Is the HELOC free? Are the reverse mortgages free? Aren’t they just swapping downgrading your living conditions with making less money than you could have? I think you’re just presenting another alternative to capitalize some of your primary home, not really disproving the general point.
Oh yes units like this should be non-market or heavily insulated from the market / regulated, etc. Basically all the things you said.
As for the quality of units, when I say cheap I don’t mean shitty to live in. For example the current luxury condo units being built are expensive to build but shitty to live in. Money is spent on using flashy materials, trims, ceiling to floor windows that are difficult to insulate and last less. Not on larger units that are comfortable to live in. You get a luxury shoebox. If you look at some buildings from the last century, you can see much simpler construction cheaper materials but 1400 sq ft units that you can raise a family in. I live in one built in the 70s and it’s in perfect shape today. Many families with children live here. That’s what I mean by cheap and durable construction. I guess I should have added the family-sized qualifier. 😄
That’s yet another level of indoctrination, no less irrational than the one I highlighted. 👌
The home you live in is not an investment if you aren’t willing to downgrade. If you live forever in your home, you can’t spend the money you’d get if you sold it because you won’t sell it till you die. If you decide to sell it, and decide you won’t downgrade, that you want an equivalent home, that home will cost approximately the same as what you sold yours for as it would have appreciated in value just like yours. In fact you’d lose the transaction fees. If you wanted to make money you have to buy a cheaper home. That typically means some form of downgrade. Size, type, location, etc. Yet many people don’t understand this and believe that the home they own is an investment and that it going up in price is good for them. All the while their taxes go up with its price along with everything else they buy because everyone else also has to pay higher housing costs. It’s irrational to believe this because it’s simply not true. Therefore I say people believe this due to indoctrination. The process of learnint to believe something without critical examination of its validity. I’m just using the term because I think it fits the bill.
The home you live in is only an investment if you’re willing to downgrade and you can only collect the upside on the difference in price between what you sell and what you move into. Secondary units are an investment proper. The scenario with classic games is like a secondary property because you don’t need to buy an equivalent in price cartridge when you sell one you have.
That release valve you speak of is unsustainable due to infrastructure and transportation costs. It only works up to some level of sprawl.
housing market basically entirely in control of investors who’ll keep it inflated to profit themselves
Correct, which is why it has to be public investment. We need massive multi unit buildouts funded by new public spending. All of it durable, cheap affordable housing. This will not only act on prices via increasing supply, it will also act by bidding prices down because the prices will not be maximizing profits. Whoever wants a place to live, should be able to afford one of thes units. Let the market sort out prices and availability of more premium options.
Meanwhile Drax: 🔥🪵🚬
That’s a relatively small problem (in terms of how many housed people are acutely impacted or even aware) in large sprawled cysts like the GTA. The unhoused population is visible in small localized spots. The vast remainder wouldn’t even hear about it if they didn’t read the news or don’t have to go to those spots. The very large city of Mississauga for example hasn’t heard or seen a peep about unhoused people. It’s only stories by the few that work specifically downtown. The backyards are as clean as ever and the birds are singing. I wish everyone was acutely aware.
I think the thinking is that first time homebuyers aren’t the whole market and perhaps are a minority. They might still be enough to bid the median prices up. If we’re in a market that has completely inelastic demand and people will pay any price they can afford, while supply is constrained, then it’s not really a functioning market for the purposes of regulating supply and demand. If that’s the case, we should stop treating it as a functioning market and intervene heavily. Unless it benefits enough people the way it is. 😌
Well yeah, prices quickly took up the slack given by the lowered interest rates and costs during the pandemic. People bid as high as they could, as they typically do. Increasing the interest rates was slower and it takes longer to trickle through the market. Prices did decrease from the peak but it seems that people are holding for dear life and were able to absorb the increased costs at renewal. That peak will have to renew in 2027 but it’s likely to happen at significantly lower interest rates than today. Perhaps if the rates stayed at their highest levels for longer, unsustainable purchases would have been forced to sell. But now rates are already going down and expected to go further down. So everyone who could afford the higher cost is no longer afraid it’s gonna go higher and are less likely to sell. So prices ain’t going down. Then on the other side, buyers are paying more for everything else so rate cuts won’t leave enough money for them to bid as high as they used to at the same interest rates. Unless their incomes catch up. Which has been happening in some sectors and at union shops. Still that’s likely to take longer so without some major affordable housing buildouts I bet the market is gonna keep going sideways for a while. Not going down significantly, not going up by much either.
A majority of their constituents are homeowners and homeowners have been indoctrinated to believe that owning the property you live in is an investment. Which is partially true only under the condition that you downgrade when you sell. So those MPs are effectively voting in the interest of the majority of their constituents. I think this is a much better explanation to the durability of this behavior.
This is what it was when they introduced it. I used to work for an Android OEM at the time and the product people really wanted to get their hands on curved screens for the same reason. Eventually they got Samsung to sell them some but it wasn’t as curved as the ones Samsung used on their devices to keep differentiation. It still cost twice what flat screens which ate a significant chunk of the profit margin.
There have been plenty of fads over the lifespan of the smartphone market. E.g. curved edge screens. I think curved screens are another and Apple is right to ignore it. There’s too many compromises required for a foldable and not much benefit to be worth it.
Pixel 8 Pro here. It just did a bulk charge session at peak 5A, average 4.5A. That’s nearly 1C. I didn’t record the temp but just like yours it was noticeably hot. I only fast charge when I’m in a bind.
Unfortunately the battery temp limits are often too high and let the heat at go really high which shortens the lifespan of the battery. If I let my Pixel fast charge as it pleases, I’d have drastically reduced battery capacity today. Instead I use USB-A to USB-C cables and older chargers to limit the charging current and therefore heat.
A Linux executable can’t be named ending on .lnk? 🤔🤔
Hanlon’s razor in shambles
Which is why the guy tha lost might have been a better option.
Speed reading error. Thanks!
That’s not what capitalism is. Competition is one component that’s observed in capitalist systems and it isn’t strictly required, nor necessarily the natural course of capitalism. There are well established examples in capitalist economies where competition cannot exist naturally. Then you have the history of capitalist economies rife with consolidation, only sometimes impeded by intervention. I’d invite you to consider what happens to the losers in a best case scenario competitive market. What happens with their machinery, workers, brands, market share, etc. once they’re our of business. I’ll say it since I want to draw a conclusion - they typically get absorbed by the successful competitors. Repeat this cycle enough and you get the consolidation we see all around us. What we live in isn’t not capitalism. It’s just a …late… stage of it. The perfect competition model doesn’t prove that it’s a natural or a likely model of economies, there’s no good evidence that competitive equilibria are likely or stable. If reality is any guide, it’s the opposite.