3w ago

Scalper economy

103 comments

Housing is a basic human need, it shouldn’t be allowed to be only an investment. With the other items, you can just say “so don’t buy it”, which is not possible with housing, you have to pay for it, even of you wouldn’t like to.
- fumo is a basic human need
- Honestly, I get what you mean, but it also provides funding for new housing projects to be built first, and if you weren't allowed to invent in it it would also not really be possible to rent a house, since that relies on someone paying for the house first.
  
  Housing construction isn't funded by existing housing investment. It's generally funded by debt. Private or public, just like any other capital intensive endeavor. And debt isn't created by lending people's savings but by creating new money. By public or private lenders. (Private lenders create money too.) The only thing that is really needed ahead of time is labor, equipment and materials available. Financial capital is created on demand to mobilize those real resources.

The worst thing about this is that housing is essential, while all the other things aren't. Scalpers only take advantage of other people's shopping addiction, while these so-called "investors" take advantage of other people's basic needs.
- That's why they are held in higer regard
- 👏👏👏
- I'll add to that: The PlayStation etc scalpers at least give you a still-new product at the inflated price. The landlords rent it out for additional income and THEN sell it at a profit.
  So it's more like buying a PS5 for $500, having somebody rent to play it for $100/mo, then selling it for $800 after a year
  
  This isn't even true were I live. Investors will buy new appartments and leave them empty and sell them a few years later. Renting them would decrease the value more than the income is. It's worse than you thought.
- basic needs make good investments unless the government supplies a viable alternative.
  
  psychopath behavior

They're all pieces of shit and deserve to be kicked out an airlock into deep space.
- Nah, it's not worth the price of sending them up there. Just compost them.
- especially the "investors"

"Private Collector"
- The commonality here is how expensive the things are. Scalping is another one of those things that's trashy if you're poor and classy if you're rich.

Scalper no Scalping!

There should be a hard limit of houses you can buy. Two by default (the one you live in and one you can rent to someone, maybe with a requirement that you need to live there occasionally) and an additional one for each child if he or she doesn't have one yet.
- The problem is most houses are being bought by huge companies, not people.
  
  We should really start by limiting that. If we start treating housing as a basic right, which we should, there's zero reason a company should be allowed to own housing to profit off of. It's a far bigger problem than my landlady who owns five flats. We can talk about limits for people like her later.
  
  They are using advanced algorithms to find the best prices for in demand properties based on profit percentages. Its become so ridiculous corpos are buying houses before individuals can even bid or have access. They buy them in lots at a time. Even using the same algos to place offers on existing properties where people live. Its ludicrous.
- In Cuba they have a law that requires you to sell your house if you buy a new one. That also means you can't be a landlord or else you yourself would be homeless. They also have a law that guarantees that if you don't own your own home, you at least get public housing guaranteed, which has rent capped at 10% of income so it can never exceed that. They have the lowest homelessness rate in all of the Americas.
  
  And they're guaranteeing this super affordable public housing all while under a comprehensive trade embargo for 60+ years imposed by the most powerful nation there is, who also happens to be their neighbor.
  Never believe that housing "needs" to be expensive, it's 100% a decision made by people who profit from it.
- First 5 investment properties should carry a 1% property income tax that is directly funneled into a housing development program, then a 5% property income tax on the next 5, 10% on the next 10...
  Realestate is the safest and highest yield investment working people can make to build generational wealth. Dont cut the throat of the guy who can afford a brand new Audi to spite the guy who has to decide between wether his driver fetches the Rolls or the Bentley.
  People should be able to aspire to being rich, just not filthy rich.
  
  The problem is the taking beyond their need, not if it's many doing a little bit each or a few doing a lot each.
  A swarm of locusts still leaves you with nothing to eat, even if each one only takes a bit (and unlike people buying a handful of houses to profit from merely owning them, the locusts only eat what they need).
- Too soft. You should not be able to own a house in which you're not gonna live at least 6 months and 1 day per year. Period.
- People shouldn’t be able to buy summer homes and weekend retreats? Fuck that.

It always impresses me how much people worship landlords, even Canada up there is having a housing crisis but nobody dares question the sanctity of landlords. You can watch both the major parties arguing for hours and nobody ever brings up landlordism once. A lot of them choose to instead become hostile to immigrants, both parties moving further right on immigration because stopping immigration or potentially even kicking out immigrants to them is more acceptable than questioning the sanctity of landlords. You also saw a similar thing here in the USA, I remember after the Trump/Kamala debate when they revealed the plans for bringing housing prices down and Trump was "mass deportation" and Kamala was "a tax credit." Not sure about every country definitely here in US and Canada, people here treat landlords like unquestionable deities, the idea that their right to rule should even be called into question is not even something that passes through most people's heads.
- One thing that started here in New Zealand was reporting on and ranking their portfolio sizes (lots had it tied up in an estate or trust, but that connection was able to be reported on - even if it might be 'co-owned by the family').
  We still have huge problems in this area but the noble few that don't 'stand out like a dogs bollocks' and all the others just looked like the same bunch of psycho/sellouts

At least in the case of fumos these days they're made-to-order. Buying 10 of them isn't snatching 10 of them from the carts of other potential buyers, it just means 10 more fumos will be made. If anything it's strictly increasing the supply and making them more accessible to people who couldn't make the preorder window.
This was absolutely not the case a few years ago, though. And just because you're technically not scalping doesn't mean you can't still wildly overcharge.

Seeing alot of touhou in the fediverse lately.
- Touhou will take over the world!
  
  Yes, Zun will force people to play touhou on lunatic mode /j

This is how I learn there's a lego death star now?
- you haven't seen spider man?

I think most of you are underestimating the cost of housing maintenance. We had some bad luck and a couple of structurally necessary renos were bigger than initially thought, or didn't address the issue as well as we hoped, requiring new renos. In the last 20 years we've paid the cost of our townhouse apartment once over, easy. And now the bathroom, kitchen, and flooring could use an upgrade (25-50 years old), which is again expensive. In that time its value has risen maybe 50%, not quite keeping pace with local inflation.
Not complaining, we bought it for living in and it's been great for that, and now that everything is at the end of its lifespan is a good time to really make it ours. But house prices aren't rising insanely everywhere, house upkeep isn't free (there are always "modifications"), and at least here the average ROI for being a landlord is abt 4-6%, same as stocks lately, and that's assuming no major surprises.
- If you only own one house, it sucks to have luck like that. But, it’s like the dips in stock prices - overall, the value of the whole market goes up over time. Those treating homes as investments tend to buy in the demand areas, where a few lofty renovations don’t dent their bottom line.
  
  If you get an investment house you plan to keep for 20+ years, those in-demand areas change (here's hoping the next areas to lose their lustre will be the car-dependent suburbia).
- Not sure I see the relevance. Yes, housing maintenance costs money, what's the relevance? Who says housing upkeep is free? What's the relevance to anything at all?
  
  "Sold it for a much higher price without ever using or modifying it." Proper upkeep over several years counts as "modifying it" in this context IMHO.

All that shit's gone to garbage except for houses, don't ask me how I know. <_<

It's only investing because there's practically no risk.

Not the Fumo

you can't have cheap housing, because it would crash the lending economy. There must always be a motivating factor for you to work for monopoly money that is losing value. That is debt.

Just as with all of those items, the "solution" is to decrease regulation and increase supply in the market.
- This is literally what caused the UK to fall back into a housing crisis that they had mostly solved with heavy regulation.

lol 😂

Arbitrage is a practice as old as the world. I don't see where is the problem in that
- People with lots of money shouldn't be allowed to make other people suffer.
  If I punched you in the face, I'd be in trouble. But if I drive up housing process so you become homeless, well that's your fault.
  
  What the hell does that have to do with luxury goods? The house is the only thing you Might not consider a luxury good because you need housing but, owning your own property and not sharing walls with a neighbor is in fact, a luxury.
- Lots of practices are as old as the world. Doesn't make them right

103 comments