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America's 'Rent Crisis' May Be Ending (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Fortune:
A new study suggests that nearly a decade of housing shortages and rising rents in the U.S. may be reversing course... From 2010 to 2016, America added nearly a million renter households a year. But the census showed a decline in that growth rate in 2016, and some early 2017 data shows an actual decline in renters so far in 2017. Recent census data also shows a rise in vacancy rates.
According to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, that's because foreclosure numbers have declined and young homebuyers are re-entering the market. Home ownership in the U.S. took a big hit from the foreclosure crisis and Great Recession of 2007-2012, while the rental market struggled to meet the new demand. Other insights in the report mostly follow from that shifting reality. Rents are increasing more slowly. Fewer renter households are "cost-burdened," or paying more than 30% of their income in rent, than they were two years ago.
The report also predicts that many high-income households may continue renting rather than buying a home. But it'd be interesting to hear how that compares to Slashdot readers around the world. Are you renting or buying -- and if renting, do you feel that your rent is too high?
According to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, that's because foreclosure numbers have declined and young homebuyers are re-entering the market. Home ownership in the U.S. took a big hit from the foreclosure crisis and Great Recession of 2007-2012, while the rental market struggled to meet the new demand. Other insights in the report mostly follow from that shifting reality. Rents are increasing more slowly. Fewer renter households are "cost-burdened," or paying more than 30% of their income in rent, than they were two years ago.
The report also predicts that many high-income households may continue renting rather than buying a home. But it'd be interesting to hear how that compares to Slashdot readers around the world. Are you renting or buying -- and if renting, do you feel that your rent is too high?
Umm, no.
California's issues generally affect everyone eventually, but housing, being non-mobile, isn't an exportable issue. Lack of rental housing in California won't really affect the availability of rental units in New Orleans, nor will it affect the prices there.
Yeah, it's going to suck trying to rent in CA for a while, but that's going to be a purely local issue....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It's not just driving people out, employers are moving out too where possible. It's creating some trouble, here around the suburbs of Austin there's a lot of consternation about (of all things) the number of democrats moving in, or at the very least some of the demands and conflicting cultural values of people moving in. I do not live in Austin proper, which has been blue for quite some time, but in surrounding counties which had been very, very red. There was an actual fight at a school meeting where someone stood up and said they don't care about the football team, why are our SAT scores so far below the national average.
The irony that red-state is good for business (and giving attractive tax breaks) comes with an inrush of comparatively liberal population is enjoyable to observe. It turns out that you can't have your cake and eat it too.
The millennials are having kids, and finding out that hip loft or apartment in the inner city, along with it’s school district, ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. They are fleeing to the suburbs. Soon they’ll be ditching the Feel the Bern shirts and voting Republican.
I was renting for a long time until a house in the neighborhood came on the market. We did the math and after mortgage, taxes, insurance, and other fees we came up with 300$ less than what we paid in rent. Buying not only saves us a lot of money, it builds equity. As a first time buyer we made use of the available assistance that allowed us to invest into remodel and a new roof. "New roof?" you say, an expense that a renter does not have to worry about. True, but even with the loan payment that will end soon we still pay less per month compared to renting....for a house twice the size.
>While it will eventually result in higher-density housing being built in some of the affected areas, eventually improving rental pricing,
Human societies are similar to forests in this aspect - occasionally we need a fire (or other disaster, like a big war) to wreak some destruction so in the long run we remain healthy.
In the case of humans, we invest in infrastructure and then as long as we have a choice, are extremely hesitant to tear it down and rebuild with something better. Even if we see other, newer places, are leaving us behind.
Burn it down and that option is no longer viable, so we move forward.
California's issues generally affect everyone eventually, but housing, being non-mobile, isn't an exportable issue.
People are already leaving California due to housing issues, so it is completely bananas to suggest that it's not exportable. The people will be exported, and they will need housing. You don't seem to understand how long it takes to get this much housing rebuilt. It literally cannot be done fast enough to avoid many people having to leave the state.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Perhaps the idea was that California is so populated that significantly rising rents in California may outweigh on average the decline elsewhere? You don't need to "export" them if you're counting a national average. (Whether that average is useful is another question, obviously.)
Ezekiel 23:20
The US is a national market, with freedom of travel a constitutional right. Prices are affected throughout by housing disturbances in any other part of the country, although it is likely to be minimal to non-measurable in most instances.
Lack of rental housing in X can lead to apartment building in Y, which will lead to lower prices in Y, which will lead to higher-rent construction in Z, which will lead to less construction in AA...
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
"...while the rental market struggled to meet the new demand."
Really? Yeah, those poor landlords had to raise their rents...oh, the horror.
Just another day in Paradise
Some of you may have noticed that California is, has been, and likely will continue to be on fire. This is driving people out of the state.
That seems like a perfectly reasonable response to me...
We'll make great pets
I own my house outright. It is one of nine homes in a small HOA in Miami FL that are worth about $400k to $450k. There are two rented for $3,500 per month wich sounds insaine considering the property value.
"This message was sent from an Apple
I see new home construction all around us. What I see is a dearth of housing that is suitable for young families as opposed to middle age, dual income families. You want a $600k+ home? No problem. We have a ton of them. What you won't see is anything in the $200k-$300k in major regions that isn't either in the ghetto or looks like it should be.
This is one of the fatal flaws in "free trade." You can't have "free trade" in land and housing. If wages harmonize between the US and China such that an American worker's wage goes down 25%, the cost of land and housing won't go down with it.
You can afford a car???
Look at Mr. Moneybags.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Some of you may have noticed that California is, has been, and likely will continue to be on fire. This is driving people out of the state.
I hate to burst your little bubble, but folks are not leaving California because Hollywood is on fire...They are leaving because it's too expensive.
Folks are leaving states like IL, NY and CA because of local and state tax rates and because their employers are moving to places like TX and FL where the taxes are lower and housing prices are not crazy high.
How do I know this? Because I live in TX where they are building houses and apartment buildings as fast as they can throw them up. I can see 5 apartment complexes with over 200 units each being built from my office window right now and when I drive around I see a large percentage of license plates from high tax states. It's like an invasion at times.
Not that I mind.... My house's value has been increasing some 10% a year of late. Homes around here are being sold above asking price almost before they get listed. Give it another 5-7 years of this and I'll have a nice profit to help make the retirement better...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I doubt the fires themselves will drive people out of the state on the whole. Sure, some people whose house burns down may not build a new house where the old one stood, but with their jobs and most social connections being in the state it's going to take much more to make any significant amount of people leave the state.
As for higher density housing, i.e apartment buildings, the reason so few have been built despite the demand has mostly to do with the NIMBY home owner's associations and the fires won't do much about them. Sure, land to build them may now be easier to come by when people sell their land in fire prone areas and actual burnt down neighborhoods, the home owner's associations and their deep dislike of the lower income people who will be living in those apartments will still be there to torpedo any and all attempts to build high density housing anywhere near a suburb.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
Just wait 'til everyone who mortgaged their home to buy bitcoins has to pay that mortgage back, that should put some cheap houses into the market.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Housing in California is generally more of a localized issue rather than a state-wide issue. The fires fall into the same category; Marin, Napa, and Sonoma are pretty messed up in housing stock due to the fires (and SF, Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, and San Mateo were already screwed up).
Southern California is a different issue; the car culture lacks rational limits on commuting time. Temecula is now a bedroom community for Los Angeles, as are several other cities 70+ miles away. The sprawl is what limits rational development.
California logically needs more quality housing stock in self-sufficient, walkable communities; there is a large population that lives here until they have kids, then move "back home." This is a natural situation where renting works, but condos are fine too. Until the problem is addressed you will keep having people move to Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and spreading the same problems there.
Nation-wide though, the real issue is smart development and anticipating 20-50% higher populations in 10 years in communities. You don't do that with "master planned communities" with thousands of single family homes 50-80 miles from where the jobs are.
In my neighborhood there were a whole bunch of rental homes, all owners who couldn't sell their homes because the home values have dropped (some have been holding onto those since before 2008). This year home prices finally reached pre-2008 levels and a whole lot of those rental homes suddenly went up for sale - owners happy they can finally get rid of them without writing the bank a large check.
You've clearly never been to Flint. I have...I grew up about twenty miles away, and while the city itself sucks, you can live in a very nice home with some of the best year round sports, shopping, and amenities just a few miles away, at prices Californians can only dream of.
I manage a team a team in northern CA, and travel there frequently. You've got nothing on MI except higher taxes.
Just another day in Paradise
Vote McMillan!
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
Perhaps the idea was that California is so populated that significantly rising rents in California may outweigh on average the decline elsewhere?
No, but it's that too. The rents up here in much of nocal (anywhere you could conceivably commute from) have about doubled. There are literally people commuting through Lake county where I live to get from where they live in Mendocino county to where they work in Napa county, or even the hind end of Sonoma, and that was true even before the fires up here. You can expect essentially the same thing to happen in socal now. Probably central California will not rise too much, but since the rents there are already exorbitant and well beyond the reach of the average family, this is not much consolation.
California has taken on a large number of people from other states, who came here seeking a liberal refuge. Thanks to the way our presidential selection system works, this has had a deleterious effect on political sanity in America. It will be interesting to see what effect some degree of exodus results in, which will depend very much on where those people wind up. That will be fascinating in itself...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm wondering if some of these numbers are happening because more people are choosing to live together to save money. This could include all sorts of situations that don't involve romance like friends sharing an apartment, college graduates moving back with mom and dad, and so on. It's interesting to note that the actual article didn't paint as rosy a picture as the excerpts above did. It says that people with higher incomes are now renting and a higher percentage of renters are older, white, and have kids (or may just fall into one of those categories). In my metro area, all the new home construction I see is extremely expensive (roughly $500,000 and up) and I have my doubts as to how wise it is to build those expensive homes given that we're not a high cost metro area. I don't really see any new construction that I would deem "affordable" for the average person.
You've clearly never been to Flint. I have...I grew up about twenty miles away,
Okay, the place my lady spent the biggest part of her childhood was Flint, so while I'm not an expert I do have some first-hand information about what it was actually like to live there. Her brother visited the old neighborhood and less than one house in ten is still standing and in good condition; the rest are lots full of weeds, rocks, and broken glass, or burned-out husks — presumably set alight either by looters, junkies, or residents trying to burn out looters and junkies. I'll pass, thanks.
I manage a team a team in northern CA, and travel there frequently. You've got nothing on MI except higher taxes.
This is not about the state as a whole, or a hole, or even about any state in particular, really. It's about the specific places where rents and homes are actually cheap. You don't want to live in them. Flint is just the one I hear about the most, since I live with a former Flinturdian.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My wife and I had been renting for a few years, paying about $1,350 per month for a 2-bedroom ranch with a fenced in yard. Earlier this year our landlord moved out of state and sold his rentals, giving us 2 months to find a new place. We discovered that our rent was incredibly cheap relative to anything similar: we'd have to pay at least $1,700 to $1,800 to rent anything comparable to what we were living in in the same area.
It turns out that a mortgage for a similar house around here is about $1,800 to $1,900, so we hurriedly applied for mortgages and got an FHA loan and bought a house before we had to leave the rental. So fortunately I am now a homeowner living in a better house than earlier this year, and paying only a little more than if I were renting. The fact that I know so many people around me renting tells me that they have so little extra income that they can afford to rent, but not the little more it would cost to buy.
In other words, yes, around here the rent is way too high when it's barely cheaper than buying a home.
Houston has had stable rents and housing prices for decades. Even during the worst of the housing collapse, home values only decreased a few percentage points. This is because they do not have zoning laws. This means that occasionally you have something weird like an office building near a residential area, but you don't end up with factories in the middle of apartment buildings as factories are built where land is cheap, and residential areas are relatively expensive.
So the question is what is more valuable, a stable housing market with a good mix of affordable and expensive homes, or being able to control it? Most of the time you can't have both.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
There was an actual fight at a school meeting where someone stood up and said they don't care about the football team, why are our SAT scores so far below the national average.
>
Only a fight? In Alabama, they would have stoned the unbeliever.
More seriously, Texas is closer to being blue than most people realize, though not the Republican legislators who are desperately gerrymandering and suppressing votes.
Of course, they've also long relied on the oil export business, but now wind may be their savor, as long as they don't get beset by another Enron.
Isn't a condo, or a townhouse, or even a "starter home." It's a clapped out duplex that they can renovate. It's lovely to have someone else (tenants, babeh!) paying most of your mortgage and property tax at age 35.
Soon you can buy another property in the next crash and rent the old one to some other "good family" for income. BECOME that n*zi landlord.
How do I know this? Because I live in TX where they are building houses and apartment buildings as fast as they can throw them up.
That seems like trouble waiting to happen. Oh wait, Harvey already did. Expect more.
Reminds me of Homestead after Hugo. Of course, they've rebuilt, but I know a dozen people who left those communities because they were so soulless and lacking in neighborliness.
I was divorced 3 1/2 years ago, and the ex and I sold our house. I was house hunting and was not having much luck, so I was looking into renting.
This is a college town, so rentals were super expensive and not much available. Finally found a house, 3 bedroom rambler, bit of a fixer-upper, but certainly livable while I update it. My house payment is HALF what the rental on a similar apartment would have been. Plus I have plenty of quiet and privacy where I am at now, something impossible with apartments. There were some apartments I could have for a similar cost but they were absolute shitholes.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
Two years ago I owned my own home with over 75% equity in the home. Now I rent. Mainly because I live in NYC and when you live in NYC, the mortgage + taxes + maintenance often exceed the cost to rent.
In other words, rent is cheap compared to buying (although it is very high as compared to most of the rest of the country).
When you buy real estate in most of the US, you are both saving money and doing a reasonably safe, reasonably profitable investment.
But in NYC, particularly Manhattan, you are most likely to be spending MORE money every month to buy rather than less, and investing in a riskier, high profit investment. I decided that it was too high risk for more and I did not have the extra cash to do it.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
12-1/2 months ago we left 25 years in a metro rental complex in the Mpls/St. Paul beltway when the gentrifying new owners raised the rent on the townhouse three times in a year. Exiled to a mortgage in the far xurbs 25 minutes from the beltway. At least an M-F city bus terminal ends a mile+ away. I would say our market is just heating up on moving the non-well off out. "Maturing" into a typical world metro market perhaps.
The rent is just too damn high...
You're still stuck in a G-d damned glass and steel sensory deprivation bubble without ability to get up and stretch your legs for 20 hours (2hr * 2 * 5 days/wk) a week. And gaining weight as you munch on your Fritos during your commute.
Sounds like a cr@ppy way to live, but some idiots will opt to "live" that way.
It is incredible for 60% of the Americans, the home they live forms more than 50% of their networth!. Homes are very very illiquid. It ties you down. You are not able to follow the economic trends and go where the jobs are. Makes you do stupid things to "protect the value of home". They are expensive to maintain. It is really a dumb way to save money. Renting is a far better solution for most Americans.
This especially true now. The babyboom peaked in 1952, and their retirement is peaking in 2017. The market is awash with four bedroom, three car garage, quarter-to-half acre lots. The demand will fall, not rise for these properties. Younger generation is not as car obsessed as the previous generations. They do not see the point in maintaining lawns or raking leaves. Any fool buying a half a million four bedroom 0.5 acre lot home in the suburb today would be lucky to sell it at cost 20 years from now.
You can add me to that list of fools. I could not convince my own wife about this. "Millions of people can't be fools. We do what they (meaning richer White people) do". Lucky for me, I can secure my retirement even if lock away half a mill in such a non performing asset. So I agreed to be smack dab right in the middle of affluent white neighborhood. Government always takes care of them, so I would not lose much.
But for younger generation starting out, "stay away from owning homes. Wait for a down turn, buy only if the mortgage is less than rent, and you are assured of job safety for 20 years, and you are planning to stay in that neighborhood for 20 years. Always watch the affluent white class is doing and do that". Invest in index funds. Put 33% in SDY, VNQ or such high dividend yield large cap. 33% in MidCap, 33% in SmallCap. Treat your credit card limit as the emergency funds. You have six month lead time to cash in some securities. Don't fall in love with cars. Start with civic, corolla level, and upgrade to pilot, crv, rav4 level. Don't pay for luxury car brands. Enjoy life.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Unless you are claiming that a significant (>33%) of the population is leaving, I don't see it having much effect across the rest of the US. I realize Californians can be a bit myopic when it comes to things going on outside of their state, but the rest of the country is pretty damn big. Unless all those leaving are concentrating in one area when they settle back down, it won't move the needle much. And even then, it would be a localized issue, restricted to the area they resettled in.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
The places with cheap rents are hellholes like Flint.
Yes, but how long can we afford to keep places not nice instead of just... ya know like replace the damn lead pipes? If you look at places like Flint you have to wonder how much time, money and effort went into avoiding fixing the problems versus just methodically replacing the lead pipes year by year until it was done.
These things don't "just happen". It takes a lot of active planning to create the kind of place that keeps people feeling completely segregated and hopeless.
Right, because Californians want to live in a shack on a strawberry farm
The GOP tax bill originally removed all deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes. The latest word is that those have been put back but with a $10,000 cap. Either of those provisions will dampen enthusiasm for home ownership and cause rents to continue upward.
It happened here in Western Australia with the Mining Boom. Trillions of dollars of metals where pulled out of the ground in the north west and miners where getting $150K+ (And by plus, one guy I know, a metalurgist, was pulling about $300K, although in some respects the man was responsible for turning a $1mil a month pilot mine into a $10 mil a week full mine, so he certainly earned it). The end result was it sent properties through the roof. Whereas 15 years ago, houses costing more than a million made the front page of the paper, by the end of the boom it wasnt that far from the median in the richer suburbs. Hell $300K would barely get you a 1 bedroom flat in the arse end of shitsville, and the rents went up accordingly. Worst of all, in many northern towns rents where going up to well about $1K a week for a bedroom, and in many of those towns there was high unemployment because the mining companies would fly in their own staff, buy up all the real estate and fill *all* of the rentals with fly-in-fly-out miners, which had a horrific effect on the local aboriginal populations which would never get offered jobs and then where unable to find accomodation leading to rural homelessness and basic social meltdown. It was fucked
And then the bom just ended. The chinese discovered you could hire africans to mine metal for $2 an hour and not have to worry about environmental regulations if you just wanted to dump a half million tonnes of cyanide into the ground water.
So now the rents are SORT of better, but I suspect we're in for the sort of crash that struck the US 15 years ago which in many respects was caused by people paying far more for their houses than they can afford. Mortgages are certainly starting to crack as people who thought the good times would last forever suddenly realise they only have skills for manual labor and packing boxes at kmart dont quite pay the same as driving a forklift in kalgoorlie. So they either sell off, and get far less than they paid, rent it out for less than it'll take to pay the mortgage, or leave it empty and hope for the best. Theres a lot of empty houses right now, and a lot of homeless folk.
But fortunately my rents now back down to $300 a week, dramatically less than it used to be. So thats good.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
My favorite topic that everyone always gets upset about. You don’t buy a house because it makes sense from the financial point of view; you buy it because it makes you feel good.
There is sufficient literature showing that the long-term inflation-adjusted returns—or savings—on homes have been lower than those of risk-free bonds, to say nothing of equity. Since the article asks about “readers around the world”, here is one such book in German. The author does a financial evaluation of home ownership over several decades in Germany and other developed countries. It makes no sense to buy a home outright and even less sense to buy it on credit as is typically the case.
An important factor in this discussion that is usually pulled out of the air by well-meaning but not financially savvy individuals is that homes are “safe investments”. They are not. By buying a home, you are putting a large portion of your net worth into a single asset type: homes in your area. Any decrease in housing prices or the quality of your area in general immediately results in a huge decrease of your net worth. If you have to sell your house for any of a myriad of reasons, you lose a lot of money. Furthermore, an uninsured home is a very risky asset, as it may just burn down one day, whereas an insured home further reduces the growth of its value due to the costs of insurance. Lastly, if you actually want to sell your home and you are lucky to get some kind of profit out of it, you are facing considerable transaction costs and much lower liquidity than you would be if you were trying to sell a market-listed instrument.
All of these make personal housing bad investments. The only two good things that come out of such a purchase is that you have the freedom to restructure your house as much as you like and that you are effectively forced to save more by the virtue of the home financing company breathing down your back. Both come at a great cost.
I rent and I strongly encourage everyone to briefly study the available literature on the topic before coming to erroneous conclusions that you will be “saving on the rent” or “investing into something very safe”. On the bright side, these erroneous conclusions are the reason why those of us who did do due diligence get to rent so cheaply. Thanks homeowners.
P.S.: This does not transfer to commercial properties and REITS.
Soon you can buy another property in the next crash and rent the old one to some other "good family" for income. BECOME that n*zi landlord.
I love it when liberals who use the word Nazi show so plainly just how incoherent their thought process is. And what terrible students of history they actually are. It explains a lot.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I want to live close by to family and most of my earnings are going to rent. I guess that is the price I have to be willing to pay in order to make that happen. However, come the end of my lease, I will have to move into a not-so-great area. I pay 990.00 a month for rent and that is just too high considering that my base pay is about 15.10 per hour and overtime is infrequent. The areas where I will be looking will certainly not be as comfortable or quiet but since when did the poor have any real options?
No, not just illegals. Hollywood hyped up California as a magical utopia where magic is real, unicorns fart glitter, and dreams come true. Plus regardless of the questionable intelligence of expats from other states... The weather is pretty fucking nice.
Itinerant non-natives aren't an issue, though. The real problem, though, is the California natives that are being forced to flee. That'll increase under Tax Reform, because poor "working class" slobs with $1.5m houses are already REEEEEEE'ing about their property taxes.
These people will absolutely try to export their failed governance to the states they end up in.
I've been a landlord for 25 years (in my 40s now). I've sold my rental assets only once before -- right before the housing bubble popped. That's because I always live by the method of buying properties when they're selling for less than 60X rent, keeping them if they're 60-120X rent and if they breach 150X rent, I sell them.
My areas are consistently edging up towards 150X rent, which means it makes more sense to sell than rent them. They're 100% occupied and stay that way always (I have a waiting list on one or two units consistently).
So right now I am 90% certain I'll sell everything. I bought a new home (for cash) 2 years ago and the comp price in my neighborhood is up 40% -- totally unsustainable. Folks again are competing to buy homes and then paying way too much compared to income.
In the last bubble, I sold a rental I had bought for $43,000 to a bidding war that ended up paying $120K for it. After the crash, the new "owners" foreclosed pretty quickly and I bought it at auction with no other bidders for $60k. Now that same unit 8ish years later is back up to $110K but it only rents for $785 a month (just over 140X rent). So if it edges up a bit more ($120K) in comps, it'll be on the market and I'll be out and hope that I can buy it back in 3-5 years at a significant haircut.
This market is yet again pushing bubble stages at least in my neighborhoods. As I get older, I realize these are the paths to wealth because people are too emotional about "their" home that they don't even have a title to.
These people will absolutely try to export their failed governance to the states they end up in.
It's amazing how liberals and Islamofascist, "refugees" are similar in this regard,
While the rest of the world realizes that Americans can be more than a bit myopic when it comes to things going on outside of their country.
I just hope sidewalk rent doesn't inflate
Sorry, but 1000 structures or so isn't going to make a measureable difference in the housing market, not even at the state level. It's a very localized problem. For scale, LA has approximately 100,000 hotel rooms. Two medium-sized high rises in Manhattan have more housing units than those fires have destroyed.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If you didn't get the irony, I was mocking the original posters use of the word. I aspire to become a hard-ass landlord.
From my standpoint, "the great recession" was a reversion to the mean, and the present resurgence in prices is the real crisis.
Where I live, over 80% of new developments are "luxury apartments." Man, fuck that, where are the affordable places for sale?
And I write this as someone from a household that earns north of $300k a year.
The affordable places to live are now in the high crime, urban areas. I was doing decently well until I lost everything due to health problems. Sadly, the demand is for luxury apartments which is why they're being built. Millennials want gyms, pools, spas, and lounges in their apartment complexes. I neither want nor need any of that extra garbage. All I really want and need is a simple affordable place. Since real estate is location, location, location and wages have not kept up with the explosive cost of housing, I will be moving into one of those high crime, urban areas. I also work now as a Security Guard which isn't the most lucrative but it is all I can do at the moment.
here around the suburbs of Austin there's a lot of consternation about (of all things) the number of democrats moving in
Me thinks people who have problem with such things could move to Alabama. #conservativefirstworldproblem
The US is a national market, with freedom of travel a constitutional right.
You have freedom of movement to go about your business --- travel, or the use of a vehicle, or the availability of a place for you to stay away from home (such as a Hotel lodging) is not a constitutional right - and there are various situations where you won't be able to get it. States and Municipalities technically CAN also regulate or restrict who can be the buyer of accommodations, who can rent, or who can be the buyer of a house or land, so even if you are allowed freedom of movement; that doesn't mean you will have a right to park yourself long term in whatever city or state you want, Especially not on an indian reservation and some other highly-restrictive communities, BUT in general most states are welcoming, housing shortages are rare, and as a US person, you can take up residence in Most cities if you want to and can afford it.
Hi. Housing prices are going through the roof up here in Oregon, and there's nothing left to rent, primarily due to the huge influx of Californians. People from California move into an area, eating up all the rentals and driving up home prices, which displace the locals from that area into other areas with lower costs, and the cycle repeats.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
...which are financed by blue states.
That's right, the country simply could not afford to be all red states, because at some point they would run out of other people's money!
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
you are an idiot.... Texas is only blue in the large cities. Rural texas(including most of the area around those large cities) are so red the thought of a democrat running things sends locals into apoplectic shock.
The Texas house has 95 republicans and 55 dems while the senate has 20 republicans and 11 dems.
Gerrymandering has occurred in every state. Both dems and repubicans use it. If you do not believe me look at california senate districts in socal or the Illinois 4th congressional district. look at texas. every party since the early 1800's has used the technique. It is not new nor is it really even controversial.
Hi there, I live just South of Ventura, where the Thomas fire started, and we get to see the brown smoke to the North. So far, about 800 homes have burned. That's not a big number at all, given the affected areas (NW Ventura County/SW Santa Barbara County) have somewhere around 150,000 homes. And I just watched a new development of townhomes, about 80 units, go up within 6 months. That is just one company. It'll take probably 1 year at most to replace those homes lost. Yes, the fire is huge and yes it is terrible, but 99% of the area it's burned is basically vacant State land.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
> Unless all those leaving are concentrating in one area when they settle back down
They ARE concentrated in Denver, Austin, and Dallas. A significant percentage of Austin residents came to Austin from the bay area.
No, not just illegals. Hollywood hyped up California as a magical utopia where ... unicorns fart glitter
See, that's the problem. It's about education. Not enough people realize that unicorn farts twinkle, they don't fart "glitter".
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Someone should look at a map and realize just how BIG Texas really is. Dallas doesn't get too much in the way of hurricane activity...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Oh, and people were leaving CA long before he fires...
https://www.charismanews.com/o...
http://www.sacbee.com/site-ser...
Just another day in Paradise
There are enough empty houses/apartments/condos within the borders of the USA to house every homeless and "homeless" individual in America. But there are too many people making too much money in keeping those houses/apartments/condos off the market in a greedy attempt to make every dollar possible.
They will happily allow multi-story office towers and residential condos to be built on streets that cannot take the added traffic
Austin's city council does not have the market cornered on this. It is incredible to me how little they think through traffic when they allow these shopping centers to be built. The "premium outlets" up north? That road was a shitshow before ikea+outlets, now it's just a train-wreck unfolding in slow motion. The worst part, is that before these shopping centers it was nothing, just empty fields and scrub brush. They could/should have seen this coming when they approved the building, and should have at least left themselves a way to expand. The only solution now is going to be massively expensive, and in response those of us local are taking our sales tax elsewhere.
The contrast though is NYC, where you cannot put a lemonade stand down without a 6 month study and community impact statement. It seems like planning and some sort of happy medium could exist, but apparently that's utopia. Either we are impeding business or we're letting them ruin our lives.
The Texas house has 95 republicans and 55 dems while the senate has 20 republicans and 11 dems.
That can be explained by either a huge majority of Republicans or, as the grandparent asserts, by gerrymandering. In the 2016 Presidential elections, Clinton got 43.2%, Trump 52.2% of the vote. That doesn't sound like a huge majority for the red team, but maybe Trump was just unpopular so let's see how that differed in previous elections. 2012, Red: 57.17%, Blue 41.38%. 2008, Red 55.39%, Blue 43.63%. Sounds like it's been around 43%ish for a while.
To put that in perspective, California voted 61.73% Blue, 31.62% Red, so is a lot more Blue than Texas is Red. In fact, of the 34 states or districts that voted Red in 2016, only 9 voted Red by a lower margin than Texas. The six reddest states (Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Wyoming) all voted red by a margin of 30% or more (46.30% in Wyoming). Of the red states, Texas is one of the least red.
That said, a Texas Democrat typically has more in common with a Texas Republican than a California Democrat.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Auto insurance is way cheaper in California.
Cheap storage VM.
Flinturdian, I like it!
Cheap storage VM.
You have a bag and money? Look at the rich snob...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Plus you can only get dial up Internet in Seattle, right? That is why everyone is moving there.
I misread the headline as saying "America's Rant Crisis May Be Ending."
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
An obvious solution is to build some more houses.
This sort of article is rarely objective. The people beating the drum most often about the necessity of homeownership are people like real estate agents and mortgage brokers. In the linked article, the interview is with the CEO of a paint company. They make their money from home improvement projects - something less frequent in a rental property. In reality, the purchase vs rent question is closer to 1:1. Here are some of the disadvantages of owning a house.
1. Not an investment, it is a capital asset - over the long term housing tracks inflation almost exactly
2. Highly illiquid asset
3. Variable maintenance costs and also depreciates in value over time
4. Most people will have a large portion of their net worth tied up in a single asset, increasing risk
5. Substantial costs to buy and sell the house, in the form of broker fees, etc.
Last hurricane that went close to Dallas, was a tropical depression by the time it got here and dumped a bunch of rain w/o much in the way of wind.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Some areas restrict based on buyer's age (55+ or 62+) or on income (below 75% of area median income or whatever).
C'mon it's not that bad - I'm sure the homebuilders have already begun the 6-month long application process and environmental assessment needed in order to begin the 6-month long public review phase required for project approval. Heck, in just a year they'll be on to the specific reviews and approvals for actual building plans!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
How do I know this? Because I live in TX where they are building houses and apartment buildings as fast as they can throw them up.
That seems like trouble waiting to happen. Oh wait, Harvey already did. Expect more.
Reminds me of Homestead after Hugo. Of course, they've rebuilt, but I know a dozen people who left those communities because they were so soulless and lacking in neighborliness.
While a lot of Huston and the low lands to the south west got hammered in places, the damage was pretty light for most of Huston for the most part. Most of the issues in Huston where flooding from all the rain, which was limited to specific areas. Most of Huston didn't have an issue once the water went down.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Apparently you never rented.
Because only people who rent realize that landlords send out brownshirts to beat people who oppose them politically and then kill millions and try to take over Europe?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Then lower federal spending. Blue tends to be in the cities which tend to have big capital players like Silicone Valley, Hollywood, or Wallstreet which will help the state average for federal taxation. I have seen the idea about only giving federal benefits in proportion to their federal taxation but that undermines the whole point of a federal republic.
Puerto Rico gives exactly 0 in federal taxes. Should we not send federal aid to them when a hurricane hits? Or what about Louisiana or Alabama? Ok, not during disasters.
Do you think down-stream states (like California) do not benefit from the Bureau of Reclamation helping to manage water in upstream states? Do you think states that have big agriculture, like California, benefit from science to study the effect of wild fires and local pollinators done by the USGS ( I wonder how the science done in Idaho during their annual fire season will help California during this one)? How many federal initiatives are you willing to restrict in various states because some states do not have Silicone Valley to pick up the tab? Do you really think the urban centers do not benefit from from that disproportionate ratio? Those are just two that I know of personally.
Are you going to limit the federal unemployment of someone that has paid taxes their whole working life because they live in a red state?
Personally, I find it to the credit of the Founding Fathers that they were able to predict the largest division the nation would face and were able to create a federal republic to service that division. The urban and rural divide should not be widened because you think you do not benefit from federal spending in other parts of the country. If you don't like the spending of the federal government then you should be arguing to lower that spending not be vindictive to the individual based on where they live.
The U.S. has one of the lowest home price to income ratios in the developed world. If it's dumb to own a home in the U.S., it's super-dumb to own one elsewhere in the world.
It sounds more like you bought more home than you could afford. I spent almost a year shopping for a home, and the one I finally bought was in a nice area I liked, in decent shape, but the price was depressed because the owners had been trying to move for years so the house had been "on the market" for a really long time in MLS. After I bought it, even after mortgage and expenses, I was still able to sock away 20%-25% of my income in savings/investments. I like living here, there's no HOA, I pay someone half the HOA fees I normally saw when shopping to rake the leaves and maintain the lawn (though I'm considering doing it myself because I could use the exercise - why pay for a gym membership when there's work to do around the house), and I'm handy enough to do most of my own repairs.
They are, but there just tiny. Almost like a mobile home one would find in a trailer park.
Look at your article: the Red State we're talking about, Texas, gives more than it takes (i.e. same column as California). So while I applaud your greater point, this isn't really the place for it...
Young adults are all living at their parents house. They canâ(TM)t afford rent and student loan payments at the same time.
then vacancies don't matter a whole lot. If all the properties that are full make up for the cost of vacancies, they will keep them vacant with a high price tag.
If the market were dominated by for rent by private small owner, then this would be different.
Meanwhile, my rent is up 45% in 2 years. Still the cheapest in the area.
I've never understood that.
My commute is 5 minutes each way, and I'd rather it be faster. I mean I'm from Ohio so I've never had to choose to move out of state, but if I had to commute that far for a job I'd just move to somewhere where I wouldn't have to.
I've never been to California (except a layover at LAX), and I hear it's nice, but there's no way it's that nice.
That is because the cake is a lie.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Then lower federal spending.
Except every time someone attempts to cut anything significant the reds then veto that idea on account of the local jobs that service supports.
Does the study include rates of folks *sharing* housing/apts?
Now, given that I read in the media earlier this year that hedge fund and other scum of the earth were buying up rental properties, and raising rents, I'd like to see a real study (shut *up* LIbertidiot trolls) that shows the rate of shared housing.
For example, a friend who's sharing a house with three other people. Or one of my daughters, who, with her husband, bought a house with another couple, which makes it *not* "single family" housing.
We absolutely should send them federal aid, and then we should bill their insurance just like the paramedics do and the way firefighters ought to. Having such insurance should be a prerequisite to joining the union, except we have no formal way to kick out a state if they don't follow the rules. In that way, the USA is kind of like a roach motel--you can check in but you can't check out!
Managing inter-state resources is the proper role of a federal government. Paying to build inter-state infrastructure projects is not.
That's kind of what you deserve for paying into a Ponzi scheme. But I see your point, and that is one reason to support a Basic Income.
Please see my other comment about how governments rob from the inner-city poor and give to the suburban rich (if that isn't a good reason for vindictiveness, than what is?), and how subsidizing the suburban lifestyle is unsustainable and creates an economic mess. "The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." --Margaret Thatcher
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Is that like how most of Florida didn't have an issue once the hurricane passed?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Yes, Texas is a notable exception. Are there any other self-sufficient red states?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
(1) California has a huge military presence, and it still pays into DC.
(2) We don't use the military. It uses us. The military is mostly a boondoggle and jobs program that uses US and pays us back in dead and maimed humans. The military uses us. We'd be better off cutting spending 50% and spending the money on pure research, infrastructure, and education. It's not 1930 where the country with the most battleships wins the way.
(3) CIA/FBI? Stop jailing 1% of our population and meddling in other countries' affairs, and they can be much smaller.
You mean buy condos that are 300sqft, and cost $250k-785k right? Cause that's already what's happening in a lot of coastal cities with a very dense population.
Om, nomnomnom...
I rented for many years, and was in the position to buy 2 duplexes and a single family house during the recession, I am currently loving life because I'm renting out the duplexes for far more than my mortgage. I do not consider myself a Nazi Landlord at all, and over the summer, I spent about 30K on fixing up my duplexes, because I figure that the people that pay me money deserve the improvements, now my rentals are nicer than my single family, which I live in, with the exception that they have less land.
Not with your taste in foreign cars....
Deserve? No. They deserve to have a clean space with working/reliable appliances and fixtures. No frills unless you can get more in rent than you put in paying for them.
They are, but there just tiny. Almost like a mobile home one would find in a trailer park.
That is almost certainly because of some stupid zoning regulation. In the absence of some prohibition, builders tend to build what people want to buy.
You mean buy condos that are 300sqft, and cost $250k-785k right?
There are three solutions to high housing prices:
1. Government price controls and rationing. This has an extremely poor track record.
2. Decrease demand, by sterilizing or shooting people, or maybe bring back smallpox.
3. Increase supply by building more houses to meet the demand, creating jobs and economic growth.
Americans have a knee jerk resistance to #3, partly out of self interest (current residents benefit from high prices), and partly out of a belief that actually building or accomplishing anything is wrong or evil. In SF, 95% of building permits were rejected last year ... and most builders didn't even bother to apply.
Dallas -- not a great example for your argument. Dallas is quite cosmopolitan and politically blue, as are all the big cities in Texas (have to get down to Fort Worth to get to a big Texas city which doesn't have a Democratic mayor). And it has all the big city advantages you mentioned if you count DFW airport as the 'port'. But your overall argument is only strengthened by Dallas, Houston, Austin -- big blue cities with booming economies. Ironic that the conservatives who gripe so much about Austin's politics are fine with living in it or nearby to take advantage of its economy, instead of taking their talents out to the many deep red areas in the state.
When that lovely tenant you rented to fails to pay their rent, and invites their friends over for late-night parties that keep you awake, and you realize that you have to file 6 months in advance of evicting them (renter protection), and then when you do evict them you had better call the sheriff to stand by while you drag all their stuff out to the street, you find out how lovely and fun being a landlord is..
I also notice that most of those red states have smaller populations and are farming states with of course the exception of california who is the highest producer monetarily (because their stuff is expensive they don't really produce more).
It's not really about rents though.
It's about employers refusing to pay workers enough to pay the rents. Period.
I recently turned down a job at a university - their offer came in at $25,000 less than what I am currently making. Maybe a marijuana field near their HR dept caught fire and a smoke cloud drifted over? Can't think of any other explanation, but I'm wanting to save for retirement. Not sell my house and move into a trailer.
If rents or housing prices go up - income has to go up. Or your workers are leaving.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Hi there, I live just South of Ventura, where the Thomas fire started, and we get to see the brown smoke to the North. So far, about 800 homes have burned. That's not a big number at all, given the affected areas (NW Ventura County/SW Santa Barbara County) have somewhere around 150,000 homes.
We'll see how many homes burn in this fire, but there will be more fires. We have no plan for making it be otherwise. We lost thousands of homes up here in nocal recently.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Academia typically underpays vs industry but offers other perks/recognition as compensation.
You mean, being exiled to Colorado and other flyover states :)
I think this last question in your post is a big key to our nation's issues....
Despite the lip service paid to encouraging people to go into skilled trades, the overall mentality is that those "blue collar" jobs are less desirable and make you a citizen of a lesser status in society than if you can finish college or a university with a "prestigious" degree.
In reality, we need FAR more people who have learned how to do quality work with plumbing installation and repair, carpentry, electrical work, roofing, flooring and HVAC work than we do more attorneys or business majors. Last time I needed some concrete work done around the house, I couldn't even find anyone in my city who claimed to have skill at repairing the concrete wall that divides my property line from my neighbor's. I was typically told, "I'm primarily skilled at doing flat work like sidewalks or driveways, but not especially good at patching up part of a vertical wall."
Overall, we're just paying far too much for a higher education. People keep focusing on how much they owe (or have the prospect of owing) on student loans, but that's just the symptom of the REAL problem; we're overcharging for and overselling the benefits of a diploma. Last I checked, nations like France had a more sensible system in place -- where you'd be steered towards learning a skilled trade if that was your area of proficiency. The people who have their heart set on being a rocket scientist or a marine biologist or a professional photographer or a lawyer? They'll still pursue that path and there will always be schools happy to take their money to try to teach them. But we need to be more realistic about teaching people the things that really make them functioning, money-making members of our society - especially when they don't really know what they want to do for a living.
I've never been to California (except a layover at LAX), and I hear it's nice, but there's no way it's that nice.
When you couple the endless feeling of living in a picture-book with provably the nicest weather in the country, it's easy to see why some people place a premium on life in California.
To be fair though, I think a lot of people are just kidding themselves. Perhaps you're familiar with the quote "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." I think most of those people are sure that just around the next corner, they're going to get into the position to be crapping on everyone else, instead of being crapped upon.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
For scale, LA has approximately 100,000 hotel rooms.
People can't afford to live in those, so it's irrelevant.
Two medium-sized high rises in Manhattan have more housing units than those fires have destroyed.
And if you could build high-rises in California, you wouldn't have the housing problems we had already. 1,000 homes in a market where there's already a deficit is going to make a big difference, especially since we already lost thousands of homes up here in nocal, and we can expect to have more big fires coming in future years.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Buying a house has always been the single smartest thing I did with my earnings.
Homes aren't incredibly liquid, but they're absolutely possible to resell. Just look how many people make a good living as realtors, if you have doubts.
If you're just starting out on your own and have your very first "career job", then no. You *likely* are better off renting for a while. A home is a big commitment (just like any large purchase would be) and you don't want to become one of the statistics who signed up for a 30 year mortgage, only to find out your employer wasn't going to employ you after 2-3 years and you couldn't find equivalent pay with another company.
But assuming you're going to be ok, earnings-wise, to afford what you're getting into? A house makes plenty of sense. Look at it this way: What else are you going to spend your money on? Unless you're one of the VERY few who is disciplined enough and content enough putting the bulk of your money into long-term investments you can't touch or do anything with you're going to spend it on tangible and intangible things. Most of those things will rapidly depreciate in value from the moment you bring them home and begin using them, if they're not just "entertainment" like travel, where you have ZERO to show financially for 100% of what you spent on it.
At least when you buy a home, you're buying something that you literally use every moment of every day or night when you're not at work or out and about someplace. You're also investing in the plot of land that the property sits on, which gives you some options other people don't have. Maybe you're in an area where the local government allows you to drill your own well for water? Maybe you want to use some of your land to put up rows of solar panels and drop your electricity costs to 0? Maybe you like working on cars and with your land, you have enough room to hang onto a spare car or two that's in a state of partial assembly? Or maybe it's just a safe place for your young kid(s) to play while you can keep an eye on them, without having to travel someplace first?
A given home may or may not turn out to be a "good investment" in the traditional sense that it appreciates in value over time. But you can't live in and enjoy stocks or mutual funds or even gold bars.
Additionally, when I rented, I hated the lack of privacy and control over my surroundings. I had a next door neighbor who used to constantly irritate me over little things like turning off the light that lit the stairway leading up to our units. I'd invite people over and they'd almost trip and fall, trying to get up to our place. The neighbor was convinced (incorrectly) that the light for the stairs was wired to HER circuit, so she was paying for it to stay on. That's not even mentioning the issues of having to be quieter than you might want to be, just because someone below you or next to you would complain. To me, that's no way to live if you can help it. It's certainly worth paying a few hundred bucks per month over and above what rent would cost (which is pretty much how my current mortgage payments work).
The $750K cap on mortgage interest deductions is going to drive the higher end buyers down. Homes just above $750K will stop selling as most buying in that range try to get under the limit. For a while, they will sell at a loss, but as that settles, the market just under $750K will be gutted.
The prices of those less than $750K will then start climbing as the availability near $750K falls. The cascading effect will suck up homes that would otherwise have been rented until the construction industry rebalances itself.
The rebalancing in the construction industry will be painful as in progress development projects have to be redesigned or abandoned. There will surely be a rash of bankruptcies because contractors often exist well out on a limb. Recovery will take time.
Building a house doesn't necessarily take that long; if you don't have a million local building regulations to comply with
I see you are unfamiliar with California. Here in Lake it costs more in permits and mandatory connection fees to build a single-bedroom home than it does to buy the materials. No municipality wants anyone to build small homes any more, but a lot of the homes that were lost fit that description. A lot of towns need higher population densities to function, so there is actually good reason for that, but this comment is already busy enough.
Some towns will fast-track the permit process in one way or another, but in many places the inspection and permitting process was already overtaxed and even those areas which want to permit properties quickly and cheaply and are demonstrating this to be true via legislation are having trouble physically doing so.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Current residents don't necessarily benefit from higher prices. It makes taxes go up on people that don't want to move, and it makes rent skyrocket for people that can't afford to own.
It also limits mobility. People that would like to upgrade get priced out and stuck in a home that is too small or in an inconvenient location.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Anymore strawmen you want to have a swipe at?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I am getting more in rent... My ROI is 10 months... basically, for those 30K in improvements which we're pretty much financed same as cash (0%) over 12 months and enabled me to drastically increase my rents. For what those improvements cost me, I basically will spent 10 months just breaking even on them, and starting on month 11, I'll be cash flowing better than what I was before.
Californians are already are living in shacks on strawberry farms. It's the only housing they can afford.
That is the dumbest thing I've read all day. In summation:
1) people leaving is not a problem: wrong. Who does low level work? robots? illegal immigrants living in alleys?
2) there is not rental crisis, rent has merely kept up with inflation: wrong. unless inflation is 25% yearly.
3) It is just people complaining or just don't want to spend time with a job that pays what living the LA lifestyle requires. wrong. Homeless numbers are up because PEOPLE CAN"T AFFORD HOMES. See number one for the result of large numbers leaving.
It's only gotten better because so many people are now home less, living on the streets, cars and in old RVs . Old RVs parked on the street are the new ghettos.
It sounds more like you bought more home than you could afford.
I live way below my means. By standard metrics I would qualify for one to two million mortgage. I choose to live in a half a mill. I come from very poor background. This already feels like the palace of the Maharajah of Mysore to me.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
My wife and I rented until recently, when we bought a place outright. We'd been looking to downsize because we're empty-nesters, and between escaping rent and dramatically reducing our utility bills (in our smaller, more efficient home) we're no longer enslaved by our shelter. We endured four long decades of every decision beginning with consideration of our housing burden, and being free of that burden seems truly fantastic. We're now in a very sustainable, very resilient situation, and won't be splashed when the middle class economy dives back into the sewer because we've never been lured into the consumer credit trap.
As the predatory lenders are so fond of saying: no credit, no problem.
Warning: This signature may offend some viewers.
I was excited for a second. I misread the title of the story as America's "Rant Crisis" May Be Ending. I was hoping for a study of social media trends that indicated a marked decrease in rantiness. Oh well, maybe someday.
[T]here is a large population that lives here until they have kids, then move "back home."
What really sucks is for those of us for whom this is home. It's a lifelong struggle for me not to be forced out of the place I was born and raised and educated where my job and family and friends and loved ones all are, just because a bunch of rich people from far away want to live here which makes living here unaffordable for people like me who were born here. There is no "home" to go back to. I haven't had a home my entire adult life, and it's increasingly unlikely that I ever will. I could move to what may as well be another country, some place that I will hate and be miserable, and buy a "home" there, but it still wouldn't be home.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
should be: "...feel that your rent is too damned high."
I've always wondered what's going to happen to those 55+ "active adult" communities in 30 years when all the original owners are dead or in nursing homes.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Which is the only red state to do so, and a good chunk of the tax revenue is driven by federal spending (NASA, military bases, border patrol). So while I applaud the misdirection....
Good idea. You can take it out of the trillion dollars the U.S. should give Puerto Rico as reparations for colonialism.
Again, look at the actual article Ichijo posted: Texas is clearly not the only Red State in that category. And again, he was replying to a comment specifically about the economic climate in Texas.
The whole Red States as Welfare States thing is totally worthy of discussion, but is strange to bring up in response to a comment that is soley and specifically about a state which lies outside that category. So while I applaud the shoehorning...
Indian reservations are technically sovereign pseudo-states. They don't operate under the same legal aegis of the rest of the US.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
If you are looking to move every 18 months, you are best renting. If you found a place you want to live for a long time, you are better buying. Short term investments are always a gamble. Long term investments (typically) increase in value in the long term.
Current residents don't necessarily benefit from higher prices. It makes taxes go up on people that don't want to move
Those people should want to move. They are going to have to face reality, because it is inexorable. Anyone who doesn't want to have to move should be fighting for negative population growth, and minimal economic output, because anything else leads to civilization arriving in your front yard eventually.
As you age, you need more of the trappings of civilization just to survive. The trick is to buy a home someplace where enough of it will arrive as you need it, but you won't wind up on a Waze-designated thoroughfare.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Indian reservations are technically sovereign pseudo-states. They don't operate under the same legal aegis of the rest of the US.
That's why, if you have a choice, you should never work in indian gaming. If you're not a tribal member, you're fucked if your workplace conditions go south. I got pushed into a back room with a color laser printer. If a normal business had done that to me I could have OSHA'd their ass.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Good idea. You can take it out of the trillion dollars the U.S. should give Puerto Rico as reparations for colonialism.
Fine with me. We can pay black people reparations for slavery, while we're at it. I think the deal was supposed to be forty acres and a mule, right? I can't speak for any black people, but I know I'd be thrilled with that right now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Which is the only red state to do so, and a good chunk of the tax revenue is driven by federal spending (NASA, military bases, border patrol). So while I applaud the misdirection....
And most of the rest of it is from oil, and the remainder from tech. The oil is made profitable by a variety of subsidies, and the tech is made possible by the internet. And the biggest tech company in TX by far is (depending on how you count) either IBM, headquartered not in TX but in NY, and Apple, headquartered in CA. (or Ireland, if you like.) The biggest "tech company" HQ'd in TX is Dell, with a measly 13,000 employees compared to IBM's almost 400,000 worldwide. (Does Dell actually make anything besides case bezels, or do they just put their name on stuff like Viewsonic?)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As usual, slashdot is the wrong place to ask this, and google is the right one. Maybe you would like this article on the subject.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I hate to burst your little bubble, but folks are not leaving California because Hollywood is on fire...They are leaving because it's too expensive.
There's this concept which explains much of economics which you may not have heard of called "supply and demand"
People are not leaving California because fire is scary. Neither that nor earthquakes have been sufficient to deter them from invading both en masse and piecemeal. They are leaving because they cannot afford to live here. They cannot afford to live here because there are not enough homes. The fires have exacerbated this situation because they have reduced the supply of housing, which was already inadequate to meet the demand. This was true before airbnb, which had already literally doubled rents in some regions.
I'm not inherently against gentrification; I rather like many of the results, in fact. Pretending that it doesn't have substantial negative effects is childish. Imagining that homes being converted into smoke won't affect the housing market is ridiculous. It's not just this fire, although this fire will have an impact. It's the last fire, and the next fire. It would take an absolute miracle for more of this not to happen in California. California's history is one of repeated fires. Pick any random little old town in California, most of it has probably burned down two or three times back in the way back. The local natives knew how to handle this situation, but their yearly intentional burns weren't their entire strategy. They would physically pick up and move their people between summer and winter homes, which was what made setting everything on fire viable. Today, we could do the same thing by living in trailers, or underground; they rebuilt their house every year, because it was simple enough to do that.
If we're going to live in such close proximity to forests and not burn them intelligently, then we must build houses which are not flammable. I read article after article about the subject of how California made the problem worse, and how we can do things about it by cutting firebreaks or by not living close to forests, but we can also build homes that won't go up like a torch when some burning bits of charcoal are distributed onto the roof by the incredible winds which can be produced by a forest fire. Permitting flammable roofs in fire country is insane, evil, or both. There's simply no way around that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Of course, you'll want to look at the other potential problems that a rush of ill-conceived slap-dash built housing can cause, especially since there are other weather disasters to be concerned about.
Well it's floodin' down in Texas, all of the telephone lines are down
Well it's floodin' down in Texas, the zoning laws will make you drown
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
All we need is for the next big quake to slide Cali into the ocean and all our problems will be solved.
It's the wrong kind of fault. It's conceivable that enough of California will sink due to aquifer depletion combined with quake activity that much of it will wind up underwater when coupled with sea level rise, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
With the deportation of the millions of illegal aliens California will have more rental vacancies available for Americans to rent
Illegal aliens tend to stack up in a rental unit, so to speak. A friend of a friend listed a property for a single or couple only, and got an application from a family of eleven. She said there's no room for that and they said "we don't mind". It's a single bedroom cabin. I don't blame them; I've seen what it looks like where they're coming from. Plywood shacks, if they're lucky. Eleven to a one-bedroom cabin with an interior and exterior wall, and insulation in between, is luxury.
If we don't want illegals here, we should stop crapping directly upon Central and South America with our drug laws and our foreign policy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My comment had nothing to do with affordability, or the feasibility of building large structures in California. I was simply pointing out the scale of the problem and showing that it was a local problem that will not affect national markets.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I don't think the fires are an important factor here. There are not enough homes because the government and physical reality have prevented them from being built, not because a few thousand upper class houses burned down.
Face it, LA is totally built, completely beyond reasonable limits and available water supplies. Government rules prevent affordable housing to be built due to zoning and occupancy regulations. The large metropolitan areas of California are generally all the same story, we have no more water, we can build no more housing on new land because there isn't any land or zoning laws prevent building on new land or upgrading existing housing for higher occupancy.
Sure the fires don't help, if you are a millionaire living in an upper class neighborhood near the places that burn, but this is temporary and very limited given the total number of homes, even with the current set of fires, These houses are largely insured and will be quickly rebuilt so the effect on supply will be pretty sort lived.
The problem with housing costs is a local and state government creation, where supply has been severely limited by regulations. Some necessary regulations, some not so necessary ones.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
My comment had nothing to do with affordability, or the feasibility of building large structures in California. I was simply pointing out the scale of the problem and showing that it was a local problem that will not affect national markets.
And I was pointing out that fires in California are already affecting national markets, and that the problem is only expected to intensify. So in short, no, and also no.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Google tiny homes and look at all the hipsters. It's a bunch of people trying to convince themselves they aren't living in a mobile home.
How are California wild fires affecting the national market?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
That is a nice story but the fact is that "red" was associated with "commie" and given that news networks were basically 95% democrat leaning, it seems a stretch to assume the current color scheme is due to anything other than a desire to paint "your team" in the best possible light. Democrat reporters, democrats get labeled blue.
Ah, not 50... more like 21,386 gun suicides a year in 2014. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fasta...
How are California wild fires affecting the national market?
Do you want me to hold your dick for you while you piss, too? I'm not explaining it a fourth or fifth time, whatever it is now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The first waves of millennials will be over 60 by then.
Almost 2/3 of those are in fact suicides. Look it up, you might learn something.
What does this have to do Technology?
Ken
Yeah, put up or shut up. You have no evidence no matter how good you think you are at 'splainin.
I actually Googled thinking you might have some idea what you are talking about, but no - the total loses in the north account for approximately 6 months of typical new building construction in the bay area. It will certainly run prices up locally, but the idea that 6000 bay area diaspora can have a measurable effect on the national market is just absurd.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Florida has a similar appraisal system - houses are re-assessed when they sell, this helps residents living on a fixed income stay in their homes, they aren't taxed-out of their home as values go up.
Ken
There are too many people who think they are rich.
Big difference. How many of them are properly saving for retirement, college, emergencies, etc.?
Were that I say, pancakes?