[ButlerianJihad]

The crazy thing about residential property in 21st-century USA is that it's always a money pit.

A few hundred years ago, it was commonplace for the middle- and upper-classes to own large estates, and these estates were expected to be assets that earn money. You would hire staff, and tenant farmers, or have slaves or whatever cadres of workers to work the land, be shepherds, and basically produce revenue for the lords or owners of the estates. This was not only a UK phenomenon but continued in the USA.

Unfortunately, in modern times, there are zoning laws, business licensing, insurance, and many things to militate against homeowners using their homes as businesses or assets or generators of revenue. You can't exactly have a public entrance and signage in a HOA neighborhood and your neighbors gonna be pissed if random stranger-customers are pulling up in their cars all day and walking up to your front door to buy merchandise or to use a service that you offer from your private residence.

But nevertheless, this commercialization happens all the time. I didn't realize how crazy widespread it is until I started paying attention in Google Maps. There are dozens of "cottage industries" in every neighborhood. It's probably exactly the reason why "McMansions" and excessively large homes are popular, even as fertility shrinks and people aren't having kids, they still want room at home for their entrepreneurship and home office, doing whatever business they go into for themselves.

I have seen little family farms that sell "raw milk" and mutton and fresh eggs, basically on the DL for your Venmo or Cashapp payments. Across the valley there is literally an arms dealer who sells out of his garage, and only a few blocks from a school. There are people fighting their HOA, tooth and nail, because the HOA is enforcing their rules about signage, or giveaways, or something, and these people are even featured on the evening news and portrayed as "innocent HOA victim" when in fact, they're trying to illicitly run a business out of their garage and gin-up foot traffic for that business from passers-by in a SFH residential-zoned neighborhood.

So yeah, a home that your family lives in, that's in a residential-zoned area, of the United States, that's guaranteed to have "negative value" because you'll always be pouring money into its taxes, upkeep, and maintenance. And that's exactly why most homeowners decide to actually start a business and use that property, in a grey area, to earn money rather than throwing it all away.

[empath75]

There's so much wrong with this comment. First, middle class _by definition_ did not have large estates that earned incomes for them.

Second, it's weird to throw in an "unfortunately" after pointing out that the only thing that enabled this was exploitative labor practices (including slavery!)

Third, most homeowners do not actually start a business and use their property to earn money.

Fourth, the home doesn't have a negative value. It has a resale value often quite substantial, and you are living in it while you're paying all those maintainence costs.

[chasd00]

> little family farms that sell "raw milk" and mutton and fresh eggs, basically on the DL

There's a decent amount of that going on in my neighborhood (Dallas TX). The reason it's on the DL is because nothing is pasteurized let alone inspected by the local health department. Some people prefer raw milk as being more natural but pasteurization was invented for a reason. I stay away from it.

[ButlerianJihad]

The real truth is that "cream-top" or non-homogenized milk is way, way better and may not be as harmful to our health, and cream-top milk is perfectly legitimate, legal, and sold by ordinary farmer's markets in my area.

Pasteurization is a very necessary process if any community expects to transport and distribute milk past a radius where a teenage girl could carry a pail, basically. I see nothing wrong with pasteurized milk and I also avoid "raw milk" because it's a red herring of a fad, and those who defiantly purchase and consume raw milk are reckless and ignorant people.

But if you've never sampled cream-top milk, then you've not lived. It is absolutely a revelation. I love opening up a glass bottle of milk from Straus Family Creamery and then using a fork to dislodge the thick cap of cream in the neck of the bottle. You can dredge it all out and then use it in your coffee or tea later. I just enjoy when it melts in my mouth.

Of course, cream-top milk is rather "chunky" and can be unsightly: homogenization was developed partly to mollify housewives and make milk more conveniently pourable from a bottle. In fact, the homogenization processes today remove all the milkfat and then that cream can either be used in creamery products, or the cream can be added back in later to satisfy a target percentage, like 1% or 2% as milk is most commonly sold.

Fat in milk and other foods contributes to the satiety factor: you can eat rice-cakes or soybeans all day and not feel full, until you put some butter or oil on them, and then you feel satisfied. If I drink skim milk then I've got some hydration, but I don't enjoy it. If I drink/chew on a glass of cream-top milk, then I've been transported very near to Cowherds Heaven, and I feel extremely satisfied with the investment.

The USDA and FDA and powers that be told us that milkfat is bad for us because they were commercially motivated to say so. Milkfat is the most lovely part of milk but also the most versatile, and can be used in many nutritious ways, and that's why dairy farmers want rank-and-file consumers to demand less milkfat and drink 1% milk, so that the more lucrative milkfats and cream can be siphoned off for use in more profitable products.

[AnthonyMouse]

> There are people fighting their HOA, tooth and nail, because the HOA is enforcing their rules about signage, or giveaways, or something, and these people are even featured on the evening news and portrayed as "innocent HOA victim" when in fact, they're trying to illicitly run a business out of their garage and gin-up foot traffic for that business from passers-by in a SFH residential-zoned neighborhood.

Isn't this just taking the perspective of the HOA? Mixed use zoning is a completely reasonable policy. The status quo shouldn't be used for normative determinations. At which point you have busybody HOAs lobbying for restrictive residence-only zoning and then harassing sympathetic small business owners who are just trying to make a living.

[ButlerianJihad]

An HOA is, by definition, your ordinary neighbors. And by the principles of “small government” and subsidiarity, the HOA is tasked with establishing rules and guidelines that help make good neighbors live in harmony, such as uniform aesthetics, prohibited activities, and so forth. These rules are otherwise handled by landlords or municipal codes.

It is really about conformity and keeping the peace, so that the Clark Griswolds and Gladys Kravitzes of the world cannot run roughshod over the others.

Mixed-use zoning is perfectly cromulent, but I am not referring to mixed-usedl zoning. These are large SFH residences with ample lots in suburban developments.

This sort of entrepreneurship is fine if you’re a web designer, or traveling electrician, but many times they instead flout all kinds of boundaries such as carrying the proper business licenses, parking/disabled accessibility, insurance, signage etc.

Americans in suburban and residential areas have a certain expectation that their neighborhoods should be free of obvious commercial enterprises, because that is why we invented strip malls!

[AnthonyMouse]

> And by the principles of “small government” and subsidiarity, the HOA is tasked with establishing rules and guidelines that help make good neighbors live in harmony, such as uniform aesthetics, prohibited activities, and so forth. These rules are otherwise handled by landlords or municipal codes.

The trouble here is that the principle of subsidiarity doesn't lead to the HOA making these decisions from both ends.

For many of them the HOA isn't local enough and the decision should be up to the individual property owners, e.g. they should have nothing to say about you putting solar panels on your roof or operating a business that isn't meaningfully disruptive to the neighbors.

For the others, the rules have regional/national implications for things like housing affordability and small business viability and the HOA is subject to perverse incentives. Each suburb wants a different one to host the strip mall, with the result that there is an insufficiency of land zoned for dense construction and mixed use, and then it requires a higher level of government to act because too many of the local ones refuse to allow any at all.

[brcmthrowaway]

I watched the show Bridgerton, and I was shocked when the main characters just dilly-dallied all day. Turns out they had estates that made money for them.

[brewdad]

Then you watch Downton Abbey and learn that upkeep on a hundreds years old castle on that estate will bury you.