I’m told I just “don’t get it.”
No. I don’t get it. That’s the problem. :p
Whenever someone hits you with that make sure you get them to document the reduction in their property value in dollars, including methodology. It's not possible, houses sell for whatever someone buys it for and you can't know the mind of buyers. Maybe the fact that your door is off-tan instead of off-medium-tan will make some buyer reduce their offer on a house 5 doors down by $20,000, but there's no way to prove that.
When you buy a house, the bank orders an appraisal to ensure the property is worth the offered price, in case of foreclosure. What's the first thing the appraiser looks at to determine value? Comparables, which is an industry term for similar houses/properties in similar areas and what they sold for. What's the best comparable? The offer you made on the property you're attempting to buy. It's cyclical.
I agree that people should not be penalized for living in and using their homes. If I buy a house with a garage, you shouldn't get mad that I work on my car and even gasp make some noise during the day while I do it.
Last time I went to sell my house the market was in a fairly volatile state and I didn't have a good idea of what a fair price for my house would be. So I called multiple appraisal companies asking if they could give me a fair market value figure I could use for the listing. Not one of them would do it. That's not their business they told me. They basically exist as one of many dubious middlemen that takes a cut out of each home sale while offering little value.
They do however tend to thwart rapid price surges in the market. Depending on if you’re buying or selling will change your opinion on if that is good or bad.
I'll grant that they largely rubber-stamp the offer price, but if the property has hidden defects it might be good for the bank to try to find that out before lending.
No, they mean "people who are in the market for a house like mine tend to not like the look of that."
Of course nobody in telepathically able to figure out what goes on in some buyers' minds. I don't know if/how many buyers would really consider it in a "let's bid $20.000 below asking because the neighbour three doors down has a broken car in his driveway" or "because the lawn isn't a golf-green" way.
What I do think many buyers will consider is whether to buy at all. And that's not about being able to quantify it. You can see from just a few of the other replies here that people do consider that, whether you like it or not. Many buyers will not even consider to buy your house, if the neighbour's yard is overgrown. Like the difference between this being your neighbor: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PGgOiHH_4Sk/maxresdefault.jpg vs. this https://fthmb.tqn.com/bUupIggP7-_Duha--avqVcXqLqc=/960x0/fil...
Now both are overgrown but one screams neglected, possibly even abandoned. The other, while not everyone's cup of tea, seems intentional and lively.
Or to take cars. This to me looks ugly and abandoned. Don't want to live next to that person: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ub_p4acppHE/TWv_24yosLI/A... but this is awesome https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c9/81/97/c98197ac689cdef00eb5... and that tractor definitely needs repairs from time to time.
The problem comes in when trying to do something about one without affecting the other. I don't know if that's possible via a law at all as there's so much nuance and personal opinion and aesthetics in it. I bet in this large HN crowd you'll find someone that even disagrees w/ my opinion that the second yard I linked to looks awesome. I'd buy that house!
A lot of people will look and think at least somewhat subconsciously "If a neighborhood tolerates that sort of thing, what else do they tolerate" and just keep driving by.
And I say that as someone who let some stuff around my property get a bit out of control (but mostly out back) over COVID but I have a fairly large property and my neighbors have even larger ones and I'm well off the road.
But my messy country garden is just a messy country garden that pretty much no one but me needs to look at. Neighbors might reasonably think differently in a neat upscale suburban neighborhood.
I strongly lean to the live and let live side but there's a, to me, distressing amount of Screw my neighbors, I'll do whatever I want because it's all about Me on this thread.
So having some broken-down cars on your property may make it "the worst house" on your street and therefore more saleable.
“Worst” here really meaning selling for the lowest value compared to what is implied by size and neighborhood.
> So having some broken-down cars on your property may make it "the worst house" on your street and therefore more saleable.
It may signal that it is likely to be underpriced and get people to check it out, but that’s about it.
The point I'm making there is that for some changes, price will most definitely be affected negatively. However, it would also be impossible to quantify how much the price would decrease with any degree of accuracy.
Now, is something like "door color" going to have this clear of a negative impact? No. We should ignore those requests as largely absurd. But there are definitely activities that would have clear negative impacts on price, even if that can't be quantified in an accurate manner whatsoever.
Does this mean we should legislate changes to help maintain property values? No. But it's certainly a valid claim in some circumstances.
If I bulldoze my house and build a beautiful park, they'll never send me a check.
In my view this has to go both ways or neither.
Housing as an investment first and a place to live second is a disease. It penalizes the poor, new arrivals, and the young, transferring wealth from these groups to people who bought homes back before the disease took hold. This is not wealth earned by working hard or creating value. Instead it's wealth extracted by obstructing value creation to collect rent from a captive audience.
Most of those benefiting from this condition would never have been able to buy in today, but "I've got mine, fuck you."
Any place dominated by this dynamic has zero claim to any kind of liberal or progressive title. This includes the supposed liberal bastion of the San Francisco Bay Area, a massively distorted housing market that creates one of the widest divisions between rich and poor anywhere in the US. Places like Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina are more progressive than San Francisco because a working class person can afford a home.
Most of the country has this disease to some extent, but obviously there are a few hot spots that are particularly bad. I picked on SF because it's among the worst and also among the most sanctimonious, continuously holding itself up as some kind of progressive bastion while implementing what amounts to red lining on a massive scale.
Unfortunately I can't think of any solution to this problem that isn't painful. Either we inflate the rest of the economy until a loaf of bread is $15 but housing is reasonable again or we let housing collapse.
The fact is, for many people having a home that they build equity in is the closest they’ll ever get to some kind of “savings” account. When the home is paid off in 30 years they no longer need money saved up to buy a retirement home because they will have full equity of their house which may have gone up substantially in value. They could then sell this property and downsize and continue to live off the proceeds from the equity they sold.
If homes weren’t investments, it means people would have to be a lot more serious about saving and investing money for the future, and frankly that just isn’t going to happen at scale given human behavior.
There are alternatives like pensions, improving social security and medicare/medicaid, etc. The de-prioritization and gutting of these has probably contributed to housing taking their place.
But housing isn't a sustainable answer. It's basically done. Current generations can never see the kind of housing appreciation their parents did. Prices simply can't go up much more except in areas that are undervalued and never saw a run-up in previous decades. New buyers today risk the opposite: straining to buy into overvalued markets only to see them crash and leave them underwater. Housing as a source of retirement funding is a one-generation-and-done phenomenon.
Personally I would not touch real estate in overvalued metros today unless I were rich and could afford to lose 25-50% of the value of the home. If interest rates don't come back down to near-zero and/or if the trend toward telework and geographic decentralization continues, these areas could very well crash.
If so, only at the expense of the next generation who will find it even harder to afford a place to live. When housing prices go up it means the next generation will find it that much harder to afford a place to live.
The "hard asset" value of a house is a very small component of its total value. The majority of the value directly relies on the government policy of overwhelming monetary inflation dumped into the financial industry. That policy can be changed much easier than bona fide entitlement policies, and perhaps it has even started changing already.
And I think gp's point was that if housing prices rise (so that they're a good investment) then they become unaffordable (as we're seeing). One or the other, not both.
Or we could build more housing?
However, I am absolutely not fine with the party house AirBNB next door to me on the other side that is constantly hosting bachelor and bachelorette parties with DJs and strippers playing loud music on Sunday night when I need to get up early in the morning to work on Monday, also filling up the entire street with vehicles and leaving nowhere to park for people who actually live here. So yeah, that I'll complain about.
I'm willing to pay a premium for that value.
I am only willing to consider an HOA if it comes with a steep discount.
The more people there are out there who think like I do, the less it makes sense for people to try to tell their neighbors how to live.
If what I do with my property negatively affects your investment perhaps you should've taken that into account when conducting your risk analysis instead of throwing a fit and making your problems my problem.
Or, absolute principles are rarely absolutely applicable.
[edit] I'm somewhat surprised by the contention that merely stating this hypothetical is "emboldening" the investor class.
Pardon: >> EMBOLDENING THE SUPPORT FOR THE INVESTMENT OWNING CLASS
whatever that means.
I bring it up as it was my experience as a renter whose quality of life (not investment value) was substantially impacted when I lived next to people who were operating a quasi-legal home auto repair shop. I think it's unfair to assume that anyone asking where a line should be drawn on what someone can do on their property is carrying water for faceless, inhumane capitalist corporate investor-vampires, or whatever. And BTW, doing whatever you want on your property at the expense of the neighbors' quality of life or investment value? Kinda antisocial as well.
No example given isn’t already covered by a law that already exists.
Except in the correlation to a “market” that this “investment” will be expected to perform on.
It puts capital and profit over humans and is deplorable behavior.
There are entire cohorts of people who cannot. Who own one home, barely, or are beholden to a landlord’s (sometimes corporate) whims.
Saying “what if they leak oil from junk cars” - resolved via environment law already.
“Noise complaint.” - resolved via law already.
Too many cars, too much blight? - laws already.
Every single example provided couches this as a potential harm to someone else’s investment, and strengthens the divide in class between those who can afford to “invest” and those who cannot and strive to simply exist.
Yes, people DO worry about investment. I do. I own my home. My only home. It’s paid off, largely speaking.
But it’s my home. I have NO desire or assumption that its value will go to my children or provide retirement income.
Because it’s a home.
And I look at my fellow working class neighbors in the same way.
If someone complains my home needing paint (it does) will affect (effect? I always forget) their investment - I will happily let them paint my house or they can f off.
>> it's believed that the code is intended to prevent small independent repair shops from popping up in someone's backyard
While other laws may cover each of the potential negative secondary effects of a backyard auto shop on the neighbors, that doesn't mean the group of behavior leading to violation of those laws should remain undefined.
Again, to me this has nothing to do with keeping value on an investment. My experience with this was renting... I now own (one) house, and my problem with what the neighbors do has to do with how it affects my health and quality of life.
Claiming every possible negative effect is covered by law makes no sense. Leaking chemicals? Could take years to be discovered in the water table. Noise? Not really enforced anywhere... especially not if the activity in question is otherwise legal / doesn't require a license.
I don't think it was a shallow objection... and I believe you're reading it through a classist lens of "what if some rich investment owner next door told me what to do on my property" without considering the other side, e.g. someone renting next door to people who do noxious stuff.
[edit] also, I can see from your point of view as a homeowner myself who's surrounded by creeping investment properties and Airbnb's... and certainly if they were telling me how to paint my house they could f off too. But that's aesthetic and about their investment value. I guess what I'm saying when you get down to it is the aesthetics of auto repair aren't the part that bothers me, it's living next door to the noise and pollution.
What “triggers” me is this idea that the default state is “consider investment” and not “does it harm one’s ability to enjoy their home.”
Sure you cab define “enjoy” as “watch value go up” but that’s clearly not what I mean.
The whole “and it harm none, do as you please”, imho, does not consider the wallet.
Which, when thinking about investments, is thinking about class divide and puts $ over people.
My neighborhood is largely renters. I’m a 1 family across from another 1 family. On my sides are multi families. Renters. Owned by corporations but not kept up. Some in pretty crappy disrepair.
If I wanted to claim they affected my prop value, I could. But those corps have MUCH more money to defend and hit back (my house needs paint, etc) … just the same. (That’s not my style though as said earlier)
Anyway. I’m tired and rambling. I do appreciate the replies and I do hope I’ve helped some bit to look at anything that comes out of the gate thinking $ before people - is widening the gap and harming people.
[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/wondering-what...
If you live next to someone concerned about their investment, perhaps you should consider what mechanisms exist to prevent you from using your property in a way that would affect their investment.
This kind of argument can go on and on forever because there's no right answer. The homeowner can do what they want within the confines of the legal system on their property, and the investor can do what they want within the confines of the legal system to protect their investment.
Investment supports a class driven, divide building system.
Homes support humans.
One of the two above clearly, imho, has “right of way.”
Why shouldn't I simply arrogate to myself the right to direct all of society's resources to my own comfort? The Veil of Ignorance is nonsensical. I can condition probabilities of outcomes on my current state and choose appropriate action.
Why would I discard any power I have? That just transfers the balance of power to power of another sort that others have.
Me, I like some freedom.
Which I like. Your desire for freedom is unlikely to be very deep. You'll give it up to impose rules on your neighbor, most likely.
Your argument is premised on the law not being for sale and thus the distribution of power being extremely unequal and therefore unjust, but (at least in real life) you're wrong.
Pretty standard sociopathic capitalist formula, to be honest.
Just because you want it to be that way doesn't mean it will be, and me and others like me will keep pushing to be left alone by people who get a hard on looking to exert power over us.
They do though, always have and always will. Society can't function unless they do. You keep the noise down, don't play with noxious materials, you can't put a shooting range in your yard facing their house, can't build a building too close to their property, can't operate a business with customers without certain permitting, have to maintain a certain level of cleanliness... I could come up with dozens of things you have to do for the sake of your neighbors.
No investor is owed a profit (unless contractually stipulated).