Here's the thing though, you didn't pay that premium to me. Why should I respect it? Homeowners want everyone in the world to respect their private covenants that only they benefit from, but it's a bad deal for everyone else, and there's no reason to indulge homeowners entitlement at the expense of everyone else's access to affordable housing.
Do you apply that logic to all things in life? No one is allowed to sit in the seat in front of you at a sporting event? No one allowed to sit in the seat next to you on an airplane?
Usually more than just a single homeowner in a neighborhood that isn't going to be happy with tanking home values by rezoning for poors. Why scrimp and save and spend decades fostering a community you want to live in only to have it fucked up by government rezoning? Ive already got to plan to drive my second car that doesnt require premium if I want to actually save anything decent. My company actually boomed during the pandemic so much the notoriously cheap owner invested in expanding. We've had a snap back to normal levels and she's getting cold feet. Not the best time to ask for a raise, which is years overdue. I might just have to nut up and get a new job if I ever want to move up in the world.
If I pay a premium? Yes. Edit - If I pay a premium for a front row seat at a concert, I don't want someone sat in front of me because they ran out of front row seats.
Firstly I reject the idea that these places are "fucked up" by increased density. There's a reason these places have such high demand in the first place, and it's not because they're sparsely populated cornfields in the middle of Iowa. Proximity to people is a good chunk of what drives housing value in the first place. Secondly, you have conveniently defined "community" by those who benefit from the exclusionary housing policy. It's self-reinforcing. What if we defined the "community" as the citizenry broadly. That might give us a more accurate look at what the "community" wants.
But you didn't pay a premium to the venue owner or the airline (which in this metaphor is a stand-in for the nation), you paid it to the guy you bought the ticket from on stub-hub. He has no power to make that promise to you, and no one else is obligated to honor that promise.
You’re spewing such bullshit it’s not even close to reality. I bought season’s tickets to my local hockey team. From the venue/club. Not some scalper. So damn rights I expect the seating I paid and contracted for. Who the fuck are you to say otherwise?
I could provide examples of where there were no third parties or some other examples but your warped thought process would just find a way to spin it.
C'mon guys, do I have to explain your own metaphor to you? Arena = country Arena owner = sovereign authority Seat = house Season ticket = deed to house Guy on StubHub who sold you the ticket = previous owner who sold you the deed Your "expectations" do not constitute a contract of any kind, much less a binding one. The arena owner maintains the right to add or alter seats as they see fit.
speaking only from personal experience here, in regard to inflation in wages, what I'm seeing is that it's mostly paper tiger crap. Places like target, best buy, grocery stores that advertise those eye popping hourly wages -- I'm interviewing and hiring people from there who are complaining of a lack of hours, and that they keep them specifically working part time so they don't have to pay benefits. So $18-20/hour looks great on a sign, but then they hire on and get like 10 hrs/week and it's pointless. Bait and switch on them, though I know walmart had been notorious for keeping employees under benefits hours for ages. I'm personally not terribly worried about all this. I'm cautious, but work is steady and not going anywhere. I have money in the bank and in my house, and I'm young enough that my 401(k) can take a hit or two and be okay -- it's largely been fine thus far anyway. I follow some prepper subs on reddit and people are just losing their shit over this or that. I think it's good to stay informed of what's going on and what the trends might be, but pending a massive political upheaval I just don't see all the doom and gloom that some do. I don't think people realize how lucky we are to live where we do, and that our quality of life is such that these "issues" we're complaining about are really just speed bumps as seen by people in places like South America, Eastern Europe, Africa etc who have ACTUAL issues.
The purchase does not come with a "the neighbors will never build anything" clause, nor a "the state surrenders it's zoning authority" clause.
This feels like a tragedy of the commons situation, and there's a tipping point where millions of renters who cannot afford to buy, and likely millions more who have experienced homelessness or home insecurity simply become too difficult to ignore. Also, the fact that you can pay a premium is a privilege you as an individual enjoy (but the rest of society largely doesn't) and is not an entitlement of yours. Housing and shelter is a basic human need. If you can turn your answer to that need into a luxury, good on you. For those that can't, they should....what? All relocate their families and lives to Detroit, because that's where it's affordable (ignoring the fact that you need a job, and most of us need one near where we work)? Rent until they die, building no equity, while a handful of people get rich playing a real life version of Monopoly? To answer your question, HUD does...and they have been ringing alarms about the price of housing exceeding the recommended percentage of income for years now. They simply are toothless in doing anything about it, and it's mind-numbingly frustrating. I love how in the thick of the 3rd....4th? "once in a lifetime" recession in the last 22 years, where the American dream is all but closed off for millions of people, the stated reason behind it is NIMBYism. The McMansion lifestyle depends on cheap gas, subsidized infrastructure, very specific financial instruments and low property taxes that are offset by other state/local revenue sources. Guess what inflation is fucking the fuck up right now? FWIW, I think a healthy chunk of the problem is so much of our built space is shitty retail developments that are falling apart the moment they are vacated, and a literal fuck ton of unused office space that could be converted to mixed-use in most places without anyone noticing a difference. Change the zoning laws so that a developer makes more efficient use of space, increasing the number of entities that maintain and purchase said space and demand mixed use development so you can have actual communities with businesses sprinkled in, not plop a bunch of Section 8 houses next to the golf course. However, the zoning isn't an issue in much of the country, the issue is housing supply has been throttled since 2008, and likely will take another 5-10 years to get back to 2006 levels, if it ever does. That was a perfect confluence of cheap immigrant labor sprinkled throughout the country, low interest rates, financial instruments (ill-fated as they were) unlocking new demand, and some fancy new trends/materials to entice buyers into paying a bit more than they had to. At a certain point, Aetius is right, NIMBYism loses to the actual way society functions, which is our elected officials make decisions and sometimes homeowners suffer the consequences. You may have heard of the Tennessee Valley Authority? The fact that it rarely happens, and we've gotten much better about how to craft zoning laws and execute planning, doesn't mean he's not wrong. Fuck, how many of y'all have an HOA that periodically increases it's dues? This shit happens, stop pretending that the house you bought is a sovereign nation unto itself...you just hope you're lucky and it happens on some other street? Fine, say that.
No it doesn’t (well, sometimes it does), but a purchaser is entitled to a right of property use, in most cases. One of the main issues with affordable housing is the focus on new construction as opposed to renovating existing structures. Local governments make for shitty real estate developers, and HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration program is strangely underutilized.
This is B.S. Housing prices are growing in leaps and bounds all over the country. This isn't just about "desirable neighborhoods" or a specific price point that you deem affordable. Housing prices are just outstripping wages like crazy. My home town, a relatively small town of ~30k people and a university, used to have a healthy population of <$150k houses that were actual livable spaces which didn't require living 20-30 minutes outside of town. Now that price point is populated with major renovation projects, abandoned houses, tiny places built in the '20s, or places way outside of city limits. The few reasonable houses that show up in that range are often snapped up within a day at prices high over asking, or with stupid contingencies like "no inspection." The houses that used to occupy that price point are now well over $200k. Many are being bought up by investment/rental firms whose price sensitivity is low. My dad sold his house in another town in the Northeast because comps were going for $200k over what he paid, and he sold it for $90k over asking when a bidding war broke out. This wasn't a big house or a fancy neighborhood, it was just another town whose prices spiked. This is happening everywhere. Do you suggest that people just pack up and move hundreds of miles away from home? Everyone who isn't pulling in mid-6 figures gets to relocate to West Bumfuck, Alabama?
Yeah, listing price doesn't mean shit these days. One of my devs just bought his first house in a mediocre part of BC for over $1m. The realtor played up the sob story of a struggling first time buyer with a new baby and that is what got them the house, a solid $20k lower bid than the highest offering. His piece of shit rental he was in sold for $1.6m.
I just did a search in the town where I bought my first house, which is a city of 150k with a couple universities, so there is plenty of housing. There are currently 500+ homes listed on realtor.com. I did an inflation calculation to figure out what I "should" pay for my first house, today. When I search by 1000+ sq. ft. (mine was 1350) and at least 0.5 acres (my lot was 2 acres), in that price range, I get a whopping TWO results, and one of the two clearly needs a new roof and to have both porches torn off and replaced. No filtering by location or anything, this is just what's available. The places that should be comps for mine are 40% higher than the inflation-adjusted number. Guess what isn't 40% higher than when I bought that house? Wages.