patrick.net

Should we allow deadbeats to buy homes again to stimulate housing?

No! Duh!

golfplan18 says

Many people who lost their homes because they stopped making payments and allowed the house to fall into foreclosure would like to get back into the housing market. If the standards are lowered and the waiting period after a foreclosure is decreased, these former owners could buy again and stimulate housing. But is that a good idea?

Yes, that is a good idea. Why hold a grudge and sacrifice our future well being?

Deadbeats don't wear plaid. Er I mean buy homes.

No we shouldn't "Not allow" anything. The Government should do it's job of dutiful oversight and arrest the bankers who give out dubious loans, and close the banks that foster that type of lending. See we don't even need an Elizabeth "You ain't seen nothing yet" Warren.

C'mon, you slaves, businesses walk away from loans all the time and continue to obtain new loans. Tishman Speyer is an infamous deadbeat RE developer who continues to obtain new financing. For that matter, jP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, GE Capital, all of the investment banks that were bankrupt received new money from us taxpayers. I understand that those who hate slaves who escape slavery the most are those who accept their lot as slaves. But please tell my why it is OK for businesses to walk away from debt, worse, to market fraudulent products, and yet continue to receive loans, but when the little guy does it, tsk, tsk, tsk.

There is nothing real about money. It can be created out of thin air for the well connected. You slaves actually have to work for it, and instead of killing bankers, you are bitching about runaway slaves. Pathetic.

Blurtman hit the nail on the head!

Blurtman says

But please tell my why it is OK for businesses to walk away from debt, worse, to market fraudulent products, and yet continue to receive loans, but when the little guy does it, tsk, tsk, tsk.

I guess the obvious answer would be the banks went bankrupt in the first place because the deadbeats stopped making payments and that the banks have paid back most of the bailout money while the deadbeats, not only didn't pay back shit but many continued to live rent free in their homes. With some having the gall to extort money from the banks not to damage the homes before they handed over the keys or play the victim card when they stayed rent free in a big home for years after having put a pittance forward as a downpayment.

Blurtman says

C'mon, you slaves, businesses walk away from loans all the time and continue to obtain new loans. Tishman Speyer is an infamous deadbeat RE developer who continues to obtain new financing. For that matter, jP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, GE Capital, all of the investment banks that were bankrupt received new money from us taxpayers. I understand that those who hate slaves who escape slavery the most are those who accept their lot as slaves. But please tell my why it is OK for businesses to walk away from debt, worse, to market fraudulent products, and yet continue to receive loans, but when the little guy does it, tsk, tsk, tsk.

There is nothing real about money. It can be created out of thin air for the well connected. You slaves actually have to work for it, and instead of killing bankers, you are bitching about runaway slaves. Pathetic.

Hall of fame post right there.

combining the principles of capitalism with the notion of equality of ownership appears to be highly corrosive.

debt slave to the bank, wage slave to the landlord, pick your poison

at least wage inflation lightens the burden of the former over time.

blue is wage level, red is rent level, 1970 = 100

wages go up, rents go up in lockstep

one of the more brutal exposures of how the world actually works you will find in a FRED graph

Funny how that graph shows a steady increasing in wages throughout the 2008-2012 depression...

is the view of total wages paid . . . we're about $1T/yr short of the 2002-2008 trendline

Bellingham Bill says

is the view of total wages paid . . . we're about $1T/yr short of the 2002-2008 trendline

And here is a picture of the participation rate:

Many of those still employed are working part time jobs.

So who's getting all that money?

New Renter says

Bellingham Bill says

is the view of total wages paid . . . we're about $1T/yr short of the 2002-2008 trendline

And here is a picture of the participation rate:

Many of those still employed are working part time jobs.

So who's getting all that money?

You would expect average earnings to be declining in such a severe recession. My guess, they are only using the earnings of those who are STILL working, excluding the unemployed. It would make sense to calculate it like that.

Why repeat the mistake again? They should instead tax all the landlords instead to bring affordability closer to the middle class.

Who is going to buy all the Boomers' McMansions?

How many Chinese businessmen want to live in the Inland Empire or in Central NJ?

Oh, Wictorwill, oh, so nice Weetaining Wall and Four Piece Outlet in Kitchen. My multimillionaire wife like shopping at K-Mart. Also, Ray and Siwent Rob have big store near Red Bank.

golfplan18 says

Home ownership is a privilege, not a right.

It is a privilege, but it doesn't mean we should just let the market up and downs ruin lives.

I think we should discourage landlordism through taxation and encourage ownership through tax cuts and help renters with rent control.

Most of the time I'm the free market guy, but sometimes free markets don't lead to good things.

FortWayne says

golfplan18 says

Home ownership is a privilege, not a right.

It is a privilege, but it doesn't mean we should just let the market up and downs ruin lives.

No, home ownership is a right. A drivers license is a privilege.

FortWayne says

golfplan18 says

Home ownership is a privilege, not a right.

It is a privilege, but it doesn't mean we should just let the market up and downs ruin lives.

I think we should discourage landlordism through taxation and encourage ownership through tax cuts and help renters with rent control.

Most of the time I'm the free market guy, but sometimes free markets don't lead to good things.

Sometimes you make sense, FortWayne.

New Renter says

And here is a picture of the participation rate:

that's counting everyone over age 65 actually.

blue is core workforce participation, down to ~80% from ~85% peaks.
red is new workers getting hosed
purple is everyone
green is older workers increasingly working largely due to the dotcom crash and then the GFC (but still bringing down the average)

Strategist says

No, home ownership is a right. A drivers license is a privilege.

. . . affordable housing is a right.

And this right comes from the same right people have, via legal tenancy in land, to forcibly exclude all others from their land holdings.

When we carve out claims from the commons, we push people without these claims into more economic challenge if not peril.

How we redress this is the interesting question. Some countries do this better than others, and I'm actually open to any solution that removes housing as everyone's #1 life expense, far, far above the actual cost of the sticks and bricks, the fixed capital occupants are using.

Apartments that rented for $750 in the late 80s are now $2000+ in Sunnyvale. It's the same fixed improvement, what has increased is the location value.

This is 30%+ over the rate of inflation, actually.

It doesn't have to be this way, but, politically, this is an almost impossible topic to approach let alone solve.

Too many vested interests, too much easy money sloshing around. Democracy is not good at implementing policies that directly harm the electorate in visible and immediate ways.

Bellingham Bill says

Strategist says

No, home ownership is a right. A drivers license is a privilege.

. . . affordable housing is a right.

If we make affordable housing a right, then someone else has to pay for it.
Housing is a right, affordable housing is not a right but an entitlement.

Call it Crazy says

Strategist says

No, home ownership is a right.

You're kidding, right?

Nope. As long as you pay for it.

Strategist says

If we make affordable housing a right, then someone else has to pay for it.

not necessarily, since land value is pushed up by incomes. "pay for it" is a vague term.

what is making land expensive is the embedded economic rents of land tenancy, the ability to make money by doing nothing constructive from things we euphemistically call "income properties". Remove that, and housing will be more affordable without further market intervention. And the best, only, way to eliminate housing rents is to forcibly increase the supply available to tenants, to introduce a significant vacancy factor that changes the market dynamics of ever-increasing rents.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CUUR0000SEHA

Land ownership is the real privilege, literally and figuratively.

I argue every person on this planet has the inherit right to live whereever the hell he wants on this planet and make a living.

But what has happened over the millennia, is we got lords, chiefs, nobles, kings, and now privately entitled landlords that have by now taken the commons away.

We desperately need to reduce the cost of living in housing. Just today I was reading the paper about some story on the local economy, and the writer mentioned the rising cost of living in land as a 'mending' real estate market.

Bullshit!

When gas prices go up 50%, we don't say they're "mending"!

affordable housing is not a right but an entitlement.

I argue that the very real and literal private entitlement of landlords and land owners -- the county even keeps these titles on file downtown you know -- in general supports a concomitant, reciprocal right of "affordable" housing.

People don't have the right to buy up the commons and dispossess everyone else, but that is what has happened here. As David Lloyd George quipped, to prove a legal title to land one must trace it back to the man who stole it. This is goes beyond a quip and is pretty true for much of California.

Strategist says

Nope. As long as you pay for it.

Libertarianism: all the freedom/rights you can afford, and not one drop more. (I got that from usenet commenter Douglas Bashford)

Bellingham Bill says

not necessarily, since land value is pushed up by incomes. "pay for it" is a vague term.

what is making land expensive is the embedded economic rents of land tenancy, the ability to make money by doing nothing constructive from things we euphemistically call "income properties". Remove that, and housing will be more affordable without further market intervention. And the best, only, way to eliminate housing rents is to forcibly increase the supply available to tenants, to introduce a significant vacancy factor that changes the market dynamics of ever-increasing rents.

In the first part you say you want to remove the ability to make income property. Then you say you want to increase the supply to tenants. You can't get both without the government building rentals.

Strategist says

You can't get both without the government building rentals.

this is a complicated topic. For one, I don't think government should build rentals to begin with.

the whole idea of rental housing is wrong from a socio-economic standpoint. Little else of our economy requires half the population to "rent", all other goods and services are purchased outright. (Leasing cars is a partial exception, but government does take an active role in providing alternatives to people, plus there's walking and other cheaper forms of transportation available . . . it is possible to get by a week or three without a car, it is not, sometimes literally, not possible to survive a week or three without tenancy in housing)

The dominant cost of housing is still land (in most areas), and while government can't make more land per se, it can make more land available, one mechanism would be high land value taxes to make people who claim more of the commons, and the more valuable parts, pay for their entitled privilege, combined with upzoning where necessary to get more density in areas people want to move to (hint: the value of unimproved land is largely driven by how much can be built on it)

But there are many ways to skin this cat, but we aren't doing anything other than directly subsidize LLs with Section 8 and indirectly with minimum wage laws, and the MID (which just raises the cost of housing to buyers dollar for dollar while also directly subsidizing the predatory economic actions of housing specuvestors) . . . don't get me started on Props 13 & 58, LOL.

From a libertarian perspective, there's very little freedom to be found in real estate these days.

Pay the man or live under the stars like a cave man, at best.

http://www.amazon.com/Libertarian-Party-at-Sea-Land/dp/0911312978

real per-capita (age 16+) cost of hosing housing