Meanwhile if BlackRock became insolvent, the government would bail them out
I find it interesting that during the mortgage crisis, banks couldn’t wait to unload the housing they were left with at fire sale prices, and now investment firms are overpaying to monopolize the housing supply.
It certainly doesn’t help that it’s literally illegal to build enough housing across the vast majority of urban land (at least in the US and Canada). Nothing like good ol’ fashioned manufactured scarcity to guarantee line keeps on going up.
It’s the mother of all regulatory capture, where our local governments (who are supposed to represent the needs of the people) have passed so many frickin laws to systematically manufacture and maintain the artificial scarcity of housing that keeps these ghouls’ investments so wildly profitable. Restrictive zoning that makes townhouses and duplexes literally illegal? Check. Arbitrary and pseudoscientific parking minimums? Check. Setback requirements so everyone is legally required to have a massive resource-consuming, space-wasting front lawn whether they want it or not? Check.
Utter insanity.
Yes! It’s also refreshing to see you mention parking minimums. It’s like everyone is blind to the sheer amount of parking lots everywhere taking up so much space.
Parking lots that are only close to full on Black Friday and Christmas Eve.
And that’s by design. Parking minimum laws were literally written with maximum demand in mind, not typical. Like, those parking lots are going to sit half-empty for 99% of the year, and we all collectively have to pay for it every day through pricier goods in stores (parking lots and the real estate they occupy ain’t free), pricier rent (it could have been housing instead), and pricier transportation (ginormous parking lots just spread everything out, meaning we’re forced to become more dependent on gas-guzzling cars instead of being able to walk to the shop for free).
In my experience as an electrical engineer, this kind of thinking, 99% non-maximum and 1% maximum, is how electrical infrastructure is built too. Conductors and transformers and other equipment are sized to the historical max + a safety factor so that the electrical system will work even on the rainiest of rainy days. It has to do with reliability and resilience.
But parking lots don’t need to be super reliable or resilient… Bridges and buildings definitely, but roads and lots literally just cover land. You don’t have the same risk as your do with structures or the grid. Most get repaved every few years anyways.
Not to mention how with store fronts you don’t even really need pavement gravel when used gets the job done and it lets rain water drain away through it and when the place goes bankrupt the lot slowly becomes a park back in my home state of Vermont there’s a lot of places that have simple dirt parking lots
In my experience as an electrical engineer I size things like that and everyone fucking argues with me. I even have a document for it that basically says
“Please sign that you have been informed that what you are doing will cause a fire and you were informed of that fact by email”
And then announce that I am not proceeding until the document is signed. So far no one has taken me up on it.
Yep. And the lower density that more parking creates means our cities are an empty wasteland of endless paving.
You are my people.
A friend of mine wants to build a small house on land he legally owns, but he’s forbidden by municipality law unless it’s a luxury home.
It’s dumb. He owns the property, but he doesn’t have the money to build a luxury house. Why can’t he build a small house?
I guess not dedicating your life to pay off your house is illegal.
land he legally owns
Well the thing is he doesn’t really own it. He owns the right to use it, and that right is extremely limited. You really can’t say you own land when:
- Men with guns will kick you off the land if you stop paying your
rentproperty taxes. - The rights you do have over the land can be removed if the community decides they have a better use for it.
- Someone else might own the rights to resources on the land like minerals, oil, or water.
- Any substantial improvements or change of use must be approved by the local government.
- Men with guns will kick you off the land if you stop paying your
The crazy thing about the whole situation is it’s like the ONE time that the solution is actually deregulation and stronger property rights, but it’s also the ONE time libertarians WANT heavy regulations, weak property rights, and big daddy government interfering in your personal life.
I feel like I’m in bizarro world.
A libertarian is just a Republican trying to sleep with a Democrat. Once you understand that everything they do makes sense.
I don’t want that
Then you aren’t a libertarian.
What makes a luxury home different from any other home?
A backsplash in the kitchen made out of those linear tiles in shades of grey, or at least that’s what all the house flippers of the last few years seem to think.
Minimum dollar value for the house.
So basically the only way you can legally make more houses is if you’re looking to make a company town like it’s 1900
The type of people that can afford it.
Higher taxes I imagine. Government only has so much land to get money from so they want the most money per unit. You might say “well why not put an apartment building there?”. Which should mean even more money but each person there is a certain cost. So even if you make more money per unit you spend more. The ideal, from the POV of the government, would be the town having no residents only businesses. Plus you know only poor people young people and non-whites live in apartment buildings and Karen on the zoning board has strong opinions on those types.
Basically bigotry and incentives.
Because your friend has a zoning board and they don’t vote.
Imagine legally forcing everyone’s house to look the same. Seriously lawn laws in are so bonkers yet nobody bat’s an eye at them.
It honestly amazes me how Americans warship freedom while they don’t use it at all and shame people for being free
I honestly think many people don’t really know what freedom means. They think it’s a one-way street that means they can get whatever they want, but they never consider that freedom means other people can do what they want, too.
I honestly think many people don’t really know what freedom means.
I can’t find it right now, but this reminds me of a tweet that said something like, “Americans think freedom means the ability to choose from between 8 different types of salad dressing instead of like, the ability to leave your job without losing your healthcare.”
True Freedom™ is when the government forces every single person to have identical, ugly-ass front lawns for completely arbitrary aesthetic reasons, clearly /s
Except this is because of zoning and zoning exists because of racism.
How many single parents with four kids can afford a house?
All of them if it wasn’t for greedy corporations.
Hey, 2$ is a bid.
All of them if you take it speculators
At least some.
Maybe the husband died, and the mom is looking for a long term solution with the life insurance, rather than getting trapped renting.
Quite a lot, considering child support is a thing.
Hahahaha
You people realize a supermajority of Americans own their own home, right?
And that the very premise of the meme is that the single mother could afford to place a bid that was beaten by an investment firm and not another individual?
You’d be shocked what you can afford outside of a major city, which is one of the reasons why WFH is what everyone should be fighting for for any industry that can feasibly do it.
There are 161 million homes privately owned by their occupants in the US, if so may I see a citation of that?
You just cited the numbers yourself, my guy.
Most home owners/people that live in their own home are families but not all, and the idea of the wife keeping the house (and the equity that would let them bid on another if they need to move) is practically a meme itself.
How the fuck is asking for a citation answering a citation?
You, yourself, said there are 161 million privately owned homes in the US.
What is the current population of the US, and do you think there is a one person per home limit to residence?
Hahahahahaha
That is about 40% off gross. So unless dad is making 240k a year…
Or mom has a respectable income herself. Or they just aren’t buying in California.
No one cares about your flyover state, it doesn’t matter.
And you wonder why the rurals vote fash.
Name one!
I think people misunderstand what BlackRock does. It’s a proxy for other investors. Investors all around the world buy assets, produced by BlackRock and BlackRock routes that money into corresponding shares/bonds/real estate, etc.
The word “Produced” is doing some heavy-lifting in that sentence. When I hear “produced” I think of a factory making stuff that has value or a farm producing food.
It’s a way more generic word than you might think
I create software. Its not farm work nor is it physical but I can assure you I produce deliverables.
Whoosh
produce /prə-doo͞s′, -dyoo͞s′, prō-/
intransitive verb To bring forth; yield. “a plant that produces pink flowers.” To create by physical or mental effort. “produce a tapestry; produce a poem.” To manufacture. “factories that produce cars and trucks.”
Sounds like the word fits just fine. The investment firm “brings forth” the investment opportunity that someone without financial advisors and millions to invest needs to get into real estate through eREITs. That opportunity wouldn’t exist without them providing the service of connecting investors with and managing funds for the investments.
I believe in the classic Homer Simpson line this covers the “services” portion of “money can be exchanged for goods and services.”
Gotcha mortgage backed securities. Well why not? Nothing ever goes wrong with those.
Nothing ever goes wrong with those.
You must never leave your house in case a meteor falls from the sky, of drive because car accidents have occurred. Right? If something can go wrong or has the potential to be abused we should just never do it.
Whenever people like you actually come up with an alternative solution to make large scale infrastructure projects happen without investors you let me know, until then stop dragging down the collective IQ of the thread.
Right? If something can go wrong or has the potential to be abused we should just never do it.
I mean you could at least acknowledge that he meant the 2008 crisis, and not act like he’s a complete idiot. You should very much expect people to be wary of those after that.
They never do. You got to understand the fuckers who got bailed out are simultaneously so brilliant they deserve salaries in the tens of millions but so foolish that they couldnt see the crash coming. The wave function collapses when observed by the SEC into a state of need bailout or need more regulations that benefit them.
So freaken boring. Which are you? The welfare wall street type my tax dollars bailed out in 2008 or the welfare wall street type my tax dollars will bail out in the near future?
Neither, and you still haven’t answered the problem of how we get things done without someone or a group of people funding it.
Is the answer you want me to give to be to give free money and no oversight to your Wall Street cronies?
I think Zach Wilson would be doing something else with the single mom
There’s only 12 people on Lemmy who will get this joke which is a shame, because it’s fantastic
I just want to know what Zach’s mom is doing these days.
this guy just knows there’s a lot of cocaine out there and it’s against market principles to let it go to waste
What single mother of 4 is even shopping for, let alone bidding on, an actual house?
A single mom who works two jobs who loves her kids and never stops. With gentle hands and the heart of a fighter…
That cut is deep.
Really. This post doesn’t make sense. Wasn’t there a post like a few days ago saying most Americans can’t survive a sudden expense because they can’t save 1000 USD?
Then how come now they can bid for houses?
everyday
You mean ‘every day’, in English. #noChildLeftBehind
I am no BlackRock lover, but at some point you should ask yourself: “do I need more kids?”.
No idea. Do those billionaire shitstains need all that money? We should take a few billions from them and see, and then go after your totally real not made up strawman.
I think that question should be up to you. If you want kids have them, if you don’t then that’s cool too.
Unless you really want to start another eugenics movement telling who can and can’t reproduce.
Bro literally didn’t say that but your comment does say a lot about how you think about others
Bros comment is a shitty dog whistle
Society as we know it is going to collapse unless we have more children. Queue Dingledufus, “It’s your fault for having kids!”
You can’t make up this level of bootlickery.
Should have picked a better baby daddy that didn’t duck out.
(Apparently this makes me both an incel and a dead beat dad. Schroedinger’s children. Shitty people have kids they shouldn’t have. More shocking news at six.)
Said like a true basement dwelling incel. Man, their must be a real migration of asshats from Reddit happening now.
Riling up Americans is as easy as shooting children in an Elementary school. You’re cracking the shits over a dumb, imagined situation.
No single mum is bidding on a house unless they have a life insurance payout or a decent asset split.
You would definitely be a dead beat dad. You’d find a way to blame it on her too, like you are right now.
It’s her fault that he was a shitty person? Big incel energy.
Mate, the golden rule of good forum etiquette is not saying something you wouldn’t say in front of them. Making a few assumptions, tough guy.
4 isn’t that many kids. It’s only a lot right now because the world is screwed
There are plenty of reasons someone might be a single mother with 4 kids.
Ummmm let them have it. They are overpaying anyways.
That doesn’t matter. Once corporations own enough of the housing market, they can literally sit on them and never sell. Then people will be forced to rent at whatever prices they want to charge. Initial high cost will be offset quickly by forever rents.
I used to think this way, but after being a home owner, a home is a depreciating value. Couple that with home repairs, bad renters, high taxes, and general business operations cost. Initial overpayment for a home will not let you pay return.
