Housing Costs

[ohio jones]

I don't want to live some place the rain water runs toward the middle of the house, no matter how "high end" it is. Nor do I want to live in some old gravel pit. What is wrong with the developers out there?

[Ken]

I don't want to live some place the rain water runs toward the middle of the house, no matter how "high end" it is. Nor do I want to live in some old gravel pit. What is wrong with the developers out there?

The alternatives are:

1. Buy a $1.5 million single family home close-in in a nearby neighborhood. If you are rich you can do that.

2. Buy a cheaper single family home on a new lot 5-10 miles further out of town with LOTs more bumper to bumper morning traffic on narrow 2-lane roads and a 10-15 minute drive to the nearest place where you can buy a carton of milk.

It is a free world. You can do the second option too, even around here. There is no shortage of suburban and exurban sprawl around every single large city in the country. You just have to keep driving and driving and driving until you find it.

Frankly I'd much rather see them redevelop old gravel pits within the existing urban area rather than cut down intact forests or chew up farmland 5-10 miles further out of town. If the area continues to grow, those are the options. But at least there are options. What is wrong with options?

[Josh]

a 10-15 minute drive to the nearest place where you can buy a carton of milk.

Are you aware that most people shop for more than just "a carton of milk"? For example, one of the people who works with me lives 0.7 miles from the nearest grocery store, and he always goes to the nearest grocery store. But he does his grocery shopping maybe once per month. A 10-15 minute drive would make virtually no material difference, it would be a difference of 20-30 minutes per month.

I would also question if there are really that many places in a metro area that are 10-15 minute drive from a gas station or convenience store. I live in a rural area of Ohio and it is challenging to find anywhere that is 10-15 minutes away from a gas station, convenience store, or Dollar General. To be frank if I could find one of these places you have to go 10-15 minutes for a carton of milk, I might be interested...

[Ken]

Virtually everything being built is luxury high-end stuff for the top tier of the market. You and I both know that.

Absolutely not true. There are all kinds of modest affordable housing going up that I pass every day. For example, all of this stuff is new on both sides of the road. https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EyACQKmgpEd5tgT7 For this area it is working class affordable stuff. People do have to live somewhere. People who can't afford the $500,000 or so medium price of a single family home (or have no interest in the burdens and costs of home ownership) are happy that this kind of thing is available. Take it away and it just shrinks supply and increases prices for everyone else.

You know what? There is actually a large homeless camp where people camp in the cars and old RVS about a block away from these apartments and it is super tidy and spotless. I pass it twice a day on my bike.

People have to live someplace.

Yes, but are high density apartment blocks really the ideal form of that? As I documented earlier, they aren't resilient at all against problems with antisocial behaviour, which means they will end up sitting empty whilst there is even further strain and demand placed for the few safe neighbourhoods and livable homes left.

There are enormous numbers of single family homes all across this metro area. Today one needs a household income pushing into the $100,000 range to afford one. Where do you want people to live who have more modest means?

Eeew, look. One house is touching the next. The horror. Next thing you know there will be pitbulls

You keep mocking my earlier post about the problems with antisocial behaviour and how it destroys urban environments which yes, includes people who decide to keep violent, aggressive dogs and then don't clean up after them.

Do you think I'm wrong about that?

Yes I think you are wrong about that. There are high crime areas and low crime areas in this metro area just like any other. There isn't really a relationship between the housing style and crime. There is between wealth and crime, but not housing style. In fact, the worst areas in the Portland metro area for crime are parts of east Portland bordering Gresham and that is mostly single family housing. Lots of streets out there look like this. It is a lot of absentee (often out of state) landlords who just let their places go to pot. This is the kind of place where you find pit bulls, not apartment complexes that have professional property management



And the most valuable blocks of real estate in the entire country are all multi-family homes. They used to be single family homes long ago but times change: https://maps.app.goo.gl/QPrFrkdmxSAnUZMg9

[RZehr]

I don't want to live some place the rain water runs toward the middle of the house, no matter how "high end" it is.

You can tell a house is high end, if the eaves are.

Nor do I want to live in some old gravel pit. What is wrong with the developers out there?

They put the roofs on upside down. Portland isn’t known for its lack of rainfall.

[Ken]

I don't want to live some place the rain water runs toward the middle of the house, no matter how "high end" it is.

You can tell a house is high end, if the eaves are.

Nor do I want to live in some old gravel pit. What is wrong with the developers out there?

They put the roofs on upside down. Portland isn’t known for its lack of rainfall.

I expect they do that so they get a higher wall of windows on the sides facing the outside. A lot of those units have views of the mountains and and Columbia River below.

I also expect that they know what they are doing when it comes to water drainage. Those aren't cheap townhouses.

I also get why people buy them. If you are a upper-middle class or wealthy empty nester or retiree and want to travel and other things with your life than sit at home, you have a condo manager, landscapers, and maintenance people keeping the place up when you decide to go to Europe for a month or two. Or maybe you have a winter home in Mexico or Costa Rica (or Pinecraft Florida ). You can take off and leave a place like that for a few months with zero worries. Not so if you have a single family home out in the country.

[Soloist]

Well, if someone is sitting on a property worth $1 million maybe they should be paying higher property taxes than the $100,000 base value that the old house might be worth in a different location. They are going to cash in on the equity when the go to sell, aren't they?

Wife: I just filed the homestead exemption this week, and I want to say that I appreciate the fact that they don’t constantly raise property taxes on your homestead every time the property value supposedly goes up, especially in our volatile landscape. Our bill last year was painful enough, and I don’t think the property value they gave our place is actually what we’d be able to get from selling it. That would be even worse for those who are economically unstable, especially because there are many people, including us, who don’t want to constantly be buying and selling and moving place to place. I’m assuming the government gets a cut from house sales anyway, so they still get their pound of flesh.

Pretty sure those legalities don’t cover anything other than your home of residence, so it’s not like investors are usually getting rich off of them. We also have something where you can get another exemption if you have lived in your place for so many years and are a senior citizen making under a certain level, and I think other exemptions for disabilities, poverty etc. which I’m sure helps the people who are dependent on Social Security or disability. If the government wants to pass those protections to keep less people homeless, then I’m not gonna complain.

Also, logically, since our exemption at least only takes off 50,000 from the base value the government people decide on, and then tax it at 3% increase for the remaining time, I don’t think that the market is so volatile that it would usually suddenly go from 100,000 to 1,000,000, so you’re probably talking about grandma and grandpa Who are living on their retirement and Social Security, and probably would hate to sell their old place. Pretty sure that if it got passed onto another family member, you can’t pass on the exemption so the only people who would be dealing with this would likely be people like them or some super lucky Joe who played his cards right during the recession. Maybe there’s ways around us that I’m not thinking about.

[Ken]

Well, if someone is sitting on a property worth $1 million maybe they should be paying higher property taxes than the $100,000 base value that the old house might be worth in a different location. They are going to cash in on the equity when the go to sell, aren't they?

Wife: I just filed the homestead exemption this week, and I want to say that I appreciate the fact that they don’t constantly raise property taxes on your homestead every time the property value supposedly goes up, especially in our volatile landscape. Our bill last year was painful enough, and I don’t think the property value they gave our place is actually what we’d be able to get from selling it. That would be even worse for those who are economically unstable, especially because there are many people, including us, who don’t want to constantly be buying and selling and moving place to place. I’m assuming the government gets a cut from house sales anyway, so they still get their pound of flesh.

Pretty sure those legalities don’t cover anything other than your home of residence, so it’s not like investors are usually getting rich off of them. We also have something where you can get another exemption if you have lived in your place for so many years and are a senior citizen making under a certain level, and I think other exemptions for disabilities, poverty etc. which I’m sure helps the people who are dependent on Social Security or disability. If the government wants to pass those protections to keep less people homeless, then I’m not gonna complain.

The way to encourage home ownership is to have generous homestead exemptions for owner occupants and then impose more of the tax burden on corporations and absentee investors. Which will encourage them to sell to families seeking to actually own a home.

Some years ago I had an acquaintance in Seattle who was a real estate agent. And she was employed full time by some sort of very deep pocketed religious order in China or Taiwan, I forget which. Thinking back on it now, it occurs to me that maybe it was the Falun Gong or something similar.

In any event, she made a very good living working full time buying up properties around the Seattle area as investments for this group and the purchases were all structured through various shell corporations. There are astonishing amounts of money sloshing around in the world looking for safe places to park and hide. And American real estate can be a plum investment due to US tax laws and laws around corporate ownership. So dozens upon dozens of Seattle-area properties were being taken off the market and converted into rentals by this Chinese group, or even just kept empty as a way to launder and deposit international money.

Localities can't do much about international corporate finance and things like hedge funds buying up properties by the thousands. But they can at least adjust their local tax codes to encourage local home ownership and discourage outside and international investors.

[Soloist]

Well, if someone is sitting on a property worth $1 million maybe they should be paying higher property taxes than the $100,000 base value that the old house might be worth in a different location. They are going to cash in on the equity when the go to sell, aren't they?

Wife: I just filed the homestead exemption this week, and I want to say that I appreciate the fact that they don’t constantly raise property taxes on your homestead every time the property value supposedly goes up, especially in our volatile landscape. Our bill last year was painful enough, and I don’t think the property value they gave our place is actually what we’d be able to get from selling it. That would be even worse for those who are economically unstable, especially because there are many people, including us, who don’t want to constantly be buying and selling and moving place to place. I’m assuming the government gets a cut from house sales anyway, so they still get their pound of flesh.

Pretty sure those legalities don’t cover anything other than your home of residence, so it’s not like investors are usually getting rich off of them. We also have something where you can get another exemption if you have lived in your place for so many years and are a senior citizen making under a certain level, and I think other exemptions for disabilities, poverty etc. which I’m sure helps the people who are dependent on Social Security or disability. If the government wants to pass those protections to keep less people homeless, then I’m not gonna complain.

The way to encourage home ownership is to have generous homestead exemptions for owner occupants and then impose more of the tax burden on corporations and absentee investors. Which will encourage them to sell to families seeking to actually own a home.

Some years ago I had an acquaintance in Seattle who was a real estate agent. And she was employed full time by some sort of very deep pocketed religious order in China or Taiwan, I forget which. Thinking back on it now, it occurs to me that maybe it was the Falun Gong or something similar.

In any event, she made a very good living working full time buying up properties around the Seattle area as investments for this group and the purchases were all structured through various shell corporations. There are astonishing amounts of money sloshing around in the world looking for safe places to park and hide. And American real estate can be a plum investment due to US tax laws and laws around corporate ownership. So dozens upon dozens of Seattle-area properties were being taken off the market and converted into rentals by this Chinese group, or even just kept empty as a way to launder and deposit international money.

Localities can't do much about international corporate finance and things like hedge funds buying up properties by the thousands. But they can at least adjust their local tax codes to encourage local home ownership and discourage outside and international investors.

Wife: Ah, I was wondering why you'd have a beef with the homestead exemption. The rest of it is over my head.

[Ken]

Wife: I just filed the homestead exemption this week, and I want to say that I appreciate the fact that they don’t constantly raise property taxes on your homestead every time the property value supposedly goes up, especially in our volatile landscape. Our bill last year was painful enough, and I don’t think the property value they gave our place is actually what we’d be able to get from selling it. That would be even worse for those who are economically unstable, especially because there are many people, including us, who don’t want to constantly be buying and selling and moving place to place. I’m assuming the government gets a cut from house sales anyway, so they still get their pound of flesh.

Pretty sure those legalities don’t cover anything other than your home of residence, so it’s not like investors are usually getting rich off of them. We also have something where you can get another exemption if you have lived in your place for so many years and are a senior citizen making under a certain level, and I think other exemptions for disabilities, poverty etc. which I’m sure helps the people who are dependent on Social Security or disability. If the government wants to pass those protections to keep less people homeless, then I’m not gonna complain.

The way to encourage home ownership is to have generous homestead exemptions for owner occupants and then impose more of the tax burden on corporations and absentee investors. Which will encourage them to sell to families seeking to actually own a home.

Some years ago I had an acquaintance in Seattle who was a real estate agent. And she was employed full time by some sort of very deep pocketed religious order in China or Taiwan, I forget which. Thinking back on it now, it occurs to me that maybe it was the Falun Gong or something similar.

In any event, she made a very good living working full time buying up properties around the Seattle area as investments for this group and the purchases were all structured through various shell corporations. There are astonishing amounts of money sloshing around in the world looking for safe places to park and hide. And American real estate can be a plum investment due to US tax laws and laws around corporate ownership. So dozens upon dozens of Seattle-area properties were being taken off the market and converted into rentals by this Chinese group, or even just kept empty as a way to launder and deposit international money.

Localities can't do much about international corporate finance and things like hedge funds buying up properties by the thousands. But they can at least adjust their local tax codes to encourage local home ownership and discourage outside and international investors.

Wife: Ah, I was wondering why you'd have a beef with the homestead exemption. The rest of it is over my head.

No beef with it at all. I think it is a good thing and a useful way that taxing authorities can promote home ownership over corporate investors. We claim it ourselves