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Comment by causi | Hacker News Reader

There's something very gross about owning a home you don't live it.

In the past, owning a 'second' or 'holiday' home was an expensive proposition - it actually cost you money. For some time now - because of rapid capital gains and the short term rental market - it makes you money. Many more people are willing and able to do it.

Actually, this seems to be largely an American problem. In Europe, Canada, and Mexico (at least just these areas I'm familiar with), it was common to have a cottage or small home in a faraway part of the "countryside" as a mini-vacation home. Definitely wasn't accessible to everyone, but was FAR from the level of wealth needed in America to operate a "second-home"

The same applies to New Zealand. Lots of families would own a 'bach' in some remote area near a lake, river, or on the coast. These were typically very basic - what you might call a cabin in North America.

Nowadays though, it's common to own that second dwelling in a city or other built up area.

Just last week I was talking with a family member (mid-60s, about to retire). They are planning on buying a small apartment in the city their son and grandchildren live in. They are not selling their existing house in another city to do this. They plan to use it only while visiting and have explicitly stated that they see it as an investment. They are by no means 'rich'. 30 years ago this would have been unheard of for people in their position.

OK, I’ll bite: why should you care about what other people own?

I think most people would be a bit put out if a significant portion of the radio spectrum was owned by people that were not utilising it (or only using it to send their Christmas messages).

But in this case most housing is being utilized, either owner-occupied or rented.

If a house in a popular area sits dormant, that's one less unit available to house the general public.

Reductio ad absurdum... if rich Chinese businesspeople buy every home in Vancouver (strictly to park money, not live or rent), nobody who works in Vancouver can live there and everybody has to commute from the suburbs.

Edit - at an indivual level, you're right, who cares. At a policy level, ensuring reasonable housing for the general public is a good thing.

If people want to buy houses and not live in them, more power to them as long as they pay their property taxes. Housing is not a finite resource, more can simply be built as long as there is demand for it. At a policy level, we sure are spending a lot of time worrying about the fraction of a percent of houses that are not being rented and not nearly enough time worrying about why not enough new housing is being built to meet demand.

Land is a finite resource that nobody created. Would you be offended if someone claimed to own a cubic kilometer of the sky and declared nobody else could use it without paying him?

Land is a finite resource, but buildings can be built up vertically. Unless your town looks like manhattan, land is not scarce for new housing.

Just for the record, building vertically is also a finite solution, just as building sprawl is horizontally constrained, so to is vertical ( and subterranian ) expansion.

Manhattan only exists due to Manhattan schist, exceptional bedrock due to old volcanic flow.

Many locations have poor subsoil for tall buildings, even with the best foundations there are other limits to building height.

There's a lot of potential space, sure, but not infinite space - it's finite on planet and bottlenecked by transport and terraforming off planet.

I get what you are saying, but lots of people can only rent - or only want to rent - so somebody needs to own those houses.

I do agree, there is really something weird about owning 'extra' houses that you may only use a few weeks a year.

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