Meanwhile if BlackRock became insolvent, the government would bail them out
I find it interesting that during the mortgage crisis, banks couldn’t wait to unload the housing they were left with at fire sale prices, and now investment firms are overpaying to monopolize the housing supply.
It certainly doesn’t help that it’s literally illegal to build enough housing across the vast majority of urban land (at least in the US and Canada). Nothing like good ol’ fashioned manufactured scarcity to guarantee line keeps on going up.
It’s the mother of all regulatory capture, where our local governments (who are supposed to represent the needs of the people) have passed so many frickin laws to systematically manufacture and maintain the artificial scarcity of housing that keeps these ghouls’ investments so wildly profitable. Restrictive zoning that makes townhouses and duplexes literally illegal? Check. Arbitrary and pseudoscientific parking minimums? Check. Setback requirements so everyone is legally required to have a massive resource-consuming, space-wasting front lawn whether they want it or not? Check.
Utter insanity.
Yes! It’s also refreshing to see you mention parking minimums. It’s like everyone is blind to the sheer amount of parking lots everywhere taking up so much space.
Parking lots that are only close to full on Black Friday and Christmas Eve.
And that’s by design. Parking minimum laws were literally written with maximum demand in mind, not typical. Like, those parking lots are going to sit half-empty for 99% of the year, and we all collectively have to pay for it every day through pricier goods in stores (parking lots and the real estate they occupy ain’t free), pricier rent (it could have been housing instead), and pricier transportation (ginormous parking lots just spread everything out, meaning we’re forced to become more dependent on gas-guzzling cars instead of being able to walk to the shop for free).
In my experience as an electrical engineer, this kind of thinking, 99% non-maximum and 1% maximum, is how electrical infrastructure is built too. Conductors and transformers and other equipment are sized to the historical max + a safety factor so that the electrical system will work even on the rainiest of rainy days. It has to do with reliability and resilience.
But parking lots don’t need to be super reliable or resilient… Bridges and buildings definitely, but roads and lots literally just cover land. You don’t have the same risk as your do with structures or the grid. Most get repaved every few years anyways.
Yep. And the lower density that more parking creates means our cities are an empty wasteland of endless paving.
You are my people.
A friend of mine wants to build a small house on land he legally owns, but he’s forbidden by municipality law unless it’s a luxury home.
It’s dumb. He owns the property, but he doesn’t have the money to build a luxury house. Why can’t he build a small house?
I guess not dedicating your life to pay off your house is illegal.
The crazy thing about the whole situation is it’s like the ONE time that the solution is actually deregulation and stronger property rights, but it’s also the ONE time libertarians WANT heavy regulations, weak property rights, and big daddy government interfering in your personal life.
I feel like I’m in bizarro world.
land he legally owns
Well the thing is he doesn’t really own it. He owns the right to use it, and that right is extremely limited. You really can’t say you own land when:
- Men with guns will kick you off the land if you stop paying your
rentproperty taxes. - The rights you do have over the land can be removed if the community decides they have a better use for it.
- Someone else might own the rights to resources on the land like minerals, oil, or water.
- Any substantial improvements or change of use must be approved by the local government.
- Men with guns will kick you off the land if you stop paying your
What makes a luxury home different from any other home?
A backsplash in the kitchen made out of those linear tiles in shades of grey, or at least that’s what all the house flippers of the last few years seem to think.
Minimum dollar value for the house.
Imagine legally forcing everyone’s house to look the same. Seriously lawn laws in are so bonkers yet nobody bat’s an eye at them.
True Freedom™ is when the government forces every single person to have identical, ugly-ass front lawns for completely arbitrary aesthetic reasons, clearly /s
It honestly amazes me how Americans warship freedom while they don’t use it at all and shame people for being free
Except this is because of zoning and zoning exists because of racism.
How many single parents with four kids can afford a house?
All of them if it wasn’t for greedy corporations.
Hey, 2$ is a bid.
All of them if you take it speculators
Quite a lot, considering child support is a thing.
Hahahaha
You people realize a supermajority of Americans own their own home, right?
And that the very premise of the meme is that the single mother could afford to place a bid that was beaten by an investment firm and not another individual?
You’d be shocked what you can afford outside of a major city, which is one of the reasons why WFH is what everyone should be fighting for for any industry that can feasibly do it.
There are 161 million homes privately owned by their occupants in the US, if so may I see a citation of that?
You just cited the numbers yourself, my guy.
Most home owners/people that live in their own home are families but not all, and the idea of the wife keeping the house (and the equity that would let them bid on another if they need to move) is practically a meme itself.
That is about 40% off gross. So unless dad is making 240k a year…
Or mom has a respectable income herself. Or they just aren’t buying in California.
No one cares about your flyover state, it doesn’t matter.
I think people misunderstand what BlackRock does. It’s a proxy for other investors. Investors all around the world buy assets, produced by BlackRock and BlackRock routes that money into corresponding shares/bonds/real estate, etc.
The word “Produced” is doing some heavy-lifting in that sentence. When I hear “produced” I think of a factory making stuff that has value or a farm producing food.
It’s a way more generic word than you might think
I think Zach Wilson would be doing something else with the single mom
There’s only 12 people on Lemmy who will get this joke which is a shame, because it’s fantastic
I just want to know what Zach’s mom is doing these days.
I am no BlackRock lover, but at some point you should ask yourself: “do I need more kids?”.
No idea. Do those billionaire shitstains need all that money? We should take a few billions from them and see, and then go after your totally real not made up strawman.
I think that question should be up to you. If you want kids have them, if you don’t then that’s cool too.
Unless you really want to start another eugenics movement telling who can and can’t reproduce.
Bro literally didn’t say that but your comment does say a lot about how you think about others
Bros comment is a shitty dog whistle
Society as we know it is going to collapse unless we have more children. Queue Dingledufus, “It’s your fault for having kids!”
You can’t make up this level of bootlickery.
Should have picked a better baby daddy that didn’t duck out.
(Apparently this makes me both an incel and a dead beat dad. Schroedinger’s children. Shitty people have kids they shouldn’t have. More shocking news at six.)
What single mother of 4 is even shopping for, let alone bidding on, an actual house?
A single mom who works two jobs who loves her kids and never stops. With gentle hands and the heart of a fighter…
That cut is deep.
Really. This post doesn’t make sense. Wasn’t there a post like a few days ago saying most Americans can’t survive a sudden expense because they can’t save 1000 USD?
Then how come now they can bid for houses?
this guy just knows there’s a lot of cocaine out there and it’s against market principles to let it go to waste
Ummmm let them have it. They are overpaying anyways.
That doesn’t matter. Once corporations own enough of the housing market, they can literally sit on them and never sell. Then people will be forced to rent at whatever prices they want to charge. Initial high cost will be offset quickly by forever rents.
I used to think this way, but after being a home owner, a home is a depreciating value. Couple that with home repairs, bad renters, high taxes, and general business operations cost. Initial overpayment for a home will not let you pay return.
everyday
You mean ‘every day’, in English. #noChildLeftBehind
