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| Author |
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| 25 new of 79 responses total. |
rcurl
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response 25 of 79:
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May 19 19:08 UTC 2002 |
Like Jan, we are also living for "free", as we paid off the mortgage on
our house. There are operating costs, and taxes, of course, but no
other "rent". The house has also increased a lot in value since 1982.
If we had just continued to rent we would have nothing to show for it.
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scott
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response 26 of 79:
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May 19 20:17 UTC 2002 |
I do very much like getting the mortgage interest deduction on my federal
taxes.
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scg
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response 27 of 79:
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May 19 23:11 UTC 2002 |
Around here there tend to be lots of political arguments that I've been
describing as the "save our slums" movement. Proposals to build nice things
in run down neighborhoods get blasted as evil gentrification that would
make long term residents unable to afford to live in their neighborhoods.
In San Francisco, and probably some other Bay Area cities as well, there have
been laws passed to make it more difficult for people to buy homes to live
in rather than renting, because home ownership is seen as shrinking the rental
property supply.
While it does strike me as a bad thing to force eople out of their
neighborhoods, the way this is being handled strikes me as a case of severely
flawed culture and public policy. I'm certianly glad there are landlords
making rental property available, and for people like me who aren't feeling
ready to make a long term financial commitment, renting does strike me as a
reasonable choice. But the notion of people living in the same place for 20
or 30 years or longer and having no ownership stake in their neighborhoods,
to the point where neighborhood improvements hurt rather than help
neighborhood residents, does not seem like a good thing. The notion of
treating home rental as a permenant arrangement, rather than something people
do over a term of just a few years, essentially expecting to be taken care
of in perpetuity by a landlord, doesn't strike me as smart long term planning.
If I knew I wanted to stay in the same place for several years, I'd want to
take control of the situation and make sure it could happen, and it seems to
me the best way to do that is home ownership. It's really not clear to me
who the "tenant activists" are helping around here, other than their own
advocay organizations, when they push for public policy that makes home
ownership difficult.
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senna
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response 28 of 79:
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May 19 23:42 UTC 2002 |
Now that's a difficult problem to solve.
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keesan
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response 29 of 79:
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May 19 23:44 UTC 2002 |
Is it possible to buy an apartment in SF?
You don't get the mortgage interest and property tax deduction except on
amounts that total over about $4500 (more for couples) including state tax
and donations.
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rcurl
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response 30 of 79:
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May 20 01:20 UTC 2002 |
Re #26: that's still not as good as not having a mortgage.
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gull
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response 31 of 79:
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May 20 01:57 UTC 2002 |
Another factor is that I live alone. An entire house would be massive
overkill for the amount of space I need. It also seems to me that while
people usually sell a house for more than they paid for it, they
usually spend more than the difference in repairs and upgrades over the
years, unless they happen to live in one of the areas where property is
really in demand.
Mostly, though, I just don't want to tie myself down that way until I know
for sure I'm somewhere I want to stay for most of the rest of my life.
Buying a house is such an expensive, aggravating, drawn-out process, and
selling one is doubly so...
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scg
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response 32 of 79:
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May 20 06:19 UTC 2002 |
It's possible to buy an apartment just about everywhere. That's what a
condominium is. However, San Francisco has some pretty strict limits on how
many rental properties can be turned into condominiums per year. There was
also a proposal being pushed by some city officials recently to ban the
practice where a group of people jointly buy an apartment building and move
into the apartments, but I don't think that passed.
If you own a house or apartment and the value doesn't go up, you still get
back most of what you paid for it when you sell. As long as you're there long
enough that the non-refundable costs aren't more than you would have paid in
rent during the period, it's a good deal. The real danger in a volitile
market is that the value of the house can go down, in which case if you sell
you're stuck paying the difference.
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gull
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response 33 of 79:
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May 20 12:41 UTC 2002 |
I guess I've never quite understood how a condominium works. It seems like
it'd have most of the disadvantages of an apartment, except worse because
you'd be stuck *owning* the thing as it deteriorated if the management
turned out to not be able to keep the building in good condition. But maybe
I misunderstand.
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jmsaul
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response 34 of 79:
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May 20 13:35 UTC 2002 |
You understand pretty well, actually. What makes it worse is that the
management charges you for the outside (outside your specific condo)
maintenance in the form of "association fees" which you have to pay as a
condition of the purchase. Those fees are charged monthly, quarterly, or
whatever -- so they raise your effective monthly mortgage payment. When a
developer builds a new condo development, they're usually responsible for
maintenance, etc. until all the units are sold, so they hold the fees way down
to make the condos more attractive to potential buyers. At some point,
though, the association takes over. They wind up having to raise the fees,
sometimes drastically, to pay for things that are starting to need fixing.
On the good side, you build equity and can deduct your mortgage interest.
The condo *may* also appreciate, though many don't, or at least don't
appreciate much, in part because of the association fees effect. My
understanding is that during the boom housing market here in the late 90s,
many condos didn't increase at all.
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keesan
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response 35 of 79:
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May 20 13:54 UTC 2002 |
Our friends with a condo in Chicago are required to pay someone to mow the
lawn every week, and probably for snow removal and other things they could
do themselves. If you are going to pay for these things anyway, it might be
slightly cheaper to have them done in bulk. There are also rules about not
being able to change the outside appearance as it affects property values.
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slynne
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response 36 of 79:
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May 20 14:30 UTC 2002 |
Condos appreciate but usually at a lower rate than houses. Although, if
rents in an area are going up, the price of condos will go up too
because it becomes worth it to buy one and rent it out. There are other
advantages too. The maintenance on attached units is generally cheaper
than on detached ones so when the building needs a new roof or
something, each person's share is less than it would be to do a major
repair on a house. *shrug*
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slynne
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response 37 of 79:
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May 20 14:45 UTC 2002 |
re#27 - That sounds like a policy designed to benefit *current*
homeowners. A policy that is sold to the public as being good for the
poor -- "Vote for this because it will help the poor" If you really
wanted to make sure affordable rental housing is available, you
encourange growth or increased population density.
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gull
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response 38 of 79:
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May 20 15:29 UTC 2002 |
Development in areas like that nowadays is usually about *decreasing*
population density, by creating gated communities with large houses in them.
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scg
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response 39 of 79:
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May 20 16:13 UTC 2002 |
The Bay Area has a bunch of gated communities full of "McMansions" out on the
edge, where land is somewhat cheaper. The impossibly high demand here tends
to be for high density urban housing, though, and my impression is that urban
development here still tends to be as dense as the developers can get away
with. This too is controversial -- often presented as greedy developers
driving prices up by building too much expensive housing, but it strikes me
as a good thing.
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slynne
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response 40 of 79:
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May 20 18:08 UTC 2002 |
My impression of the Bay Area has always been one of communities filled
with really nice well intentioned people who just dont have a clue
about basic economics so they end up doing things that end up hurting
the very people they are trying to help.
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gull
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response 41 of 79:
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May 20 18:16 UTC 2002 |
Yeah, that's one set of people. The other set seems to be people with lots
of disposable income who are really eager to show it off. When I was down
there a few years ago that group seemed to be rapidly taking over.
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slynne
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response 42 of 79:
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May 20 18:24 UTC 2002 |
Heh. I totally formed my impression, btw, by hanging out with a bunch
of granola types in Berkeley. I am sure it isnt totally accurate.
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utv
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response 43 of 79:
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May 20 18:27 UTC 2002 |
re #27: the problem, as I see it, and as you touched on, is that renters
and owners have conflicting financial interests - and the politics
involved awaed
award the goodies to the homeowners. Renters, especially those on the
margin (e.g. me), could be considered to have a negative stake in the
neighborhood - rising property vales make renters worse, not better, off.
If someone could figure out a way to extend renters a positive stake in
their neighborhoods, they'd be onto womething.
By extension, I resent the popular belief that homeowners "care more"
about their neighborhoods than so renters. For me, caring entails
preserving rental supply and affordability - not enriching homeowners and
landlords at the expense of the working poor.
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utv
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response 44 of 79:
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May 20 18:32 UTC 2002 |
re #37: zoning is designed to benefit current homeowners, rent control is
designed to benefit current tenants..
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scg
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response 45 of 79:
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May 20 23:23 UTC 2002 |
In general, desirable neighborhoods will have higher housing prices than
undesirable neighborhoods. This means that those trying hard to keep market
rate rents in a particular neighborhood low need to work to make the
neighborhood undesirable. Different people have different standards of what
makes a neighborhood desirable, so there may in some cases be neighborhoods
that the current residents are very happy with but that most outsiders
wouldn't dream of living in, but for the most part the things that make a
neighborhood more expensive are also the things that make it, in the short
term, a nicer place to live.
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utv
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response 46 of 79:
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May 21 00:05 UTC 2002 |
Also, tenants are chosen by landlords, not by neighboring homeowners.The
homeowners would rather have me as a neighbor (as opposed to a drunken
or deugged college student, but the landlords prefer the students who
have more money than I. So the homeowners try to crack down on rental
housing in an effort to get rid of the students, and succeed only in
displacing people like me.
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keesan
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response 47 of 79:
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May 21 13:34 UTC 2002 |
When I was a college student I was not drunken, drugged, or rich, and I did
my own plumbing repairs. My landlord prefers non-students because they
stick around longer, sometimes 20 years.
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orinoco
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response 48 of 79:
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May 21 14:16 UTC 2002 |
The impression that I get is that in the past, the situation Steve described
came up a lot in ethnic neighborhoods. Chinatown was a highly undesirable
place to live, unless you were Chinese, in which case it wasn't bad at all.
That doesn't seem to happen as much anymore, maybe because people are more
willing to live in racially mixed surroundings, and because the middle and
upper classes aren't so white as they used to be. There are still ethnic
neighborhoods -- fewer and smaller than they used to be -- but they aren't
protected from gentrification anymore.
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utv
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response 49 of 79:
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May 21 14:45 UTC 2002 |
victims of gentrification, unite!
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