Poll of the Day > Why has housing prices gone up so much?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Ozmose posted...

If you think Russia and China aren't communist countries, you should try living there. The whole postmodern "but it's not REAL communism" thing is getting old.

Give us your personal accounts of life in Russia and China.

mario2000 posted...

Give us your personal accounts of life in Russia and China.

He can't because he's using a strawman per usual.

Ozzy is like Zeus-lite: moronic "hot takes" with half the personality and none of the wit of a Zeus post

Ozmose posted...

If you think Russia and China aren't communist countries, you should try living there. The whole postmodern "but it's not REAL communism" thing is getting old.

"They're not communist" doesn't mean "they're good places to live." It just means they aren't communist, and that's entirely possible to assess objectively. China's kinda borderline, being communist on paper but increasingly capitalist as more and more elites reach the point of having the resources to influence the government in their capitalistic favour, but Russia just straight up hasn't been communist since the Soviet Union fell. They switched to a different economic and governance system after that.

Now, Russia's not particularly democratic, which might be what you're thinking of, but that's got nothing to do with being communist. That's just being a dictatorship.

why am i not surprised that he thinks "if: no democracy, then: communist"

Because "communist" is widely used as a catch-all term for anything government-related that right-wingers don't like. Actually understanding what it means is beyond many such people.

I cannot believe people still exist who live in fear of "the commies". Join the current fucking millennium already. I bet they also believe that AIDS is an unstoppable death plague.

The thing I don't get is that a lot of people cannot afford homes, even if they're making decent money for their area. Then also lumber prices are up, like I was going to rebuild my deck last year and decided to wait, and this year it was significantly more expensive....So I'd imagine the cost to build a home is way higher too. Then there's war everywhere, so not only is the lumber costly but the fuel is too. Meaning cost to buy a brand new home is probably way, way up compared to an already constructed home.

But, with all of that in mind, right now in my city there are 12 new neighborhoods being constructed. Not like a one-off home being built in a lot, but 20-30 home communities are being built. They're not even cutting down the woods or anything in my area (which I think they would to at least re-use that local lumber), but are instead just building them in vacant fields.
It makes absolutely no sense to me, but it seems like new neighborhoods are constantly popping up. There was one that finished being built 5 years ago and there are a grand total of two families living in that neighborhood that I've counted. I ride my bike through there all the time and it's some weird, creepy ghost town and they keep building more and more.
I don't like the look of the neighborhoods, either. They all look like that movie "Vivarium" if anyone is familiar with it...which doesn't fit aesthetically at all with my area, which is the stereotypical midwestern small-medium sized city.

Still wondering about the debt up to your eyeballs comment. Are regular people supposed to buy homes or no? The logic is inconsistent.

BucketCat posted...

They're not even cutting down the woods or anything in my area (which I think they would to at least re-use that local lumber), but are instead just building them in vacant fields.

The issue with clearing land to use for homes is that clearing it is expensive, and the profit from selling whatever lumber is produced (if it's even useful lumber, which isn't the case in a lot of areas) usually goes to a logging company that has bought the land. If a developer owns the land, they'll often want to split those profits, which makes fewer logging companies willing to take the job. There's also often opposition from environmental groups to clearcutting forests for developments when other viable land exists. Meanwhile, buying up a couple of abandoned farms and developing those is relatively cheap and has fewer hoops to jump through.

BucketCat posted...

There was one that finished being built 5 years ago and there are a grand total of two families living in that neighborhood that I've counted. I ride my bike through there all the time and it's some weird, creepy ghost town and they keep building more and more.

There's a good chance that most of the empty ones were bought by investors instead of prospective homeowners. They'll sit empty until property values go up, then be sold for a profit. Of course, the irony is that if too many houses are bought out by investors and nobody lives in the neighbourhood, that keeps property values from going up, so it turns into a game of chicken as each investor waits for the others to give up and sell at a loss so the neighbourhood can actually be populated and the remaining investment properties can turn a profit.

It's also quite possible that the developers gambled on there being more demand for homes in your area than there actually was, but that generally wouldn't explain a continuous stream of similar new developments. At some point, they'd stop, even considering the sunk cost fallacy.

Jen0125 posted...

Still wondering about the debt up to your eyeballs comment. Are regular people supposed to buy homes or no? The logic is inconsistent.

Clearly, you're supposed to buy a house, carve it up into six micro-apartments and rent them for $2000/month each so your tenants pay your mortgage off in a couple years, then sell the house for double what you paid, buy another house debt-free, and use the rest to buy even more properties where you get somebody else to pay off those new mortgages for you.

mario2000 posted...

I bet they also believe that AIDS is an unstoppable death plague.

Have they made big movements in the treatment of AIDS recently? You don't hear about how terrible it is as much as you did in the 90's/00's

BucketCat posted...

The thing I don't get is that a lot of people cannot afford homes, even if they're making decent money for their area. Then also lumber prices are up, like I was going to rebuild my deck last year and decided to wait, and this year it was significantly more expensive....So I'd imagine the cost to build a home is way higher too. Then there's war everywhere, so not only is the lumber costly but the fuel is too. Meaning cost to buy a brand new home is probably way, way up compared to an already constructed home.

But, with all of that in mind, right now in my city there are 12 new neighborhoods being constructed. Not like a one-off home being built in a lot, but 20-30 home communities are being built. They're not even cutting down the woods or anything in my area (which I think they would to at least re-use that local lumber), but are instead just building them in vacant fields.
It makes absolutely no sense to me, but it seems like new neighborhoods are constantly popping up. There was one that finished being built 5 years ago and there are a grand total of two families living in that neighborhood that I've counted. I ride my bike through there all the time and it's some weird, creepy ghost town and they keep building more and more.
I don't like the look of the neighborhoods, either. They all look like that movie "Vivarium" if anyone is familiar with it...which doesn't fit aesthetically at all with my area, which is the stereotypical midwestern small-medium sized city.

Everybody wants to buy new. If they can afford it, they don't want to buy a house someone else has lived in. When my real estate agent worked with me to buy my house, even they treated buying an older house as "settling".

And right now, the only people who can afford to buy a house are the ones who buy new.

Zareth posted...

Have they made big movements in the treatment of AIDS recently? You don't hear about how terrible it is as much as you did in the 90's/00's

Not big movements in the sense of a full cure, but we've kind of quietly hit a point where the treatment options that keep it under control mean it's no longer a death sentence in most of the developed world. It's still a life-altering diagnosis in the sense that you'll be taking meds for the rest of your life and will have to be particularly careful about sex (though some of those meds also reduce the risk of transmitting it, and there are also meds that partners of HIV-positive people can take prophylactically to further reduce their risk), but provided you keep on top of it you're probably going to end up living about as long as you would without it.

Of course, that's less applicable in areas where the meds aren't readily available, so it's still definitely a problem in the parts of Africa that have been particularly ravaged by it, but things are substantially better now than they were even just ten years ago.

Man, this topic turned into an entertaining, confusing mess.