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More important than luxury goods homes have become the new, well returned, speculative investment. Where else can you make an investment bet with 3% interest and 90% financing. The more expensive house you buy the bigger the margin and the potentially higher the profit.
The trick is to play the game until you see the cost curve start to flatten. Then sell out of the market and buy small house you can live in until you use your speculative profits to get in on the next boom. All it takes is timing, a bit of capital and a really, really clear crystal ball.
FWIW - The primary goal of most zoning law is to keep out people that place more demand on the school than their property tax will cover. It also works to keep out other undesirables like used car shops on the back lawn, smelly agriculture and similar nuisances that might lower property values for the existing owners. Free market concepts are not applicable and never were.
??? ??? ??? ??? How much does a 400 sq ft house cost? I had the financing to buy one but the zoning required more land than I could afford.
Well, obviously your heart was set on that particular house since you are still talking about it. Did you look into moving it to a lot that you could afford where the zoning would be approved?
It is the "work full time" and "affordable living area" that are incompatible. Any place that has decent paying (100k or so) jobs also has unaffordable housing.
It is the "work full time" and "affordable living area" that are incompatible. Any place that has decent paying (100k or so) jobs also has unaffordable housing.
More important than luxury goods homes have become the new, well returned, speculative investment. Where else can you make an investment bet with 3% interest and 90% financing. The more expensive house you buy the bigger the margin and the potentially higher the profit.
The trick is to play the game until you see the cost curve start to flatten. Then sell out of the market and buy small house you can live in until you use your speculative profits to get in on the next boom. All it takes is timing, a bit of capital and a really, really clear crystal ball.
FWIW - The primary goal of most zoning law is to keep out people that place more demand on the school than their property tax will cover. It also works to keep out other undesirables like used car shops on the back lawn, smelly agriculture and similar nuisances that might lower property values for the existing owners. Free market concepts are not applicable and never were.
Historically, that was the case, and there were loose rules of thumb to that effect: studio apartments generated net tax revenue - no kids - while larger apartments generated increasing levels of school expenditure, which is why historically very few apartments have more than 2 bedrooms.
But there has always been an underlying principle that zoning be designed to maintain if not elevate the economic strata of the community, so types and quantity of housing considered 'beneath' the community were rejected. One way to do that is to restrict the supply of housing below the level of demand.
Well, obviously your heart was set on that particular house since you are still talking about it. Did you look into moving it to a lot that you could afford where the zoning would be approved?
How much were you going to spend on that house?
There was no full sized lot I could afford. None.
I was going to spend $40k on a 400-sf house on 2,000 sf land.
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