissed because you can't afford to buy a house in your hometown any more and there is nothing family size to rent for less than $1200 a month. Every time a house listing goes by on Facebook a long list of negative comments follows. People here are pissed.
This is in BF Montana mind you and if you'll recall it sucks here. Hopefully the August snow storms and hungry packs of bears knocking over the gas grills will make them Californians leave.
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Post by epaul on Oct 19, 2021 10:20:46 GMT -5
There's a nice place up for sale jut outside of Newfolden. Nice, three bedroom rambler on a ten acre wooded lot. It is just west of the Maki Boys, but given the prevailing winds, that should rarely be an issue. $85,000.
This country is 90% empty, yet we keep packing all the jobs and people into the remaining 10%, 5% of which has become unsustainable for human life.
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Post by majorminor on Oct 19, 2021 10:28:28 GMT -5
There's a nice place up for sale jut outside of Newfolden. Nice, three bedroom rambler on a ten acre wooded lot. It is just west of the Maki Boys, but given the prevailing winds, that should rarely be an issue. $85,000. This country is 90% empty, yet we keep packing all the jobs and people into the remaining 10%, 5% of which has become unsustainable for human life. Pretty much. It's weird how hot real estate is in some places. 14 acres of prime building ground with mature trees and with all services to property 1 mile from the Kenai River just went up for 68K in Soldotna Alaska. Hell a new truck is 70K. 30 years ago that chunk of ground was 50K. Yeah it's Alaska but it's got every thing outdoors Montana has and then some. Good paying jobs. Just takes another 4 hours of flying to get there and apparently that is the real estate killer.
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Post by millring on Oct 19, 2021 16:38:24 GMT -5
Yeah if it craters housing will be the driver. It's gotten out of hand. In our little valley the filming crew of that show Yellowstone has locked up a majority of the available rentals and the California Exodus® has blown up housing pricing so even your basic old 1200 sq ft home on a small lot in town is 450K. Want 10 acres with a basic 3/2 house and room for a f*****g horse and few chickens? That's a 800K - million bucks now. Crazy. So what you see now is the seasonal campgrounds, and every little flat spot on a canyon creek filling with RV's with working class people living in them year round. Also seeing kids and parents combining cash and income to buy a home and both living in it. Lots of young people flopping here and there for short bits of time who are one broken fan belt from losing a crappy job. This real estate boom comes up in most social conversation these days and either you already got yours and are making bank or you are pissed because you can't afford to buy a house in your hometown any more and there is nothing family size to rent for less than $1200 a month. Every time a house listing goes by on Facebook a long list of negative comments follows. People here are pissed. This is in BF Montana mind you and if you'll recall it sucks here. Hopefully the August snow storms and hungry packs of bears knocking over the gas grills will make them Californians leave. I suspect from my experience as a mail carrier that lots of houses you would never suspect are multifamily dwellings now. And I don't mean just in that failure to launch sense. Many names get mail at the same address -- even in "nice" neighborhoods.
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Post by RickW on Oct 19, 2021 16:53:50 GMT -5
So here’s a question for the Republican/Free Market folks. The real estate market in North America is, like the stock market, a bastion of free enterprise, what the market will bear. In big cities, such as Vancouver, the amount of speculation in the market is insane, and it’s nothing compared to San Francisco and New York, I’m sure. The nicer areas of pretty much every major city in North America are going through this. There has been some foreign investment here from folks with deep pockets, looking for shelters for their money, but the locals also go crazy buying at ridiculous prices, driving them up even more.
So then people can sell their million dollar condo and move to Montana and buy a house for 400k. And with the pandemic driving the ability to work remotely for anyone tied to a keyboard, said folks are heading out. It’s happening here as well.And I hate to say it, but that cat is well out of the bag now. I’m sure the Cali situation is doubly driven by the fires, and I’m not sure Montana is going to be free of that, but I digress.
The only way to have controlled this that I can see is government caps of prices for real estate, in some form or other. I’d be interested to see if anyone has seen other thoughts on this, but I certainly haven’t. And unfortunately now, it’s a bit late, and doing anything about it would likely cause a crash of epic proportions, which would be pretty rough on the fragile economy. But if we wanted to prevent the current insanity, we needed to have put controls on 20 to 30 years ago. The 2000 square foot 90 year old house I grew up in the burbs is now worth north of 2 million. And that is beyond stupid, far beyond the stupid in Montana and Warsaw. I don’t know who is buying places like that.
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Post by jdd2 on Oct 19, 2021 17:47:28 GMT -5
... The only way to have controlled this ... There are a lot of tax quirks (benefits) that could be eliminated. One could be called "live in your flip", where 'living' there for two out of five years means you get a tax free gain (250/500k). Another is the 1031 tax free exchange--for investors, but maybe that's who need to be out of the market to benefit homeowners. And somehow stop the house-as-piggybank scheme, where a person can pull money out of 'their investment' tax free.
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Post by Russell Letson on Oct 19, 2021 18:05:19 GMT -5
Real estate seems to be especially vulnerable to feeding frenzies. Back in 1989, we chatted with the owner of a York B&B, who told about Londoners showing up with literal bags of cash and pricing the locals out of the family-home market. Two factors were behind this: Thatcher-era finance-industry big money and high-speed rail service that made a York-London commute practical. (Of course, the real UK-yuppie solution was a London pied-a-terre flat and a nice Edwardian family place in York.) The northerners were more than a little pissed at the situation.
Severe income inequity operates like this everywhere (including in urban gentrification situations), and I can't see a work-around, given the political clout of those who benefit from such market dynamics.
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Post by aquaduct on Oct 19, 2021 19:41:04 GMT -5
Severe income inequity operates like this everywhere (including in urban gentrification situations), and I can't see a work-around, given the political clout of those who benefit from such market dynamics. That's pretty much what I and my family learned in our 2011 bankruptcy (emphasis mine).
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Post by millring on Oct 20, 2021 4:50:22 GMT -5
So here’s a question for the Republican/Free Market folks. The real estate market in North America is, like the stock market, a bastion of free enterprise, It's broken like most everything else. But what is true is that it's also not really a free market. It's layered on the credit/banking industry, its regulations, and who that empowers.
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Post by aquaduct on Oct 20, 2021 6:39:23 GMT -5
So here’s a question for the Republican/Free Market folks. The real estate market in North America is, like the stock market, a bastion of free enterprise, what the market will bear. In big cities, such as Vancouver, the amount of speculation in the market is insane, and it’s nothing compared to San Francisco and New York, I’m sure. The nicer areas of pretty much every major city in North America are going through this. There has been some foreign investment here from folks with deep pockets, looking for shelters for their money, but the locals also go crazy buying at ridiculous prices, driving them up even more. So then people can sell their million dollar condo and move to Montana and buy a house for 400k. And with the pandemic driving the ability to work remotely for anyone tied to a keyboard, said folks are heading out. It’s happening here as well.And I hate to say it, but that cat is well out of the bag now. I’m sure the Cali situation is doubly driven by the fires, and I’m not sure Montana is going to be free of that, but I digress. The only way to have controlled this that I can see is government caps of prices for real estate, in some form or other. I’d be interested to see if anyone has seen other thoughts on this, but I certainly haven’t. And unfortunately now, it’s a bit late, and doing anything about it would likely cause a crash of epic proportions, which would be pretty rough on the fragile economy. But if we wanted to prevent the current insanity, we needed to have put controls on 20 to 30 years ago. The 2000 square foot 90 year old house I grew up in the burbs is now worth north of 2 million. And that is beyond stupid, far beyond the stupid in Montana and Warsaw. I don’t know who is buying places like that. The answer is "what's wrong with free market"? Seriously. You pay your money, you take your chances. Government never fixes anything like that. The current situation is heavily controlled by government policy anyways. Did you hear the one from the Obama/Biden geniuses? The one about folding suburbs into local big cities? Because, you know, people like me shouldn't be able to enjoy little towns where people are sane? Sure, turn that shit over to the government. That'll fix things.
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Post by robjh22 on Oct 20, 2021 7:21:07 GMT -5
It's possible that a young person today will never, ever be able to afford a home of his own because capitalism.
But before taking to the streets and oiling up the guillotines, consider: the wealthiest people you personally know probably cannot afford to buy real estate in Beverly Hills, Monte Carlo, or Manhattan, either. Now it's San Fran and San Diego as well. As has been the case for decades.
"Yes," you say, "but now it's happening in small-town America as well." Not in Texas, though I admit there are too many of those mega homes sprouting up here as well. So your choices are to buy a pre-existing small house in small town America, or to rent anywhere.
But renting is not the end of the world. It takes a certain amount of money to live on this Earth, no matter where or how you live. Maintaining a house of your own can be an expensive pain in the rear. If you lose your job in a downturn due to AI or outsourcing, you can be foreclosed on. Financing over 30 years results in a lot of interest payments, which is as "down the drain" as rent money. Plus you can get stuck with an annoying next-door neighbor. My wife and I occasionally recall, with genuine fondness, the 1BR apartment we lived in in Houston for $350/month. It's probably $1,100/month now, but so is the property tax on the "home of our own."
And for the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone would want to actually live in San Francisco anyway, even for free. What exactly is the upside? I personally feel the same about Rome, Paris, Beijing, London, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle and Chicago.
Monte Carlo and Amsterdam we can talk about .... to live, I mean. Buying is out of reach there even for the wealthy.
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Post by robjh22 on Oct 20, 2021 7:28:39 GMT -5
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Post by Rob Hanesworth on Oct 20, 2021 8:51:32 GMT -5
If nobody can afford to buy a house, why do they keep building them?
At some point the older generation, apparently the last that could buy houses, will die, leaving a glut of empty houses.
Just a couple of random, and possibly crazy, thoughts.
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Post by epaul on Oct 20, 2021 10:01:40 GMT -5
The "End Times" are what keep religions going.
(well, that and church suppers)
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Post by david on Oct 20, 2021 12:15:47 GMT -5
The "End Times" are what keep religions going. (well, that and church suppers) It certainly is a common thread. Insightful Mr. Paul.
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Post by epaul on Oct 20, 2021 12:47:06 GMT -5
Do note that "church suppers" was inserted to cover the important social/societal functions churches fulfill.
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