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Comment by spoonjim | Hacker News Reader

After I spent my entire net worth plus a good chunk of my future net worth on this house you can be damn right I’m going to vote to protect its value.

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Hmmm this just seems like a bad decision on your part. I bought my house in 2018 and it was expensive, yes, but definitely manageable on my salary. I definitely would not buy a house right now, especially if it required spending 'my entire net worth plus a good chunk of my future net worth'.

Almost everyone spends more than their present net worth on their house. It’s great for you that you didn’t have to but I’m not in the minority.

It's a vicious cycle – OP and others are forced to commit most of their wealth to own a home because of all the NIMBYs that came before them, and on and on.

Nah... That's just ignorance.

It's like the American opposition to pedestrianization of blocks. Pedestrianized blocks increase local business footfall and increase high margin economic activity.

New developments in your community increase value of your home, far better than restricting development.

How's that? Genuinely curious.

Opposition to development hurts the homeowners value, a lot.

The value of your home doesn't only depend on the fact that it's in a rich neighborhood with beautiful lawns, but the services and proximity to said services.

NYC is desireable, not because it's a big city... but because you can get services there. Take away the services - you take away all of the value proposition.

In my area, we have everything around us (big retailers, malls, nightlife, etc.) in the suburbs in a well-off area in South Florida. How would adding more houses appreciate my property's value?

More people = more service consumers = more jobs = higher demand for housing = higher demand for services

For most Americans, if you want to own property you drain most of your savings and take on debt worth many times your annual income. If people did not do this the demand for real estate would crater.

What key metrics do you observe when it boils down to determining whether or not you feel it is a good or bad time to buy?

It is worthwhile to recognize that there is nothing unusual in this response, many homeowners feel this way.

But then by same token we can also move to justifying other things, like not hiring people without CS degrees (I spent $xxx,xxx on my CS degree, I want to protect its value), only hiring other MBAs, only hiring people with prior experience in tech companies etc. – which can perpetuate and amplify inequality in opportunity among society.

At what point do we move from that to a more altruistic viewpoint? I am genuinely not sure.

There's "wanting to protect the value of your home" and there's "I'm going to vote NIMBY/BANANA and screw everybody else out of a place to live because I decided to 'invest' all my money in this house and expect it to be a nest egg that catapults me out of the working class." It sounds like the parent is in the latter category.

Is the problem "losing value in my house" or "not realizing astronomical gains like my peers"? And if building much-needed housing does decrease your house's value then hey, maybe your house was overvalued at the price you paid and you made a bad 'investment'. Why punish everyone else and artificially strangle housing supply to cover your bad decision?

If "protect its value" means maintain and strengthen it, retrofit it against likely disasters, plant gardens and craft way to preserve the products, add off-grid energey infrastructure, etc., then that's great.

If it means try to use the heavy hand of the state to prevent others from living their best life, then you aren't protecting anything; you're violently stealing the future net worth of others and making it your own.

It’s all violent stealing back to the white people who took this land from its settlers at the wrong end of a gun. I got ripped off and I’m not going to be the bigger man and be the first person in this chain to say “it’s ok, I don’t mind losing a million dollars on this.”

Hyperbole doesn't help here. Legalizing four-plexes in your neighborhood will almost never knock a million dollars off your home's value. I bet it'd be hard to find many examples of upzoning causing SFHs to drop significantly in price anywhere.

Gambling your entire net worth on a single hyper-local investment is not a good idea.

Sadly in many parts of the US, that is how one gets access to the best public schools -- via home purchases. Many of the best public schools are in districts w/o a large number of rentals.

It’s a great idea, it means that my kids will go to school with other kids whose parents care a lot about their education. A large amount of money shouldn’t be needed for that, but I didn’t see another way to achieve that outcome.

Schools can go downhill pretty fast, and often do.

Markets also go downhill. If you really went all out with paying for it, you also need to hope that your employment will remain stable. People who are very comfortable with their job and predict no downsides are often the ones getting bitten when the market changes, as it always does.

“Screw you, I got mine!”

The capitalistic attitude in a nutshell.

More like "I got screwed and I'd rather other people get screwed than get screwed further." Obviously not selfless, but I don't think the housing market is their fault.

BANANA results in higher homeless rates, that means that denying any building anywhere... you're actively supporting increase in homelessness.

Yeah why fix anything ever? If it was bad for me it should be bad for them too right?

In fact, I'll actively try to make things worse for them to try and eke out a little profit.

Do you own/mortgage a house you're willing to lose what you put in?

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