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Comment by mancerayder | Hacker News Reader

I just sold a home days before the pandemic hit, and consider myself very lucky.

But now I have cash and I'm nervous inflation might start becoming a real problem.

I'm also worried that dense American cities are going to have a huge drop in property values, desirability, and an increase in crime. I am seeing this right now, and a lot of sentiment from people with money is to never come back.

It's a tough call. Is this a good time to buy property if there's a crash in six months?

Will there really be asset inflation of properties if there's a commercial default explosion about to happen (hurting banks), if a lot of people are unemployed, and if cities become a little less popular? Crime is spiking in NYC right now and it's not really a priority to report it.

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> Crime is spiking in NYC right now and it's not really a priority to report it.

How can you know this? If it is not being reported, you must be relying on anecdotal reporting? Reddit, nextdoor, facebook?

Anecdotal - Citizen App blowing up, in several neighborhoods I know well. A large number of street robberies, gunshots heard. Unusual events, like a deadly assault during the afternoon in an area that never happened.

Before the pandemic crime had spiked for certain things, like misdemeanor assaults and robberies, I want to say 20+ percent. The politicians use Major Crimes, because it makes them look better as they go down and you can also make them go down by downgrading indictments or pushing people who report crimes so it's filed differently (if you've been the victim of robbery they'll do everything to lower the value of the items, as one example). But you can view CompStat data from before the pandemic. DAs accused the NYPD of exaggerating but DAs had already begun to decline to prosecute. Also the discovery rules just got more strict.

Now logic for the present moment: a large percentage of the NYPD is out sick, a lot of people have no income and there's no one in the street. Would you feel safe? There are regular strongarm and knife-point robberies reported on Citizen near where I live.

Or maybe there are more people at home with free time to make reports on neighborhood apps.

"free time"? And are you suggesting these are fake?

There are many claims that these community apps end up with multiple reports of the same crime and reports of crimes that didn't actually happen. Not only that, but a lot of urban people have a terrible time distinguishing the sound of gunshots from other noises that are common in urban areas.

I don't want to claim that there isn't a spike in crime. There may well be. But you really have to be careful in relying on what you see reported on these apps. Especially with so many people at home, nervous and stressed out.

It's also common sense! People without work, cops calling out sick, and street gangs ready to go. So I trust those reports, and I did just say above there are videos and exact addresses.

Also, Detroit's murder rate has just spiked by 50 pct and shootings by 30%, because you can't 'hide' that or hand wave that away.

"Is this a good time to buy property if there's a crash in six months?"

As an investment, or a place to live?

What are the alternatives for investing? They might be better, they might not be.

If the time frame you're considering is long enough, presumably yes, it's a great time. And if your time frame is even longer, the answer is it doesn't really matter :)

If you mean you sold your home and invested in stock market just before this all happened, you probably lost 20-25% as of right now as opposed to just holding on to the property. A bear market doesn't mean anything about real estate prices, and in practice demand for real estate increases as the stock market and bond market drops

I got lucky, because I had cash from the sale and the world crumbled before I had time to invest in the market. Otherwise I absolutely would have, and I've have absolutely lost a lot.

Now I have cash and wondering if inflation will become a problem for the first time since the 70s.

As a regular critic of many things and ideas American, I have to point out that in the long run, you’ve never been better off betting against America.

I would love to see you take this and short the SP500, really put your money where your mouth is. Value is relative, and relative to the rest of the world the US is going to fare quite well. So good luck to you!

I think you are misunderstanding what he said. He's saying you have never gotten better off by betting against the United States in the long run, not that now is the time to bet against the United States.

I read the sentence two time to get what he was saying. Figured it out based on his first part of the sentence.

I feel gross looking at my 401k. Everything in there is a bet on the continuation of the world that led here, and that world is unjust in the extreme and needs to go. And right now I think we're on the razor's edge fo something wonderful happening. I know a few people participating in rent strikes here in NYC. Maybe this is the week where a decade happens.

Could have said the same about Rome at some point.

How do we know this isn't a great flippening event? It will take the West years to recover - we haven't even started. East Asia is up and running.

We only started forcing (politely) people to self isolate. That's right, in NYC there are still crowds, and cops aren't able to keep people apart. Polite communitarianism.

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