Hacker News Reader

Comment by erhk | Hacker News Reader

This is already happening with property ownership being coagulated in cities. How is this a surprise

How is that the same?

It's as if you bought your house, but had one room walled off with the developer saying "for only $100 a month, we will open that room up for you! isn't that great? you only pay for it if you need the extra space!"

Except that obviously the room is there whether you pay the subscription or not, you paid for it in the cost of the house.

I was looking at a house the other day, it said "option to continue rental of garage". That's not a new house by any means (1800s or so I think), nor is it in some modern hippy city with new ways of doing things.

Maybe not bought but we rented a house where the owner padlocked 2 bedrooms shut and said if we wanted to use them it was an extra $200 a month to use them as home offices.

That's......beyond dumb. Like, if you don't pay him the extra $200, he's not extracting any extra value from these bedrooms. It's not like they can be rented to someone else in the meantime. So.....why do it in the first place?

Because he doesn’t lose anything, but has the possibility of gaining something.

He's definitely losing something. Property taxes are based on area and number of rooms. They could have found a tenant looking for the right number of rooms in their budget.

Unused capacity might be claimed as a business loss?

Or he advertised 1, 2, and 3 BR and took the first that came along.

You are assuming demand is equal for all of those. It might be in some places, but not others.

A bit weird but there's at least an argument that there's some wear and tear associated with using the rooms and, presumably, the landlord thought that the slightly cheaper/smaller apartment--with a possible upsell--was more rentable.

If the rooms aren't used, they won't experience any wear and tear and they won't have to be cleaned again for the next renters.

Good point. Here in the UK the big developers seem to be getting more and more creative in generating post-sale revenues, be it from escalating ground rents, property management fees, captive ISPs, or £3 towel rentals for the sky pool.

That's only a problem because people buying them don't factor those costs into the equation. Effectively the company is arbitraging based on laziness of the general consumer to do the calculations

Reply on news.ycombinator.com