The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

This is wrong, or your definition of "luck" is different to mine and most other people, I assume.

> Public transport: the last few times I've taken the bus, it's been easy to find a seat. The last time I took the BART it was nearly empty.

if that is the case, SF has either the most amazing public transportation already or the most under-used public transportation. or you are simply cheery-picking.

school, kindergarten and medical need to be in close vicinity though. the overall capacity is meaningless for the first two if you build housing for an additional 15k within a few blocks and then have no GPs (and to a lesser extend consultants) within a few minutes of walking or no hospital within a quick driving distance. and if that 70k to 50k (i assume it is not covid related) is uniformly across all kindergartens, it is pretty meaningless for housing

I'm ex-bay area since 2016, but I recall standing room only BART and shoulder-to-shoulder CALTRAIN can't add another body when heading to south bay. Although I didn't take SF bus, or send kids to Kindergarten.

So it's even more efficient with higher population.

in close vicinity of the housing. not sure i understand the question.

> How hard is to coordinate to double the number of trains or buses?

running a bus during peak hours at twice your current rate (unless the rate is completely ridicilous) does not sound easy. why do you assume it is? at that rate, for SF at least, you are talking subway.

by streets i meant the higher volume during peak hours that need to be sustained (walking, cycling, driving, busses, trams, parking etc).

I'm not arguing that sprawl is inherently bad, but it definitely does add the need to own a car (for most people) and spend a lot of time in it (ditto).

NIMBYs will argue that, in a certain sense, they did: they bought the land their houses stand on decades or centuries ago, when the area was farm land, and then promoted a city charter for a certain type of community, together with every other citizen in the area. They paid taxes for local infrastructure, schools, time and effort to organize and solve community issues, inconvenience when a new water mains or bypass was built etc. etc.

This whole communal development is what made the area desirable, it's not like they are hoarding limited farmland. It's the combination of private property + working community rules that create property value.

Some owners in the area would now opt out of those rules outside the democratic process pre-agreed to their change, by simply building a large condo building on their plot, depreciating the value of nearby single family homes and pocketing the cash. You can imagine existing owners will fight tooth and nail to maintain the agreed rules.

While i don't 100% subscribe to this point of view and there is much to be said about the exclusionary and down right racist behavior it can enable, the issue of urban development is not quite as clear cut as you make it out to be.

> Ifbyou want control over who can move in somewhere, or what can be built somewhere, you have a simple solution, buy the land in question.

That seems contradictory. The existing owners did by definition buy that land they own. So you're saying thus they get to decide, but also that no they don't.

This is true of initial 800 sq ft as well.

Prioritising your finances over a satisfying and interesting life sounds dull, and like a great way to make yourself mentally unwell if you do it for too long.

Not everyone’s preferred life “needs” much space but when yours does, not having it can be very stifling and stressful.

He's died now, I took over the flat, and moved from a family home into the same flat. I also had to shed a lot of books in the process. I ripped my large CD collection to a media server. I miss some of those books I got rid of; but I like this small flat, and I don't want to dedicate a small room to a library.

The first books I got rid of were computer books. They were all manuals for some obsolescent technology; like, I thought the "Rhino" Javascript book would be useful forever (um, no). I got rid of a few feet of books on Buddhism, and several more feet were books on Western philosophy from my undergraduate days. These were books that had been formative for me, but I was honestly never going to open them again.

So I don't really agree with my father's advice. If you regret ditching a book, you can just replace it.

That's what the internet + ebooks are for.

Unless a book has a special meaning to me personally or is considered life changing, I rarely keep any physical books.

And sure, any wealth story has some piece that involves luck and/or timing. Nothing wrong with that.

I feel this distinction is important because it could guide whether the solution is based on encouraging more capital investment to do things like increase density, or whether the solution is essentially to ban outside investment.

I choose to move to SF knowing that rents were absurd compared to other cities I could have moved to. But I choose to roll the dice on SF being the better choice.

I get it that people who grew up in SF face a different choice - leave or not. But it’s still a choice for them.

My parents were landlords for nearly two decades. Their property was not a good investment even though they kept cost down by doing all the work themselves.

The building unit depreciates, but the total value usually goes up due to the land value, not the construction value. Cars would also appreciate hypothetically if metals suddenly became more expensive.

However, since lands are scarce and a collective effort to maintain, maybe it should be taxed for the benefit of the community and rewards given to the people who put it to the most valuable use, by not taxing buildings and other improvements built upon it.

Totally. That's why that $50,000,000 house in NYC should eventually cost only $1.

That doesn't change the point this house cleaner was able to get creative and a bunch of property.

Population growth alone would bring an expectation of rising housing costs.

Of course there is a reason, multiple ones.

Land, of course, but that's the easy one so let's ignore it for the sake of argument for a moment. Let's say land price remains constant.

Housing will still appreciate simply because everything related to it goes up. Contractor labor and supplies.

So to build a new identical house on an empty lot next to an older house will cost more than it cost to build that old house. But they houses are identical so they compete for the same buyer. So inevitably the old house value will go up to match the new house that cost more to build.

Young people need to go to shitty places that are cheap and then make the place better. Many young people want to live in SF or NYC. Go to Detroit instead.

I assume by "incentives", you mean that they'd manipulate the law to limit other suppliers. I'm sure that happens, but as a landlord you don't have to do that. And being a landlord (who isn't manipulating the law) doesn't make the problem any worse.

Criticism should be directed at the real problems. Those are a mix of law and culture and just inertia.