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You don't want to, but you do. That's the problem.

saghm 1700 days ago

The problem is people having the audacity to want to choose where they live and buy a house there? It was reasonable to do that if you were born more than 35 years ago, but if not, you're just out of luck?

No, that's perfectly sensible. Unless you were born in a poor area, I guess, in which case fuck you, you don't get to choose where to live OR buy a house there because all the rich people from out of town are driving you out of your own city.

But that's fine, poor people shouldn't be alive anyway.

I was born and raised in a rich area.

It is unfair that I can not get a 12 bedroom detached house on the upper west side of New York, where I was born and raised for $50,000. I demand someone gives it to me.

deathanatos 1699 days ago

My childhood home, for example, was $60k when my parents bought it. It's over $600k now, appreciating at over 7% per year, well in excess of inflation.

There is a difference between my lament for a $1M on the outskirts of a city that has maybe 3 bed being cheaper, and wishing for a 12 bed for $50k in literal Manhattan.

roudaki 1700 days ago

People always push the argument into extreme but for practical example you have housing around industrial zones going 250% up and being turned into gated communities and factories cant move because of nearby high way and harbor.

So it is not socialism but common sense to call for residency zoning area reserved for workers.

In tourist zones this is normal: from Alps to Mediterranean. But if you mention big cities suddenly nobody ever heard of workers working there only landlords and retail shops.

And I am not talking across the street where you work I am talking 1h commute area around industrial zone rejecting cheap apartments and building gated communities where one foreign firm can buy all 128 houses at once.

If we can talk against concert ticket/ps5/3070ti scalping and overcharging we can talk about housing without being mocked at and called greedy lazy socialist. I just dont wanna live in a shoe box or be 3h in traffic every day.

I do not believe my desire, having been born in a $5million house, and wanting to also live in an equivalent house is at all extreme. It is no differnt to being born in the bronx and wanting to live in the bronx or the projects and feeling entitled to also be given project housing.

> If we can talk against concert ticket/ps5/3070ti scalping and overcharging

I was able to buy a ps4 on release for $399.99. How is it fair that they want $499 for a ps5. Is this really equivalent?

jklein11 1700 days ago

> But that's fine, poor people shouldn't be alive anyway.

I am glad that you are finally speaking sensibly. /s

deathanatos 1700 days ago

At some point, there simply isn't going to be much choice; I have a job that now requires space for a home office, and at some point, a family will require space, and it can only be delayed so long. Rent goes up year after year without so much as skipping a beat for the pandemic, and so it might, in some ways, be nice to put that into equity — even equity that might crash — rather than just continuing to enrich my local landlords.

There isn't choice? That makes it sound like you're forced to spend 1M on a home. There are people with families and space requirement who don't even have 10k, let alone 1M. What choice do they have?

The issue isn't that rich people buy homes in rich areas, it's that they buy homes in poor areas and poor people can no longer afford to.

mvc 1700 days ago

There really isn't a choice. Nobody pays more than they have to, to secure a house purchase. If the price paid is 1M, that's because that's the price the seller wanted. They'd have demanded that price whoever bought it. And if the price is 1M in whatever town we're gentrifying, then a similar house in SF would be considerably more (and thus not affordable).

I get the frustration with gentrification. But what's the alternative? Everyone must live and die in the town/city in which they were born? What's more, if nobody is coming to your town to live/work, it just slowly declines as the population ages out of work. Visit some of the old mining towns in the UK to see what that's like.

At least if you have a steady stream of incoming "rich people", then the entrepreneurial folk in the town have a chance at extracting some of that wealth.

> That makes it sound like you're forced to spend 1M on a home

No they are 'forced' to buy a home.

The home that fulfills their needs is 1M. If they could find a home that fulfilled their needs for $5 and 10c they would spend $5.10 on their home.

The 'poor' person who sold their house to them in the poor area for $1mil ('where back in my day a house cost nothing') now has $1mil. The 'rich' person has a mortgage.

The poor person didn't have a house to sell. Poor people don't have assets. This discussion feels like talking to people from another reality.

I live in a country where $900/mo is considered a good salary. New 120 m^2 flats in my city now cost $600k because people from abroad have come in, bought stuff and raised prices. What are regular people here, who have no "houses to sell", supposed to do? Move away from the place they've lived for decades because people from rich countries are "forced" to buy a home?

Has nobody heard of gentrification?

> Poor people don't have assets.

But they could afford before the gentrificaion.

They were not buying assets when they could afford them, they certainly are not buying assets now that they can not afford them. As you have written them off as "poor" for all eternity then they will never be able to afford them.

Therefore the purchase price of the property in question is entirely irrelevant to your poor person, those flats could be $6, $600k, or $6mil they are not buying them.

spurgu 1700 days ago

Yeah, the same thing has happened in Malta.

jelliclesfarm 1700 days ago

It could also mean that there is an erosion of poverty and more people want to buy property. Only the poverty is visible. The reality is that a larger percentage of the worlds population is more prosperous and richer and consuming/desiring luxury more than any other time of our planet’s existence.

ironmagma 1700 days ago

Isn’t the issue equally that people (presumably poor people, since it’s poor neighborhoods) are selling their houses to rich buyers? It’s entirely possible to only sell to a poor person for a lower price.

ironmagma 1700 days ago

Demand is a group phenomenon; anyone who participates in the act of desiring a house drives up the prices. It’s not just the buyers, and certainly not just a particular age group of buyers.

mvc 1700 days ago

There's two sides to every transaction. Why blame only the buy side?

alx__ 1700 days ago

The folks driving up property prices are the speculators/flippers/airbnb buyers. Nothing wrong with moving into a space if you're going to live there full time.