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So you suggest suing the shack owner to recoup your $100-500K in property value loss.
How is the shack owner going to pay for that?
And shanty shacks don't increase in value. You need to by a real house on real property.
It is a mantra in this country that home ownership is good for neighborhoods and communities. I see shack ownership as the first and accessible step on the property ladder - something you live in for a few years while you save up for a better house because you now have escaped rent inflation, take good care of (because you now have pride in ownership, plus you NEED as much equity as you can get in order to trade up), and then trade up to the next higher level. Just as starter homes don't detract from property values, a lower level of starter homes should not detract from property values.
Freemkt, you bring up an excellent point about how many land use and zoning laws simply erase the right to trade for all manner of things. And I totally agree. Absolutely.
Personally, I am not sure why there aren't more micro/tiny options allowed, like the stuff going on in Tokyo. So many restrictions that economically price tons of people right out of our most prosperous and opportunity laden cities. No idea why.
Huge strain on infrastructure. Waste water and sewage, roads, schools, parking, crime etc.
However there is nothing stopping someone from camping indefinitely in national forests (just have to move your tent every two weeks).
There is also nothing stopping people from just renting out a room.
But if you want to make money, buy some total stock market funds with low fees (VTSAX). It's up over 25% this year (Thanks Donny!!!!). My RE investments have never done better than ~10% P.A.
A mortgage is where you pay $600K for a $300K house that is maybe worth $600K when it's time to sell (if you're lucky).
So there is nothing to stop a political majority from effectively setting a de facto economic standard for property purchase. And you're okay with that. Got it.
"Relying on government as the source of property rights seldom ends well for the landless."
I never said I was OK with it.
But I'm a realist, so I'm willing to work with what I have instead of sitting on my ass and complaining about how unfair life is.
Putting forth the effort, even in an unfair scenario will likely result in a better outcome than putting forth none and complaining about the rules.
The typical inference of this type article is that the poor would be wealthy, if the wealthy didn't 'take' more than their share ... or, if there were fewer wealthy people, there would be fewer poor people. Neither of these assumptions have any rational validity, since wealth is not simply distributed from a large finite bag. The "world" numbers are also disproportionately skewed by the large number of totalitarian governments and non-free-market countries.
In America, the wealthiest 1-percent have only 35-percent of the wealth, while the top 20-percent have 80-percent. At the same time, the top 1-percent also Pay 44-percent of all the taxes, while the top 20-percent pay 87-percent of all taxes. Meanwhile, the bottom 45-percent pay no taxes at all, with 40-percent entirely on the receiving end. So how does this feed into the implied argument that the wealthy take from the poor?
Even if equal distribution were possible, unless everyone simply kept their share inside their mattresses, it would not take long before there would again be a wealthy percentage that had a disproportionate share of the wealth -- and a poor percentage that did not.
Wealth would be less unequal if everyone owned their home - the lack of home ownership is a major upward redistribution of wealth.
Personally, I am not sure why there aren't more micro/tiny options allowed, like the stuff going on in Tokyo. So many restrictions that economically price tons of people right out of our most prosperous and opportunity laden cities. No idea why.
America is NOT Japan. Done American style the micro homes thing could become a nightmare of health and safety violations. We had a mayor come in and lift long standing bans on street camping in the Portland city limits and now some sections of town are overrun with ad hoc dwellings fashioned from tarpaulins, tents, cardboard and other rubbish. Some people way overestimate how many of the poor the rich are maintaining in the manner to which...
110 million renters are funding the lifestyles and retirements of 20 million landlords.
Most LL are paying a mortgage, insurance and property tax. If there's anything left over it goes to maintenance. Any money they make is from increase in property values. And they will have to pay LTCGT when it come times to sell, which is basically money being redistributed (nice word for stolen) to the "poor".
Most LL's would be better off selling and investing their capitol in the stock market. More profit less hassle.
Huge strain on infrastructure. Waste water and sewage, roads, schools, parking, crime etc.
However there is nothing stopping someone from camping indefinitely in national forests (just have to move your tent every two weeks).
There is also nothing stopping people from just renting out a room.
But if you want to make money, buy some total stock market funds with low fees (VTSAX). It's up over 25% this year (Thanks Donny!!!!). My RE investments have never done better than ~10% P.A.
A mortgage is where you pay $600K for a $300K house that is maybe worth $600K when it's time to sell (if you're lucky).
??? ??? ??? ??? ???
If you have N people in a city and say 1/20 of them move from rentals to owner-occupied tiny homes, how does that alter the existing infrastructure needs?
A mortgage is where the $600K you pay is based on a locked-in P&I payment. If you rented the same house for 30 years you a year you'd pay well well over $1M and have nothing in the end to show for it.
Wealth would be less unequal if everyone owned their home - the lack of home ownership is a major upward redistribution of wealth.
I don't own my home. Home ownership in a tanking real estate market is overrated as a source of enduring wealth. It was a mistake to use the success of our parents in turning $3,000 down-payments on starter homes into multi-million dollar returns on investment as a baseline for our own financial planning.
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