America's 'Rent Crisis' May Be Ending (fortune.com) 584
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?
Millennials having kids (Score:4, Funny)
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C'mon... do you really have to piss on everyone's Monday morning...?
Of course you are correct; kids change the dynamic.
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>Soon theyâ(TM)ll be ditching the Feel the Bern shirts and voting Republican.
"If you're a conservative before 25 you have no heart. If you're liberal after 35 you have no brain."
It's too old, and there are too many variants to attribute that quote correctly. I think it's a false dichotomy anyway; there are a LOT of social issues on which you might have opinions, and it seems extremely unlikely they're all going to fall into the same camp (whichever it may be).
I'm not particularly keen on the left
Re:Millennials having kids (Score:5, Interesting)
As a general rule (an unresearched, unscientific gut-feeling kind of rule!), people do seem to get more conservative as they age. I think it's fear - fear of losing what they have accrued, fear of a lifetime of experience becoming less relevant as they age, and an unwillingness to re-examine things they think they got figured out decades prior.
I don't think becoming more conservative as you age has much to do with changing political views. In fact the only research I have seen who track actual individuals' views over time has shown that supreme court justices become more liberal as they age. [fivethirtyeight.com] (although that may be because they are already older when they become justices) From what I can tell it has more to do with the difference between social and fiscal liberalism and how societies become more socially liberal over time.
I for instance am a social liberal and fiscal moderate. This means in 2017 I clearly lean Democrat. But in 2047 all of today's socially liberal battles will probably have been won. Or at least not nearly as big of issues as they are today. So I will likely be a social and fiscal moderate in my 60's. My views of women's reproductive rights, LGBT issues, and safety net programs will not have changed, it will be society's views on them which have changed.
While I am a proponent of a basic income today, perhaps in 30 years I will be against it going up from $30k/year to $40k. Then I might consider myself a fiscal conservative.
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Until you're ready for social security and Medicare, at least. Then you'll scream and yell for entitlements.
It's not an entitlement if you paid for it, ya moron.
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Until you're ready for social security and Medicare, at least. Then you'll scream and yell for entitlements.
It's not an entitlement if you paid for it, ya moron.
You should probably review the funding for Medicare and Social Security before claiming you "paid for it". Especially when tossing around words like moron.
Under both programs, the recipients paid in far less than they will receive. For example, Social Security recipients on average paid 1/3 what they will receive.
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The 1/3rd figure comes from Boomers. Younger generations will get similar returns.
"Social Security has a shitty ROI" is true only if you pretend you are getting paid from your own personal pool of money. Since the program has never operated that way, it's not exactly a valid argument. But it is utterly fantastic if you want to lie to people about 401k's being "the solution".
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Semantics, I know it's a ponzi scheme. Pointing that out doesn't help your case.
If you put money in and get money out, there is a ROI that can be calculated (it's not 3x, it's below inflation). Tough shit that you don't like that fact.
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You are putting money in. That money immediately goes to someone who is 67 or older. The money does not sit around waiting for you.
You think that any money put into your investment portfolio sits around waiting for you? Hell no - it immediately goes to someone.
FCOL, money you deposit into your fucking bank account does not sit around waiting for you- it immediately goes to someone else. That doesn't mean that the money you eventually get back is not yours.
If you put money into anything that eventually gives it back to you like an investment, bank account, retirement fund, or social security, what you get back is yours, because you dam
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>People tend to become more conservative once they have accrued things that they'd like to conserve. Also water is wet and rocks are hard.
Which shows a sad lack of empathy in both directions - when younger, a lack of respect for people who have worked to own things, when older, a lack of respect for those who want to own things. And it seems to get more extreme when the younger folks feel entitled and demand the previous generation just give them things they haven't earned, and the older generation want
Re:Millennials having kids (Score:5, Insightful)
Government regulation and standards allow for prosperity.
Public (or semipublic) health insurance means that employers can be free to do whatever they do, not be benefits managers. It means that employees can choose the job that best fits their skill set, not one that they're chained to via the prospect of losing insurance.
Environmental standards -- people without access to clean water, food, and air are less productive.
Rule of law means that business or personal property generally (outside of abominations like civil forfeiture) can't be stolen at random without redress.
True, there are excessive regulations like environmental-impact rules on infrastructure that drive up costs massively, but no one who has a sense of history wants to return to Love Canal and the burning Cuyahoga River.
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The goal is to make good regulations, and get rid of bad regulations. The only way to do that is to consider each regulation on its own merit.
Re:Millennials having kids (Score:5, Insightful)
Except there is no evidence that ACA/Obamacare actually raised insurance prices for equal insurance policies more (on average) than they'd have gone up under the old system. Absent market manipulations that deliberately worked against it, of course.
It also got rid of abominations like a friend of mine with epilepsy living in CA, being quoted $2000/mo for individual insurance minimum. Sure put a damper on his plans to start a business in 2010.
Most of the policies that people whined about losing were shit policies with low lifetime caps and a list of exceptions 100 pages long.
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Costs seem to be increasing [ncsl.org] from ~7% of income to 10.1% of income, after the ACA passed.
And of course the ACA was a handout to the insurance companies. You are compelled under threat of penalties to give money to a private corporation, whether you want to or not. If you choose not to, then the Government would forcibly take the money from you and hand it over. You were forced to buy a product whether you intended to use it or not. Yes, people talk about car insurance - but you do not need to own or dri
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Yeah. Costs increased because people who long delayed treatment for existing conditions could finally SEE A DOCTOR at an affordable price.
Actual facts [census.gov] say otherwise. People are going to the doctor LESS.
As far as what you pay, I agree, it's too much. There should have been a public option charging people say 8% of their income (plus 2% per child covered or something) for an acceptable level of insurance, capped at a certain amount.
Simple to pay for and calculate cost, portable between jobs within the state of California, gets employers out of the benefits-admin business, and cuts out much of the profit-taking middlemen. But noooo, the private insurers wouldn't stand for being relegated to second-class providers of "Medigap."
Blame the insurance lobby and low-information voters for not having a public option like 90% of developed places have.
And blame President Obama and the Democratic leadership for forcing the ACA on us, which forces purchase of a product from a private corporation and fines you if you choose not to buy. It's a tax, through and through - but one that goes predominantly straight to corporations.
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Your stats are from 2001 and 2010, from before the Obamacare/ACA law's implementation. Nice try, though.
Also, ACA = Romneycare. Democrats wanted a cheaper truly public insurance option, the ACA was the watered-down GOP-approved version. Blame the GOP, not Obama.
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No, it's some experience and wisdom [that turns people conservative as they age]
Considering research shows even our supreme justices become more liberal as they age [fivethirtyeight.com], I would say spending a lot of time having your believes continuously tested in a way that really gives you more experience and wisdom on these topics probably makes you more liberal over time.
Perhaps most people don't actually obtain usable and unbiased experience and wisdom over their lifetime, but instead let fear drive themselves towards conservatism, but it is a big stretch to think thoughtfulness is the cause of that.
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the false premise upon which a hundred million people died in the last century's misadventures in utopian collectivism
Closer to 200 million deaths, I believe (100 million just down to Mao). And people get all worked up over fascism, which, as evil as it is, is a rounding error in comparison.
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As I said, 'burps with good schools ain't cheap.
Demographics don't matter as much as you think -- the problem is that school administrators in many white bred 'burps think that people of color can't achieve. They're tracked in lesser classes and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Soon they’ll be ditching the Feel the Bern shirts and voting Republican.
My understanding is that this is mostly just a misconception based the republican supporter base being skewed towards old people because of to the way younger generations tend to be more progressive than their parents. People don't start voting republican when they get older, no, old people just vote republican more often because they're on the whole more conservative than their children are or will ever be.
I doubt anything will happen because of this except the 'burbs becoming more liberal and republica
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Socially, all a liberal has to do to become conservative as he ages is not change his social views. You'll find that's quite common, although sometimes people do actually become more conservative relative to their younger selves when they have kids. Having kids commonly changes one's attitude towards risk-taking in general.
Financially, people often become conservative once they have a stake in the system - once they have something to conserve. From the simple (and normal) selfishness of not wanting new t
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Re:Millennials having kids (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Millennials having kids (Score:5, Insightful)
Buying is often cheaper (Score:5, Informative)
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and depending on the cause that new roof may even be paid for by the insurance company.
Re:Buying is often cheaper (Score:5, Insightful)
Running the numbers is important. When I moved to Los Angeles, I expected to be here for a year or two max. Have been renting for 11 years now. While housing prices have appreciated beyond rational levels, it is only that which makes the equation for buying (retroactively) work. We put offers in on a few houses over the years, but our monthly costs would double, and the net return on investment is basically on par with what we get in our brokerage account, at best. (We bought a vacation home instead for what our down payment would have been.)
Real-estate is mainly an inflation hedge in the long term. It is helpful for diversification, and it can be something useful for survival, and it is a good way for people that can't save otherwise to be forced into it. It is a poor investment if you need to sell in less than 5-6 years, or if you end up buying a much bigger house than your present needs dictate to accommodate long-term family plans.
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Buying a house is a pretty good (usually low risk) investment, but it has one significant down side: It ties your investment to your lifestyle. Pretty much any other form of sensible investment is decoupled from anything that you do on a daily basis and so doesn't affect your mobility.
One of the big problems with globalisation is that it is far easier to move capital than labour and so it disproportionately benefits the individuals whose net work is primarily capital and n
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It is a poor investment if you need to sell in less than 5-6 years
Absolutely. And I'd second taking a hard look at the "math," as well as including a lot of unforeseen potential costs of home ownership if you're not planning on staying long-term.
Most people just do comparisons of rent vs. mortgage+taxes or whatever. There's often a lot more to home ownership. There are transaction fees both to buy and sell, agent fees if you use one, and then you have the real question of how much maintenance really can be.
If it's a newer home, and you're lucky, maintenance may not
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That is one of the easiest things to take into account. Personally, I like the NY Times Rent vs Buy calculator [nytimes.com]. I had fancier spreadsheets, but this gives you an easy means of screening.
The hard factors to account for are the relative inflation rates of renting and buying.
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This is very true. Especially once you start needing 3 bedrooms.
And the price stays the same every year as opposed to an apartment which raises rent but not enough to pay the cost of moving . Well least that's how it was before property taxes in San Antonio sky rocketed. I'm paying almost 3 hundred more that when I moved into my house 4 years ago. My escrow costs as much as my mortgage.
Even with the high taxes, it's still cheaper than renting a 3 bedroom apartment - and I have privacy and a yard.
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I second this in my area too. When I bought my house, it was about $700 a month for a 1 bedroom apartment with not much square feet beyond that. For a 20 year mortgage the payment was about the same for a 4 bedroom house with 2000 square feet (including unfinished workshop) a quarter acre property and a full garage. Plus I paid extra and paid off the mortgage early.
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You still did it wrong.
You should have bought a duplex or triplex. They're typically prices similarly (or cheaper) than single family houses, and, if you rent the other unit(s), you have some other skell paying most of your mortgage and taxes. Beautiful situation.
Re:Buying is often cheaper (Score:4, Insightful)
It's much better to rent a different property. You really, really, REALLY don't want to live in the same building with a bad renter. People do it, but it adds stress to your life that isn't worth the money (in my opinion, of course).
Generally that's going to mean having your primary residence be smaller, and having it paid off. I guess that means adding a decade to your schedule for becoming a landlord, but I highly recommend it. I haven't done it (yet), but I have a couple of friends who have.
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I was renting for a long time until a house in the neighborhood came on the market. We did the math and after mortgage, taxes, insurance, and other fees we came up with 300$ 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.
As a homeowner, I'd say this is highly situational. In my case, I'm certainly building equity, but it's hard to feel that since I have to make repairs (and with homes, you always have to.)
Main reason we bought the house was to get as close as possible to the 2nd best school district in the county (and one of the best in the nation), to build equity and because it is hard to find an affordable renting place in such neighborhoods. Otherwise, I would have stayed as a renter till my kids go to college.
Ultim
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Also those repair expenses that you don't have to worry about? You worry about it in every rent check.
Re:Buying is often cheaper (Score:4, Informative)
If they double the standard deduction, they've effectively eliminated my mortgage tax deduction.
Who Writes this Crap? (Score:2)
"...while the rental market struggled to meet the new demand."
Really? Yeah, those poor landlords had to raise their rents...oh, the horror.
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Really? Yeah, those poor landlords had to raise their rents...oh, the horror.
Only a portion of the demand is for higher-rent units. Most of the demand is for units of the same or lower price. Without that demand being filled, people wind up having to commute to work, which is inefficient. The inefficiencies add up, with the commuters adding inefficiency to other businesses depending on the same transportation conduits.
The landlords are clearly not suffering. Everyone else, however...
High Rent (Score:2)
There is no housing shortgage (Score:2)
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 wor
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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 know what would hep with this? School choice - whether full on vouchers so I can send my kids to private school or getting rid of districts so I can send my kids to a better public school.
When I was looking for homes, several areas of town we ruled out solely due to the school district. I can make my home safer but I can't make my kid's school safer. I could have gotten a house 2 times the size of mine if I didn't have to worry about the school my kids would be going to.
Best thing for a young family... (Score:2)
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It's gonna improve soon (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
OR, owners no longer up-side-down sell their homes (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
The Rent Is Too Damn High! (Score:2)
I'm dubious about the conclusions (Score:2)
Rent is Too High (Score:2)
It turns out that a mortgage for a similar house around here is about $1,800 to $
Expensive rentals (Score:2)
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.
I decided to rent (Score:3)
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.
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Buy in Jamaica. I don't mean the nation, I mean the part of Queens. You can get a comfortable house within walking distance of the subway for about $200-300k, maybe even a fixer-upper duplex.
Oh, and good South Asian and Latin American food all around you :)
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I hope you don't mean South Jamaica. My friend who grew up there would joke that the reason there was so much street parking is teams of a dozen guys carrying parked cars down to the chop shop. And a rap lyric that went something like "I come from South Jamaica Queens, where they beat you up and take your jeans. Most these kids put a toaster in your ribs!"
Fun things to think about while waiting for the Q112...
On the other hand, they are (finally) building some tall non-luxury apartments within walking di
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Come on that doesn't wash!
If the 'cost' of renting was lower than ownership there would be no rentals. Sure there are some small economies of scale managing multiple properties but that does not explain it. Rentals exist for two reasons.
1) Some people don't want to commit to a large illiquid asset when they know they might want to move in the foreseeable future.
2) As a function of capital. You need a home and do not have / are unable to raise the required capital for a cost lower than the premium a land
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I love when people say that the facts don't agree with the theory, so therefore the facts are wrong.
xurbs (Score:2)
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.
It is dumb to own a home in USA, (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Bingo. You see that a lot here.
Never Objective (Score:3)
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.
Re:No, it's all going to hell again (Score:5, Insightful)
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....
Re:No, it's all going to hell again (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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An obvious solution is to build some more houses.
They ARE concentrated in Denver, Austin, and Dalla (Score:3)
> 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.
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Re:No, it's all going to hell again (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
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Re:No, it's all going to hell again (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re:No, it's all going to hell again (Score:4, Informative)
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".
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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...
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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
Re:No, it's all going to hell again (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:No, it's all going to hell again (Score:5, Informative)
...which are financed by blue states [politifact.com].
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!
Re:No, it's all going to hell again (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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...
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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% Bl
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>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, ne
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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...
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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 apartmen
Re: No, it's all going to hell again (Score:2, Informative)
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.
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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
Re:No, it's all going to hell again (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:No, it's all going to hell again (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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
Houston (Score:3)
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 valuabl
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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 th
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You can afford a car???
Look at Mr. Moneybags.
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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.
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The rent is just too damn high...
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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.
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