This makes me happy, and honestly I think city government is being more generous than it needs to be. Airbnb comes with significant community costs if it exceeds a low percentage of available...
This makes me happy, and honestly I think city government is being more generous than it needs to be.
Airbnb comes with significant community costs if it exceeds a low percentage of available housing. It also makes neighborhoods less pleasant to live in. In tourist communities it prices out needed service workers.
I'm feeling it living in San Diego. The house I'm currently long term renting used to be an AirBnB, but my landlord got tired of having to keep cleaning it and dealing with shitty guests. And...
I'm feeling it living in San Diego. The house I'm currently long term renting used to be an AirBnB, but my landlord got tired of having to keep cleaning it and dealing with shitty guests. And luckily for me he put it out lower than market rate, but that was a few years ago, and although my rent hasn't changed since we first moved in, in starting to find better deals around nearby neighborhoods.
But when I look to buy, it's literally impossible for me. For a 2 or 3 bedroom house in the city, the cheapest is like $700k. And even with a 20% down payment, with interest rates the way they are it's like $3000 to $4000 a month, which is quite a bit more than we pay for rent. I'm considering trying to buy and then getting roommates to help subsidize for the first few years until I'm able to refinance or make more money lol
One thing to keep in mind with interest rates is that most people base what they can afford on the monthly payment, which is largely driven by interest rates. I relocated and moved to a high cost...
One thing to keep in mind with interest rates is that most people base what they can afford on the monthly payment, which is largely driven by interest rates. I relocated and moved to a high cost of living area last summer and I ended up with an interest rate of 6.9%, giving me a monthly payment of around $4,700. If I fixed that monthly payment, and vary the interest, you will get a sense of how the interest might impact the home price. If interest rates had stayed at 3%, I might have ended up paying an extra $250-$300k more for the house with the same monthly payment.
Over the next few years, I would predict that as interest rates decrease, the home values near me will rise more or less keeping that rough monthly payment intact. If you can afford to buy with the higher interest rate, you can lock in a lower total price, and refinance years later to reduce the monthly cost.
So don't let me talk you into over leveraging yourself, but if you can swing it, buying when interest rates are high can work out well in the long term. As rates drop and home values increase, you will have a more favorable debt to value ratio when you refinance. This is my second time buying at the peak interest rate during an upheaval, and so far things are working out well.
If I'm understanding this correctly, then I'd like to politely challenge this argument. I've heard this kind of thing a lot. From people in real estate, from talking heads on financial shows, and...
If interest rates had stayed at 3%, I might have ended up paying an extra $250-$300k more for the house with the same monthly payment.
If I'm understanding this correctly, then I'd like to politely challenge this argument. I've heard this kind of thing a lot. From people in real estate, from talking heads on financial shows, and they always repeat it as fact and without really proving that this kind of massive fluctuation (as a percentage) can happen between housing prices and pressure from mortgage rates.
So I looked it up and I found a lot of articles saying it was true without making any claims. Then I found this article titled "How Higher Mortgage Rates Have Historically Affected Home Prices" that explains the situation in broad terms. Now this is partially looking at housing price appreciation, but that's one of the factors that sets the comparable value of neighboring houses for sale. One thing this article doesn't talk about is the dramatic increase in the cost of goods contributing to higher housing prices (both for building and for comparable housing estimates were you to (re)build the same house today).
The article explains that:
In general, a stronger economy and higher inflation can support housing price appreciation for several reasons. Higher wages and a lower unemployment, consistent with economic growth, will boost housing demand. Potential homeowners can reasonably expect rents will rise at least as fast as inflation (or faster, if demand is strong).
We have that economic growth now (S&P 4,900!), even if some of our economic growth is a (huge) bubble. And even if higher wages taking effect the past couple years are incidental and not 100% correlated to employers being more generous with their greater profits. And even if those higher wages aren't trending with inflation. What's described in this article from 2022 still sounds true to me.
The article concludes:
There has been a lot of speculation, but little evidence, about what higher rates tell us about home price appreciation. Our look at the historical evidence shows that sharply higher mortgage rates tend to slow home price appreciation and may weigh on housing market activity. But nominal home price appreciation does remain positive. And during these periods of sharp interest rate increases, we did not have the acute housing supply shortage we have today, which could slow the deceleration in home price appreciation. In short, despite a sharp drop in affordability because of higher mortgage rates, home prices are unlikely to decline. Rather, affordability challenges are likely to persist.
I take that to mean that without additional external influences, housing prices would not decrease by double-digit percentages just because mortgage rates went up. The economy is good and people are still buying over the long term and over the short term there might be a pause or simply less growth in the number of buyers. The article's data includes the entirety of the 1980s when 30-year mortgage rates ranged from 9-18.4% yet median home prices increased from $63,700 at the start of that decade to $123,900 by 1990. So I don't think that a substantial amount of equity is "saved" by buying when mortgage rates are higher because I don't know that there's real proof, even in a closed system, that higher mortgage rates do that to housing prices in an appreciable way. The charts seem to back that up.
In general, I think housing prices will continue to trend up because of a variety of economic factors, and it'll be more than, and correlated less, pressures from interest rates. People will be displaced by economic headwinds that impact the average person, which means there's churn in the market. Cost of materials are 25% higher or more (in some cases 200% for copper and plywood) for new homes and renovations. Cost of labor is higher for new homes and for renovations. Private equity companies have invested a lot of money in real estate and they'll continue to find ways to make their investments profitable. There's been a FOMO in highly desirable areas along beaches and tropical islands that have pushed the appreciation of housing up by 80% in a short period of time and buyers are going to have a hard time letting go of over-paying.
So really what I am looking at is the short term. In the long term fluctuations based on interest rates are normalized so to speak by all the macro factors you mention. However, when interest...
So really what I am looking at is the short term. In the long term fluctuations based on interest rates are normalized so to speak by all the macro factors you mention. However, when interest rates are the fastest changing variable, I expect it will correlate with either increases or flattening of home value appreciation in high cost of living areas. In high cola's demand never stops but what plateaus is the amount the majority in the area can get approved for. When that amount is constrained by higher interest rates, and then those rates drop, people bid each other up to what they can now afford each month. That amount increases as interest rates drop.
Once the rate of change of interest rates slows or stops, the interest rate stops being the dominant term in appreciation of home value.
However, we will see in time. My wager is that if you track home price data from now through the next 4-6 interest rate decreases, in high cola's like DC, San Diego, and NYC, you will see home prices increase faster than a 3-5 year trend in the following 90-120 days after each decrease.
It'll be interesting to watch!
Edit: I might see where some confusion is.
I take that to mean that without additional external influences, housing prices would not decrease by double-digit percentages just because mortgage rates went up.
I never intended to mean that price was solely driven by interest rates or that they would drop in high cola's with higher rates. In part, sellers often are attached to their perception of value and prefer to take their house off the market rather than sell for a dramatic loss, unless there is something forcing their hand.
I didn't state my thesis or assumptions well. I'm specifically saying that significant decreases in interest rates on the order of 4% over a few years, in high cola's, with sustained demand, will see home prices appreciate following rate decreases faster than the 3-5 year trend lines, for short periods following each decrease as buyers re-establish market values as they are approved for higher amounts.
But again, I could be wrong! It's fun to predict and then observe and this one is easy to measure! If I'm wrong, find me in 3 years and I'll buy you a beer! 🍺 🍻
Isn't the article (which cites 20-40% decreases in value for admittedly very expensive housing) suggesting that AirBnB has distorted the market in other ways we've never seen before, and banning...
Isn't the article (which cites 20-40% decreases in value for admittedly very expensive housing) suggesting that AirBnB has distorted the market in other ways we've never seen before, and banning STRs like AirBnB could have an outsized impact on the housing market in the most impacted communities?
I'm not sure the 2-3x housing cost increases I've seen in many desirable vacation areas (including the one where I currently live) are sustainable if STRs stop. The gap between the STR revenue and just about every other means of earning money in the area is simply too great. So these communities have to choose: do they squeeze everyone else out with the STR-enabled bubble pricing? Or do they ban or severely limit STRs, pricking the bubble now so everyone else can afford to live in the area?
High housing costs affects everything though. Palm Springs is a desert. People do not visit because of the natural beauty, they visit because of the community and structures that people have built...
High housing costs affects everything though. Palm Springs is a desert. People do not visit because of the natural beauty, they visit because of the community and structures that people have built there. Pricing the people who made those out of the market risks destroying the appeal that brings people and money to that community, so it very much makes sense for them to pop that bubble.
It might be possible, but you’d have to convince the financial institution to let you. This seems like the kind of thing that would invite extra paperwork and financial risk (from the bank’s...
It might be possible, but you’d have to convince the financial institution to let you. This seems like the kind of thing that would invite extra paperwork and financial risk (from the bank’s perspective), so I’m a bit skeptical. As it is, I know Americans often have trouble just opening bank accounts in foreign countries due to the weird way the US IRS taxes income earned abroad.
Also, the exchange rate risk and the fact that the loan is backed by an asset in a different country makes it unlikely that they'd offer the same interest rate they would domestically.
Also, the exchange rate risk and the fact that the loan is backed by an asset in a different country makes it unlikely that they'd offer the same interest rate they would domestically.
The bank account stuff is more about the IRS requiring special reporting from foreign banks that's a huge PITA (at best) for the banks themselves. I think the difficulty in getting a mortgage...
The bank account stuff is more about the IRS requiring special reporting from foreign banks that's a huge PITA (at best) for the banks themselves. I think the difficulty in getting a mortgage abroad is a more general problem that isn't really dependent on any US-specific policy.
That's a pretty good set of options! I know many countries like Canada and the UK don't really have the 15 or 30 fixed rate options. Maybe I need to look at relocating to the Netherlands!
That's a pretty good set of options! I know many countries like Canada and the UK don't really have the 15 or 30 fixed rate options. Maybe I need to look at relocating to the Netherlands!
Generally speaking it is wildly different to get a mortgage in a country where you are not a citizen and especially one where you do not live. I don't think most financial institutions would...
Generally speaking it is wildly different to get a mortgage in a country where you are not a citizen and especially one where you do not live. I don't think most financial institutions would mortgage a house abroad in the same way anyway (though idk much about Dutch banks, maybe they're way more chill than I expect).
I feel that there is a vibe going around in Southern California concerning housing availability. I have heard that a state judge has halted the approval of construction licenses in Beverly Hills...
I feel that there is a vibe going around in Southern California concerning housing availability. I have heard that a state judge has halted the approval of construction licenses in Beverly Hills due to their continual failure to approve low income housing. I can only hope that it continues to build momentum.
Here in San Diego, it's frustrating to see new apartment buildings constantly going up in working class neighborhoods, and no one originally from the neighborhood being able to afford to rent...
Here in San Diego, it's frustrating to see new apartment buildings constantly going up in working class neighborhoods, and no one originally from the neighborhood being able to afford to rent them.
And the same thing in middle class neighborhoods. Is there a work that describes "gentrification" from middle class to upper class? Because I feel like that's most of San Diego rn
Gentrification is just that word, it's just that the gap between affluence and 'middle class' is a lot larger than you expect. Working class people clawed out a little bit of wealth, convinced...
Gentrification is just that word, it's just that the gap between affluence and 'middle class' is a lot larger than you expect.
Working class people clawed out a little bit of wealth, convinced themselves they were now 'middle class' and didn't need to care about the poors anymore. Now, the rich have come knocking again, since we've been kicking the poors down so much and it's hard to get blood from a stone they needed another meat sack to drain.
The transition seems a bit rough. One way to make it smoother might be to allow people with licenses to transfer it with a property sale once, but not after that. The new buyers would know they...
The transition seems a bit rough. One way to make it smoother might be to allow people with licenses to transfer it with a property sale once, but not after that. The new buyers would know they can’t resell it for short term rental, but it would have some value since they can rent it out themselves.
These people speculated on a very expensive asset with known detriments to the local community (they take up housing others could rent or buy; they bring in vacationers who don't care about the...
These people speculated on a very expensive asset with known detriments to the local community (they take up housing others could rent or buy; they bring in vacationers who don't care about the community). I live in an area with a very similar problem, and I've met several braggy STR owners who are absolutely swimming in cash from their half-dozen+ properties. They don't care about the ramifications of what they do, they just see an infinite money machine with very little work, since they farm out the low-level stuff to management companies. Why should the community care about the loss these people take when their overinflated asset bubble pops? They've made enough cash at everyone else's expense for years exploiting government housing subsidies for profit.
I’m sure there are people like that, but I’m unwilling to assume they’re all the same. I also think tourists are people too, even if they aren’t “the community.” Serving people who are on vacation...
I’m sure there are people like that, but I’m unwilling to assume they’re all the same.
I also think tourists are people too, even if they aren’t “the community.” Serving people who are on vacation is a worthy occupation. Many of us go on vacation sometimes, and would like to be treated fairly.
Palm Springs is absolutely brimming with boutique hotels and resorts. The center of the town practically has a hotel on every other block. Tourists are extremely well accommodated without the...
Palm Springs is absolutely brimming with boutique hotels and resorts. The center of the town practically has a hotel on every other block. Tourists are extremely well accommodated without the existence of STRs. I’m not sure how it’s “fair” to house tourists in the places more urgently required for the people who actually live there everyday and more consistently contribute to their local community and economy.
I see a role for a certain number of short term house rentals. They fill a need for families with kids and for parties/reunions, where a living room and kitchen are important. However the current...
I see a role for a certain number of short term house rentals. They fill a need for families with kids and for parties/reunions, where a living room and kitchen are important.
However the current spread of Airbnb is malignant to communities and contributing to some terrible social problems including homelessness
Many places have significant, urgent problems with too much tourism, and new regulations can sometimes help, if done well. I just want to emphasize that most tourists aren't doing something wrong...
Many places have significant, urgent problems with too much tourism, and new regulations can sometimes help, if done well. I just want to emphasize that most tourists aren't doing something wrong (except for the ones who are) and many businesses that serve tourists aren't doing anything particularly wrong either. There's nothing inherently wrong with staying in a residential community or with short-term rentals. Serving tourists is a reasonable way to make money and it's not inherently wrong for someone to become rich that way.
It's in the aggregate that it becomes a problem. Systemic problems need systemic solutions. But demonizing vague classes of people doesn't help.
I didn’t think I was demonizing the tourists. I was just pointing out that they were already well accommodated without the huge expansion of STRs in the past few decades. Lately, though, I have...
I didn’t think I was demonizing the tourists. I was just pointing out that they were already well accommodated without the huge expansion of STRs in the past few decades.
Lately, though, I have begun to really despise the mentality of excusing individual behaviors that cause harm in aggregate. We have these problems because even if people are aware of the extent of how much harm is being done they excuse their personal actions because they choose not to see beyond the scope of the damage they are personally doing, all for the sake of personal convenience. Then they hear stories about unprecedented climate disasters and they think they have nothing to do with it.
You’re not wrong about systemic problems needing systemic solutions, but those solutions will not happen until a critical mass of people take direct action.
Okay, not demonizing but at least moralizing. Also, I disagree on direct action. It can be a good way raising awareness, prototyping new ways of living, and making things more comfortable for...
Okay, not demonizing but at least moralizing. Also, I disagree on direct action. It can be a good way raising awareness, prototyping new ways of living, and making things more comfortable for yourself and the people you care about. But making individual changes isn't going to move the needle on larger goals if you're working at cross purposes with the people around you. What you do is going to get undone by other people, and shaming them won't fix it.
These AirBnB's are a case in point: many homeowners don't rent to tourists, but that doesn't fix the problem on its own. If there's no law then you might as well do it too.
Fixing systemic problems means getting consensus at a larger scale - in this case, community scale. How do you get that "critical mass" if not though organizing? You need cooperation from people whose main priority is something else. That's done by changing defaults and incentives, and sometimes setting limits.
And that's what Palm Springs did, apparently? It seems pretty reasonable in principle, although perhaps the implementation could have been better. I think it helps to make sure that the people adversely affected don't lose too much. Sometimes the best thing to do about opposition is to buy them out.
Getting concensus means getting people to agree with you. And the best way to do that is to lead by example. It's hard to tell people to stop using one-time-use plastics for instance, if you are...
Getting concensus means getting people to agree with you. And the best way to do that is to lead by example. It's hard to tell people to stop using one-time-use plastics for instance, if you are still doing it yourself. If you aren't practicing what you preach, then you are viewed as a hypocrite on the matter and nobody will listen to your message.
I should clarify that I don't think that you're wrong when it comes to this in particular. As you pointed out, most homeowners were not turning them into STRs. But doesn't that also mean that those homeowners were already leading by example? It sounds like they were talking to eachother about how these rental properties were damaging their community, and it was those people who were leading the charge against them - not the people who owned the STR properties.
I'm certainly not saying systemic changes aren't needed, but you need direct action to get enough momentum going to enact those changes. You need to demonstrate to people what change can look like. Without it there is little hope of change.
Yes, there was a political process resulting in new laws being passed. This article doesn't go into much detail about it, though. It did say that they failed the first time. Setting an example can...
Yes, there was a political process resulting in new laws being passed. This article doesn't go into much detail about it, though. It did say that they failed the first time.
Setting an example can be important, but I'm not sure how necessary it is in this case? Not renting on AirBnB is the norm.
Not sure about hypocrisy. It's true that an advocate might look like a hypocrite if they proposed extreme measures while renting out their own property, but on the other hand, a proposal from someone who's "on the other side" might seem more reasonable and realistic, because they've "been there." Sometimes proposals that come from the same group get more traction than those that come from perceived outsiders.
Folks who applied for a proper rental license are not targetted in this ordinance. Why didn't they. Housing should never be speculation - that's why there are already hotels, which pay fair taxes...
Folks who applied for a proper rental license are not targetted in this ordinance.
Why didn't they.
Housing should never be speculation - that's why there are already hotels, which pay fair taxes and a city can decide how many visitors per year etc. underground rentals don't profit the community at all.
I like going on vacations but not if it's at the expense of putting the locals' housing at risk.
That one-time transfer reminds me of a state vehicle title tax where a vehicle can only be gifted every other owner change. Basically, it prevents people from selling their car and letting the...
That one-time transfer reminds me of a state vehicle title tax where a vehicle can only be gifted every other owner change. Basically, it prevents people from selling their car and letting the buyer avoid the title tax.
In this case, allowing a one time transfer would allow flippers or speculators to get out of their investment by selling to an entity interested in managing the property for the long term, while preventing future sales whose value is based solely on appreciation and changes in NPV and opportunity cost calculations.
In Palm Springs, a cap on short-term rentals in specific high-demand neighborhoods has all but frozen the market in those communities.
Sales are down. Homes languish on the market for months. And investors who bought up Palm Springs properties during the COVID-19 pandemic are facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses.
…
Palm Springs, a city dependent on tourism, tried something new in an attempt to preserve its local identity in the era of Airbnb.
In 2022, the City Council adopted an ordinance that capped the number of rental certificates in any given neighborhood to 20% of the homes there.
If you live in one of 10 Palm Springs neighborhoods that already are over the limit, you’re trapped in permit purgatory, stuck on a waiting list for a rental license that may take years.
Those with licenses before the cap were grandfathered in. Those count toward the cap, so most of the capped neighborhoods were over the limit as soon as the ordinance passed. Some, like Movie Colony East at 21.8%, are just above the limit. Others, like Racquet Club Estates at 41.6%, have blown through it.
But beyond the grandfathered homes, the rules are extremely strict. If you have a license and sell your home, the license isn’t passed down to the buyer.
…
To be clear, caps aren’t the only thing driving down prices. The market in Palm Springs — and all of Southern California — is still nursing a hangover from the wild pandemic market. Low interest rates led to record prices in the last few years, but as interest rates climbed higher and higher, home values dipped across the board.
In addition, people simply aren’t renting as many Airbnbs in Palm Springs these days.
“Occupancy rates are dismal,” said Sarlund, who runs a small short-term rental business in addition to working as a real estate agent. “Even people with rental licenses aren’t getting as many contracts as they used to.”
…
As a compromise, the city has introduced a junior vacation rental certificate that anyone can apply for whether they live in a capped neighborhood or not. It costs $642 and allows homeowners to rent out a property six times per year.
So homeowners could technically rent their homes six times for up to 28 days each time — the maximum that Palm Springs considers a short-term stay — but good luck. With occupancy rates down overall, it’s tough to get a renter to book for more than a weekend, much less a month.
That honestly sounds like a fantastic solution and system. It's insane how many people can't find first homes, while others own dozens and rent them out
That honestly sounds like a fantastic solution and system. It's insane how many people can't find first homes, while others own dozens and rent them out
My landlord told me to my face, excitedly, that he used the income from his (what was three) rental properties to buy a new house to rent out. I wanted to cry.
My landlord told me to my face, excitedly, that he used the income from his (what was three) rental properties to buy a new house to rent out.
I understand your frustration, but isn't that how any business operates? Using the revenue from your business to make a capital investment and grow the business is just sort of how things work. It...
I understand your frustration, but isn't that how any business operates? Using the revenue from your business to make a capital investment and grow the business is just sort of how things work.
It sucks to see that when you're trying to move from renting to owning, and there is a lot of room for policy improvement in the long-term rental space like what Palm Springs has done with short term rentals, but it's hardly surprising that a landlord would buy more buildings with the revenue from their existing buildings.
It's neither surprising nor confusing. I'm sure they realize how businesses operate, and saying "that's just how things work" is not really comforting or helpful. I don't like how things work. I...
It's neither surprising nor confusing. I'm sure they realize how businesses operate, and saying "that's just how things work" is not really comforting or helpful. I don't like how things work.
I agree with the sentiment above. I would love to see a steep tax on such investment properties at a minimum. Throw in some public investment for affordable housing and further restrictions on for-profit property hoarding, and we might just make some progress.
I guess we're just going to have to accept that disagree then, as I just don't see renting out homes/apartments as inherently exploitative. Don't get me wrong - it certainly can be very...
I guess we're just going to have to accept that disagree then, as I just don't see renting out homes/apartments as inherently exploitative.
Don't get me wrong - it certainly can be very exploitative, and many shitty landlords exist - but it's not some fundamental law of nature.
Being a landlord is definitely a valuable service, there are many people who don't want or need to own a home. But once that market is served it quickly becomes a rent seeking problem -- landlords...
Being a landlord is definitely a valuable service, there are many people who don't want or need to own a home.
But once that market is served it quickly becomes a rent seeking problem -- landlords would ideally own and rent all properties if they could in the current climate. Of course that can largely be solved by over building but we don't seem to be able to do that.
I would argue that it is a fundamental thing. Because all capitalism is necessarily exploitative by it's very nature, and the segment of it the exists around profiting from essential-to-life stuff...
I would argue that it is a fundamental thing. Because all capitalism is necessarily exploitative by it's very nature, and the segment of it the exists around profiting from essential-to-life stuff like housing and healthcare in a restricted and largely captive market is the most exploitative of all.
Put it like this, what proportion of private landlords do you believe are being landlords to serve the public good? Because those are your non-shitty landlords and there are so few of them that they might as well not exist at all. There are landlords that treat their tenants well, for sure - but that just means they're exploiting them with a smile. But it's just good business to keep your income stream happy while you jack up the rent as far as you can get away with.
Our experiences with communism so far have also been extremely oppressive. I am đź’Ż in favor of social safety nets. But central planning economies applied at a granular level quickly become...
Our experiences with communism so far have also been extremely oppressive.
I am đź’Ż in favor of social safety nets. But central planning economies applied at a granular level quickly become ridiculous and ineffective.
Capitalism can be flexible and pivot quickly to changed conditions, increased or decreased demand because of economic signals.
Also personal autonomy is an issue with communist systems we have seen so far.
I am very very sympathetic to the needs of the destitute and the aspirations of the proletariat. I would like a progressive system of government that doesn't become totalitarian.
I hate this line of discussion, but we've literally never had communism. We've had communisT states, but not communism. An important distinction, let me explain: Suppose that tomorrow, Biden...
Our experiences with communism so far have also been extremely oppressive.
I hate this line of discussion, but we've literally never had communism.
We've had communisT states, but not communism. An important distinction, let me explain:
Suppose that tomorrow, Biden publicly announced that monarchism is amazing and the US should never have seceded from the British empire. That would, arguably, mean the US government is monarchist. However, the USA would not be monarchisM unless it has a king/queen.
So what does ist really mean? It means the beliefs of the govt in question. Not their actual setup.
Communism is a classless, moneyless, stateless society. So you can imagine that "a communist state" is an absurd concept - the communists took over the state and planned to use it to construct conditions that would enable communisM and then dismantle said state. The USSR never claimed to be communisM, and they knew it would be decades away.
Now, naturally lots of people said "ah, a country ruled by communists?" and called it Communism. However, this term is incorrect jargon.
So what exactly was the USSR? Well, marxism is where the workers control the factories etc where they work, and in the USSR those were controlled by govt bureaucrats, and the govt was controlled by the communist party in an undemocratic one-party state, so the workers didn't control the govt, and thus didn't control the capital. So it wasn't marxisM, it was state capitalism.
And FWIW, if we consider the People's Republic of China to be communist, then they don't have fine-grained central planning so that's a moot point too. Although, I would argue that central planning has nothing to do with communism anyway - it's a concept of the state or at least some opt-in central governing/planning body. Market socialism exists.
So, jumping from "capitalism vs communism" to "the USA vs the USSR" is a complete non-sequitur.
I haven't figured out from your comment whether or to what extent we disagree, except on one point. If a country has called itself communist or based its governing philosophy on Marx, I feel free...
I haven't figured out from your comment whether or to what extent we disagree, except on one point.
If a country has called itself communist or based its governing philosophy on Marx, I feel free to call it communist. USSR and PRC are far from the only ones although they were the most influential. And Mao absolutely did central planning for the economy
I made a specific distinction between "communist" and "communism". The former is the intentions (and a strategy for getting there), the latter is the actual result. We don't disagree on whether...
I made a specific distinction between "communist" and "communism". The former is the intentions (and a strategy for getting there), the latter is the actual result.
We don't disagree on whether the USSR/PRC were communist. They were communist. Honestly, I think you missed my central thesis here.
I wonder whether you understood why I brought up communism in response to Mat's drag on capitalism. We are getting a long way from the conversation about Airbnb. I respect that there are aspects...
I wonder whether you understood why I brought up communism in response to Mat's drag on capitalism.
We are getting a long way from the conversation about Airbnb.
I respect that there are aspects of communism that haven't been tried and might lead to good.
I fear that people using communist theory to attempt change will fall into past mistakes like driving small businesses underground and imposing thought control, self criticism and struggle sessions.
There are a lot of aspects of human nature that aren't going to change regardless of economic systems.
Edit and if you are really talking about theory that is not going to be implemented, what is the point?
It's quite funny how you jump from "public housing is less oppressive than landlordism" to "communism is oppressive and totalitarian" as though getting rid of landlordism is remotely the thing...
It's quite funny how you jump from "public housing is less oppressive than landlordism" to "communism is oppressive and totalitarian" as though getting rid of landlordism is remotely the thing that makes a state totalitarian.
I was responding to the statement 'all capitalism is necessarily exploitative' And I don't believe all communism would necessarily be oppressive totalitarian, just the versions we have seen so far
I was responding to the statement 'all capitalism is necessarily exploitative'
And I don't believe all communism would necessarily be oppressive totalitarian, just the versions we have seen so far
What do you think the source is of all the housing policies that exist to protect tenants? It wasn’t a result of proaction. By the way, not all landlords are even people that rent out housing....
What do you think the source is of all the housing policies that exist to protect tenants? It wasn’t a result of proaction. By the way, not all landlords are even people that rent out housing. There are also commercial landlords. Do you know what services a commercial landlord is legally obligated to provide their tenants? Literally nothing more than a guarantee that they won’t be evicted if they operate there. And this is all housing tenants got, too, until people got sick and tired of living in shanty towns (by the way, in the places where shanty towns still exist, guess what tenants are entitled to)
"just sort of how things work" doesn't make it right, and when someone is standing in front of you and crowing about how their exploitation of your need for a roof over your head is making them...
"just sort of how things work" doesn't make it right, and when someone is standing in front of you and crowing about how their exploitation of your need for a roof over your head is making them richer just makes it worse.
Of course, one salient difference is that most businesses actually provide some beneficial product or service rather than literally just rent-gathering.
Using the revenue from your business to make a capital investment and grow the business is just sort of how things work.
Of course, one salient difference is that most businesses actually provide some beneficial product or service rather than literally just rent-gathering.
You mean a beneficial service like providing a safe place to live that gives you the flexibility to move if and when you want to - without the burden of regular maintenance costs, the risk of...
You mean a beneficial service like providing a safe place to live that gives you the flexibility to move if and when you want to - without the burden of regular maintenance costs, the risk of having to cover expensive unexpected issues, or the restriction of having to go through a lengthy sale process before moving?
None of those are services I'm provided by my landlord even on a practical level, and they certainly are not considered such on an economic level. I did not make up the term "rent-gathering" just...
None of those are services I'm provided by my landlord even on a practical level, and they certainly are not considered such on an economic level. I did not make up the term "rent-gathering" just to insult landlords. "Rent-seeking" is an economic term that's been around for quiet a long while and refers to the concept of economic rent as defined by famous Big Econ Guy, Adam Smith. It does not refer specifically to the concept of payment on a lease, but being a landlord but not a property developer is a classic example thereof.
If you rent and your landlord does not maintain the building to ensure it is safely habitable and maintain appliances, etc. that are part of the unit you're renting then they're violating the law...
If you rent and your landlord does not maintain the building to ensure it is safely habitable and maintain appliances, etc. that are part of the unit you're renting then they're violating the law and your rights as a tenant, and you have the ability to address that.
Otherwise, yes, they are providing you with a service. The service is that you can live there and not have to worry about getting a repair done, replacing an appliance, or really anything besides paying your fixed bill on time each month. And renting is much more flexible than owning inherently - you don't have to deal with the sale process at all, just don't renew the lease (or go through a predefined process to break it), and move.
Maintaining a property is a service. It is not what "being a landlord" entails and even when maintenance is made part of a landlord's responsibility by the government, it's actually a joint...
Maintaining a property is a service. It is not what "being a landlord" entails and even when maintenance is made part of a landlord's responsibility by the government, it's actually a joint responsibility of landlord and tenant in most jurisdictions (think about security deposits, after all - they exist specifically to protect the landlord from tenants failing to maintain the property in certain ways). My landlord certainly can hold me responsible for not sufficiently maintaining my flat, after all, and our ability to force the other to do so legally is obviously not proportionate (or at least it wouldn't be, if I weren't a member of the local tenants' union -- something unfortunately far less common in the US than it is where I live).
Please in general don't make statements about how someone is violating the law in an area that varies as much per jurisdiction as tenant rights unless you're sure you know what jurisdiction you’re talking about and that the law applies there. The amount of responsibility a landlord bears for the maintainance of a property is not universal even within the US, where it varies a ton state-to-state and perhaps even more granularly, to say nothing of other countries. And, of course, what tenant protections exist in terms of maintenance of a safely habitable place with working appliances can be difficult to enforce, since they're gatekept behind legal action that can be difficult for low-income victims to afford. And I say this as someone who has sued a (former) landlord in the past -- I was only able to do so because I worked at my dad's law office at the time, and the vast majority of people don't have that opportunity.
Calling landlordism rent-seeking is not particularly controversial on an economic level even among diehard capitalists. You're free to disagree with me and be pro-landlordism, but I'm not interested in holding a debate on the topic where we don't go deeper than "you should be grateful they let you pay them more than it cost to buy your building for the right to temporarily stay there". I'm not trying to claim there are no inconveniences to home ownership, but that's utterly irrelevant to the question of whether landlordism is rent-seeking (and, more practically, whether we should get rid of it).
I guess this is a matter of perspective, as in my view a security deposit is not to encourage you to perform maintenance, but is to discourage you from actively damaging the property (beyond...
security deposits, after all - they exist specifically to protect the landlord from tenants failing to maintain the property in certain ways
I guess this is a matter of perspective, as in my view a security deposit is not to encourage you to perform maintenance, but is to discourage you from actively damaging the property (beyond normal wear and tear).
We're going to have to leave it here though, because I too, am not interested in debating this as we're both clearly firm in our views and simply will not agree.
I live in a small town in rural PA. I have owned a really old house since 1996 in the small town where I live. These kinds of hoses are quite affordable and always have been. I've put a good bit...
I live in a small town in rural PA. I have owned a really old house since 1996 in the small town where I live. These kinds of hoses are quite affordable and always have been. I've put a good bit of money in it over the years and it needs inside remodeling but it's served me well. I had to do this when I was getting divorced in 1996. Living in a nice ranch house with a huge yard wasn't hard yo give up. This smaller property was easier for me to take care of.
Now that I am near retirement I am just going to sell it and try to find an apartment. I will likely need to move to a nearby larger town as there are extremely limited apartment options in my area.
I can't wait to not to have to take care of everything! I have to arrange for people to almost everything there days - cutting grass, handyman repairs, etc.
This makes me happy, and honestly I think city government is being more generous than it needs to be.
Airbnb comes with significant community costs if it exceeds a low percentage of available housing. It also makes neighborhoods less pleasant to live in. In tourist communities it prices out needed service workers.
I'm feeling it living in San Diego. The house I'm currently long term renting used to be an AirBnB, but my landlord got tired of having to keep cleaning it and dealing with shitty guests. And luckily for me he put it out lower than market rate, but that was a few years ago, and although my rent hasn't changed since we first moved in, in starting to find better deals around nearby neighborhoods.
But when I look to buy, it's literally impossible for me. For a 2 or 3 bedroom house in the city, the cheapest is like $700k. And even with a 20% down payment, with interest rates the way they are it's like $3000 to $4000 a month, which is quite a bit more than we pay for rent. I'm considering trying to buy and then getting roommates to help subsidize for the first few years until I'm able to refinance or make more money lol
One thing to keep in mind with interest rates is that most people base what they can afford on the monthly payment, which is largely driven by interest rates. I relocated and moved to a high cost of living area last summer and I ended up with an interest rate of 6.9%, giving me a monthly payment of around $4,700. If I fixed that monthly payment, and vary the interest, you will get a sense of how the interest might impact the home price. If interest rates had stayed at 3%, I might have ended up paying an extra $250-$300k more for the house with the same monthly payment.
Over the next few years, I would predict that as interest rates decrease, the home values near me will rise more or less keeping that rough monthly payment intact. If you can afford to buy with the higher interest rate, you can lock in a lower total price, and refinance years later to reduce the monthly cost.
So don't let me talk you into over leveraging yourself, but if you can swing it, buying when interest rates are high can work out well in the long term. As rates drop and home values increase, you will have a more favorable debt to value ratio when you refinance. This is my second time buying at the peak interest rate during an upheaval, and so far things are working out well.
Best of luck!
If I'm understanding this correctly, then I'd like to politely challenge this argument. I've heard this kind of thing a lot. From people in real estate, from talking heads on financial shows, and they always repeat it as fact and without really proving that this kind of massive fluctuation (as a percentage) can happen between housing prices and pressure from mortgage rates.
So I looked it up and I found a lot of articles saying it was true without making any claims. Then I found this article titled "How Higher Mortgage Rates Have Historically Affected Home Prices" that explains the situation in broad terms. Now this is partially looking at housing price appreciation, but that's one of the factors that sets the comparable value of neighboring houses for sale. One thing this article doesn't talk about is the dramatic increase in the cost of goods contributing to higher housing prices (both for building and for comparable housing estimates were you to (re)build the same house today).
The article explains that:
We have that economic growth now (S&P 4,900!), even if some of our economic growth is a (huge) bubble. And even if higher wages taking effect the past couple years are incidental and not 100% correlated to employers being more generous with their greater profits. And even if those higher wages aren't trending with inflation. What's described in this article from 2022 still sounds true to me.
The article concludes:
I take that to mean that without additional external influences, housing prices would not decrease by double-digit percentages just because mortgage rates went up. The economy is good and people are still buying over the long term and over the short term there might be a pause or simply less growth in the number of buyers. The article's data includes the entirety of the 1980s when 30-year mortgage rates ranged from 9-18.4% yet median home prices increased from $63,700 at the start of that decade to $123,900 by 1990. So I don't think that a substantial amount of equity is "saved" by buying when mortgage rates are higher because I don't know that there's real proof, even in a closed system, that higher mortgage rates do that to housing prices in an appreciable way. The charts seem to back that up.
In general, I think housing prices will continue to trend up because of a variety of economic factors, and it'll be more than, and correlated less, pressures from interest rates. People will be displaced by economic headwinds that impact the average person, which means there's churn in the market. Cost of materials are 25% higher or more (in some cases 200% for copper and plywood) for new homes and renovations. Cost of labor is higher for new homes and for renovations. Private equity companies have invested a lot of money in real estate and they'll continue to find ways to make their investments profitable. There's been a FOMO in highly desirable areas along beaches and tropical islands that have pushed the appreciation of housing up by 80% in a short period of time and buyers are going to have a hard time letting go of over-paying.
So really what I am looking at is the short term. In the long term fluctuations based on interest rates are normalized so to speak by all the macro factors you mention. However, when interest rates are the fastest changing variable, I expect it will correlate with either increases or flattening of home value appreciation in high cost of living areas. In high cola's demand never stops but what plateaus is the amount the majority in the area can get approved for. When that amount is constrained by higher interest rates, and then those rates drop, people bid each other up to what they can now afford each month. That amount increases as interest rates drop.
Once the rate of change of interest rates slows or stops, the interest rate stops being the dominant term in appreciation of home value.
However, we will see in time. My wager is that if you track home price data from now through the next 4-6 interest rate decreases, in high cola's like DC, San Diego, and NYC, you will see home prices increase faster than a 3-5 year trend in the following 90-120 days after each decrease.
It'll be interesting to watch!
Edit: I might see where some confusion is.
I never intended to mean that price was solely driven by interest rates or that they would drop in high cola's with higher rates. In part, sellers often are attached to their perception of value and prefer to take their house off the market rather than sell for a dramatic loss, unless there is something forcing their hand.
I didn't state my thesis or assumptions well. I'm specifically saying that significant decreases in interest rates on the order of 4% over a few years, in high cola's, with sustained demand, will see home prices appreciate following rate decreases faster than the 3-5 year trend lines, for short periods following each decrease as buyers re-establish market values as they are approved for higher amounts.
But again, I could be wrong! It's fun to predict and then observe and this one is easy to measure! If I'm wrong, find me in 3 years and I'll buy you a beer! 🍺 🍻
Isn't the article (which cites 20-40% decreases in value for admittedly very expensive housing) suggesting that AirBnB has distorted the market in other ways we've never seen before, and banning STRs like AirBnB could have an outsized impact on the housing market in the most impacted communities?
I'm not sure the 2-3x housing cost increases I've seen in many desirable vacation areas (including the one where I currently live) are sustainable if STRs stop. The gap between the STR revenue and just about every other means of earning money in the area is simply too great. So these communities have to choose: do they squeeze everyone else out with the STR-enabled bubble pricing? Or do they ban or severely limit STRs, pricking the bubble now so everyone else can afford to live in the area?
High housing costs affects everything though. Palm Springs is a desert. People do not visit because of the natural beauty, they visit because of the community and structures that people have built there. Pricing the people who made those out of the market risks destroying the appeal that brings people and money to that community, so it very much makes sense for them to pop that bubble.
Our strategy is to rent and save for possible relocation and buying when we retire.
It might be possible, but you’d have to convince the financial institution to let you. This seems like the kind of thing that would invite extra paperwork and financial risk (from the bank’s perspective), so I’m a bit skeptical. As it is, I know Americans often have trouble just opening bank accounts in foreign countries due to the weird way the US IRS taxes income earned abroad.
Also, the exchange rate risk and the fact that the loan is backed by an asset in a different country makes it unlikely that they'd offer the same interest rate they would domestically.
The bank account stuff is more about the IRS requiring special reporting from foreign banks that's a huge PITA (at best) for the banks themselves. I think the difficulty in getting a mortgage abroad is a more general problem that isn't really dependent on any US-specific policy.
What is the max term length for the loans? In the US the standard term is 30 year fixed.
That's a pretty good set of options! I know many countries like Canada and the UK don't really have the 15 or 30 fixed rate options. Maybe I need to look at relocating to the Netherlands!
Generally speaking it is wildly different to get a mortgage in a country where you are not a citizen and especially one where you do not live. I don't think most financial institutions would mortgage a house abroad in the same way anyway (though idk much about Dutch banks, maybe they're way more chill than I expect).
I feel that there is a vibe going around in Southern California concerning housing availability. I have heard that a state judge has halted the approval of construction licenses in Beverly Hills due to their continual failure to approve low income housing. I can only hope that it continues to build momentum.
Here in San Diego, it's frustrating to see new apartment buildings constantly going up in working class neighborhoods, and no one originally from the neighborhood being able to afford to rent them.
And the same thing in middle class neighborhoods. Is there a work that describes "gentrification" from middle class to upper class? Because I feel like that's most of San Diego rn
Gentrification is just that word, it's just that the gap between affluence and 'middle class' is a lot larger than you expect.
Working class people clawed out a little bit of wealth, convinced themselves they were now 'middle class' and didn't need to care about the poors anymore. Now, the rich have come knocking again, since we've been kicking the poors down so much and it's hard to get blood from a stone they needed another meat sack to drain.
The transition seems a bit rough. One way to make it smoother might be to allow people with licenses to transfer it with a property sale once, but not after that. The new buyers would know they can’t resell it for short term rental, but it would have some value since they can rent it out themselves.
These people speculated on a very expensive asset with known detriments to the local community (they take up housing others could rent or buy; they bring in vacationers who don't care about the community). I live in an area with a very similar problem, and I've met several braggy STR owners who are absolutely swimming in cash from their half-dozen+ properties. They don't care about the ramifications of what they do, they just see an infinite money machine with very little work, since they farm out the low-level stuff to management companies. Why should the community care about the loss these people take when their overinflated asset bubble pops? They've made enough cash at everyone else's expense for years exploiting government housing subsidies for profit.
They speculated on a very expensive liability, pardon the minor correction.
Let me play the smallest possible violin to their collective demise.
I’m sure there are people like that, but I’m unwilling to assume they’re all the same.
I also think tourists are people too, even if they aren’t “the community.” Serving people who are on vacation is a worthy occupation. Many of us go on vacation sometimes, and would like to be treated fairly.
Palm Springs is absolutely brimming with boutique hotels and resorts. The center of the town practically has a hotel on every other block. Tourists are extremely well accommodated without the existence of STRs. I’m not sure how it’s “fair” to house tourists in the places more urgently required for the people who actually live there everyday and more consistently contribute to their local community and economy.
I see a role for a certain number of short term house rentals. They fill a need for families with kids and for parties/reunions, where a living room and kitchen are important.
However the current spread of Airbnb is malignant to communities and contributing to some terrible social problems including homelessness
Many places have significant, urgent problems with too much tourism, and new regulations can sometimes help, if done well. I just want to emphasize that most tourists aren't doing something wrong (except for the ones who are) and many businesses that serve tourists aren't doing anything particularly wrong either. There's nothing inherently wrong with staying in a residential community or with short-term rentals. Serving tourists is a reasonable way to make money and it's not inherently wrong for someone to become rich that way.
It's in the aggregate that it becomes a problem. Systemic problems need systemic solutions. But demonizing vague classes of people doesn't help.
I didn’t think I was demonizing the tourists. I was just pointing out that they were already well accommodated without the huge expansion of STRs in the past few decades.
Lately, though, I have begun to really despise the mentality of excusing individual behaviors that cause harm in aggregate. We have these problems because even if people are aware of the extent of how much harm is being done they excuse their personal actions because they choose not to see beyond the scope of the damage they are personally doing, all for the sake of personal convenience. Then they hear stories about unprecedented climate disasters and they think they have nothing to do with it.
You’re not wrong about systemic problems needing systemic solutions, but those solutions will not happen until a critical mass of people take direct action.
Okay, not demonizing but at least moralizing. Also, I disagree on direct action. It can be a good way raising awareness, prototyping new ways of living, and making things more comfortable for yourself and the people you care about. But making individual changes isn't going to move the needle on larger goals if you're working at cross purposes with the people around you. What you do is going to get undone by other people, and shaming them won't fix it.
These AirBnB's are a case in point: many homeowners don't rent to tourists, but that doesn't fix the problem on its own. If there's no law then you might as well do it too.
Fixing systemic problems means getting consensus at a larger scale - in this case, community scale. How do you get that "critical mass" if not though organizing? You need cooperation from people whose main priority is something else. That's done by changing defaults and incentives, and sometimes setting limits.
And that's what Palm Springs did, apparently? It seems pretty reasonable in principle, although perhaps the implementation could have been better. I think it helps to make sure that the people adversely affected don't lose too much. Sometimes the best thing to do about opposition is to buy them out.
Getting concensus means getting people to agree with you. And the best way to do that is to lead by example. It's hard to tell people to stop using one-time-use plastics for instance, if you are still doing it yourself. If you aren't practicing what you preach, then you are viewed as a hypocrite on the matter and nobody will listen to your message.
I should clarify that I don't think that you're wrong when it comes to this in particular. As you pointed out, most homeowners were not turning them into STRs. But doesn't that also mean that those homeowners were already leading by example? It sounds like they were talking to eachother about how these rental properties were damaging their community, and it was those people who were leading the charge against them - not the people who owned the STR properties.
I'm certainly not saying systemic changes aren't needed, but you need direct action to get enough momentum going to enact those changes. You need to demonstrate to people what change can look like. Without it there is little hope of change.
Yes, there was a political process resulting in new laws being passed. This article doesn't go into much detail about it, though. It did say that they failed the first time.
Setting an example can be important, but I'm not sure how necessary it is in this case? Not renting on AirBnB is the norm.
Not sure about hypocrisy. It's true that an advocate might look like a hypocrite if they proposed extreme measures while renting out their own property, but on the other hand, a proposal from someone who's "on the other side" might seem more reasonable and realistic, because they've "been there." Sometimes proposals that come from the same group get more traction than those that come from perceived outsiders.
Folks who applied for a proper rental license are not targetted in this ordinance.
Why didn't they.
Housing should never be speculation - that's why there are already hotels, which pay fair taxes and a city can decide how many visitors per year etc. underground rentals don't profit the community at all.
I like going on vacations but not if it's at the expense of putting the locals' housing at risk.
That one-time transfer reminds me of a state vehicle title tax where a vehicle can only be gifted every other owner change. Basically, it prevents people from selling their car and letting the buyer avoid the title tax.
In this case, allowing a one time transfer would allow flippers or speculators to get out of their investment by selling to an entity interested in managing the property for the long term, while preventing future sales whose value is based solely on appreciation and changes in NPV and opportunity cost calculations.
From the article (archive):
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That honestly sounds like a fantastic solution and system. It's insane how many people can't find first homes, while others own dozens and rent them out
My landlord told me to my face, excitedly, that he used the income from his (what was three) rental properties to buy a new house to rent out.
I wanted to cry.
I understand your frustration, but isn't that how any business operates? Using the revenue from your business to make a capital investment and grow the business is just sort of how things work.
It sucks to see that when you're trying to move from renting to owning, and there is a lot of room for policy improvement in the long-term rental space like what Palm Springs has done with short term rentals, but it's hardly surprising that a landlord would buy more buildings with the revenue from their existing buildings.
It's neither surprising nor confusing. I'm sure they realize how businesses operate, and saying "that's just how things work" is not really comforting or helpful. I don't like how things work.
I agree with the sentiment above. I would love to see a steep tax on such investment properties at a minimum. Throw in some public investment for affordable housing and further restrictions on for-profit property hoarding, and we might just make some progress.
I guess we're just going to have to accept that disagree then, as I just don't see renting out homes/apartments as inherently exploitative.
Don't get me wrong - it certainly can be very exploitative, and many shitty landlords exist - but it's not some fundamental law of nature.
Being a landlord is definitely a valuable service, there are many people who don't want or need to own a home.
But once that market is served it quickly becomes a rent seeking problem -- landlords would ideally own and rent all properties if they could in the current climate. Of course that can largely be solved by over building but we don't seem to be able to do that.
I would argue that it is a fundamental thing. Because all capitalism is necessarily exploitative by it's very nature, and the segment of it the exists around profiting from essential-to-life stuff like housing and healthcare in a restricted and largely captive market is the most exploitative of all.
Put it like this, what proportion of private landlords do you believe are being landlords to serve the public good? Because those are your non-shitty landlords and there are so few of them that they might as well not exist at all. There are landlords that treat their tenants well, for sure - but that just means they're exploiting them with a smile. But it's just good business to keep your income stream happy while you jack up the rent as far as you can get away with.
Our experiences with communism so far have also been extremely oppressive.
I am đź’Ż in favor of social safety nets. But central planning economies applied at a granular level quickly become ridiculous and ineffective.
Capitalism can be flexible and pivot quickly to changed conditions, increased or decreased demand because of economic signals.
Also personal autonomy is an issue with communist systems we have seen so far.
I am very very sympathetic to the needs of the destitute and the aspirations of the proletariat. I would like a progressive system of government that doesn't become totalitarian.
I hate this line of discussion, but we've literally never had communism.
We've had communisT states, but not communism. An important distinction, let me explain:
Suppose that tomorrow, Biden publicly announced that monarchism is amazing and the US should never have seceded from the British empire. That would, arguably, mean the US government is monarchist. However, the USA would not be monarchisM unless it has a king/queen.
So what does ist really mean? It means the beliefs of the govt in question. Not their actual setup.
Communism is a classless, moneyless, stateless society. So you can imagine that "a communist state" is an absurd concept - the communists took over the state and planned to use it to construct conditions that would enable communisM and then dismantle said state. The USSR never claimed to be communisM, and they knew it would be decades away.
Now, naturally lots of people said "ah, a country ruled by communists?" and called it Communism. However, this term is incorrect jargon.
So what exactly was the USSR? Well, marxism is where the workers control the factories etc where they work, and in the USSR those were controlled by govt bureaucrats, and the govt was controlled by the communist party in an undemocratic one-party state, so the workers didn't control the govt, and thus didn't control the capital. So it wasn't marxisM, it was state capitalism.
And FWIW, if we consider the People's Republic of China to be communist, then they don't have fine-grained central planning so that's a moot point too. Although, I would argue that central planning has nothing to do with communism anyway - it's a concept of the state or at least some opt-in central governing/planning body. Market socialism exists.
So, jumping from "capitalism vs communism" to "the USA vs the USSR" is a complete non-sequitur.
I haven't figured out from your comment whether or to what extent we disagree, except on one point.
If a country has called itself communist or based its governing philosophy on Marx, I feel free to call it communist. USSR and PRC are far from the only ones although they were the most influential. And Mao absolutely did central planning for the economy
I made a specific distinction between "communist" and "communism". The former is the intentions (and a strategy for getting there), the latter is the actual result.
We don't disagree on whether the USSR/PRC were communist. They were communist. Honestly, I think you missed my central thesis here.
I wonder whether you understood why I brought up communism in response to Mat's drag on capitalism.
We are getting a long way from the conversation about Airbnb.
I respect that there are aspects of communism that haven't been tried and might lead to good.
I fear that people using communist theory to attempt change will fall into past mistakes like driving small businesses underground and imposing thought control, self criticism and struggle sessions.
There are a lot of aspects of human nature that aren't going to change regardless of economic systems.
Edit and if you are really talking about theory that is not going to be implemented, what is the point?
I'm done here
It's quite funny how you jump from "public housing is less oppressive than landlordism" to "communism is oppressive and totalitarian" as though getting rid of landlordism is remotely the thing that makes a state totalitarian.
I was responding to the statement 'all capitalism is necessarily exploitative'
And I don't believe all communism would necessarily be oppressive totalitarian, just the versions we have seen so far
What do you think the source is of all the housing policies that exist to protect tenants? It wasn’t a result of proaction. By the way, not all landlords are even people that rent out housing. There are also commercial landlords. Do you know what services a commercial landlord is legally obligated to provide their tenants? Literally nothing more than a guarantee that they won’t be evicted if they operate there. And this is all housing tenants got, too, until people got sick and tired of living in shanty towns (by the way, in the places where shanty towns still exist, guess what tenants are entitled to)
"just sort of how things work" doesn't make it right, and when someone is standing in front of you and crowing about how their exploitation of your need for a roof over your head is making them richer just makes it worse.
Copying my response above:
Of course, one salient difference is that most businesses actually provide some beneficial product or service rather than literally just rent-gathering.
You mean a beneficial service like providing a safe place to live that gives you the flexibility to move if and when you want to - without the burden of regular maintenance costs, the risk of having to cover expensive unexpected issues, or the restriction of having to go through a lengthy sale process before moving?
None of those are services I'm provided by my landlord even on a practical level, and they certainly are not considered such on an economic level. I did not make up the term "rent-gathering" just to insult landlords. "Rent-seeking" is an economic term that's been around for quiet a long while and refers to the concept of economic rent as defined by famous Big Econ Guy, Adam Smith. It does not refer specifically to the concept of payment on a lease, but being a landlord but not a property developer is a classic example thereof.
If you rent and your landlord does not maintain the building to ensure it is safely habitable and maintain appliances, etc. that are part of the unit you're renting then they're violating the law and your rights as a tenant, and you have the ability to address that.
Otherwise, yes, they are providing you with a service. The service is that you can live there and not have to worry about getting a repair done, replacing an appliance, or really anything besides paying your fixed bill on time each month. And renting is much more flexible than owning inherently - you don't have to deal with the sale process at all, just don't renew the lease (or go through a predefined process to break it), and move.
Maintaining a property is a service. It is not what "being a landlord" entails and even when maintenance is made part of a landlord's responsibility by the government, it's actually a joint responsibility of landlord and tenant in most jurisdictions (think about security deposits, after all - they exist specifically to protect the landlord from tenants failing to maintain the property in certain ways). My landlord certainly can hold me responsible for not sufficiently maintaining my flat, after all, and our ability to force the other to do so legally is obviously not proportionate (or at least it wouldn't be, if I weren't a member of the local tenants' union -- something unfortunately far less common in the US than it is where I live).
Please in general don't make statements about how someone is violating the law in an area that varies as much per jurisdiction as tenant rights unless you're sure you know what jurisdiction you’re talking about and that the law applies there. The amount of responsibility a landlord bears for the maintainance of a property is not universal even within the US, where it varies a ton state-to-state and perhaps even more granularly, to say nothing of other countries. And, of course, what tenant protections exist in terms of maintenance of a safely habitable place with working appliances can be difficult to enforce, since they're gatekept behind legal action that can be difficult for low-income victims to afford. And I say this as someone who has sued a (former) landlord in the past -- I was only able to do so because I worked at my dad's law office at the time, and the vast majority of people don't have that opportunity.
Calling landlordism rent-seeking is not particularly controversial on an economic level even among diehard capitalists. You're free to disagree with me and be pro-landlordism, but I'm not interested in holding a debate on the topic where we don't go deeper than "you should be grateful they let you pay them more than it cost to buy your building for the right to temporarily stay there". I'm not trying to claim there are no inconveniences to home ownership, but that's utterly irrelevant to the question of whether landlordism is rent-seeking (and, more practically, whether we should get rid of it).
I guess this is a matter of perspective, as in my view a security deposit is not to encourage you to perform maintenance, but is to discourage you from actively damaging the property (beyond normal wear and tear).
We're going to have to leave it here though, because I too, am not interested in debating this as we're both clearly firm in our views and simply will not agree.
GOOD. That's all I have to say. GOOD. I hope more cities follow suit and more housing becomes available and AFFORDABLE.
I live in a small town in rural PA. I have owned a really old house since 1996 in the small town where I live. These kinds of hoses are quite affordable and always have been. I've put a good bit of money in it over the years and it needs inside remodeling but it's served me well. I had to do this when I was getting divorced in 1996. Living in a nice ranch house with a huge yard wasn't hard yo give up. This smaller property was easier for me to take care of.
Now that I am near retirement I am just going to sell it and try to find an apartment. I will likely need to move to a nearby larger town as there are extremely limited apartment options in my area.
I can't wait to not to have to take care of everything! I have to arrange for people to almost everything there days - cutting grass, handyman repairs, etc.