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I think the difference with the first 5 is that a manufacturer sets the price, scalpers purchase it by that price and sells it at a much higher one.
The house price just fluctuates continuously and when the “investor” or “scalper” purchases it, it was available at that price for everyone (or did he purchase it from another scalper?)
Yes, the problem is the high prices of houses, but to reduce it we need to either increase supply (encourage building more, perhaps changing zoning laws to allow more homes etc) or reduce demand (increase interest rates (that though make it harder for regular people), restricting corporations from purchases, banning Airbnb (yes, they drive prices up, and if you use them, you are contributing to it), penalizing if unit is not occupied (though enforcement of this will be hard), or banning foreign investors.
Land. Value. Tax.
Value.
Tax.
It’s wild that you don’t see how exploitable such a tax would be. Specifically, it would make gentrification occur more easily and quickly.
If a developer became interested in rebuilding a poor neighborhood, their interest alone would dramatically raise the land value of the area. The now untenable tax burden would force the current residents to move out, and because the developer would be the only one interested in buying, the developer has nearly complete control over the sale price.
Developer is not controlling the price, they’re the highest bidder. It seems like a positive anyway - existing owners can sell at a high rate, government can get more tax, more tax can fund more support for the poor
The current owner can no longer afford the taxes and is forced to sell whether or not they want to. The developer can position themselves as the “highest bidder” by an extremely small margin over the property’s historical value, denying the current owner the windfall from the recent spike in land value. Despite the increased land value, no one else will be interested in purchasing the property at this valuation until the developer’s project is complete, as the project itself is the cause for the spike.
This is effectively eminent domain for private developers. If you’re a homeowner and you’ve been paying your property taxes just fine for the past decade on a $40,000/year salary, you shouldn’t suddenly become unable to afford to live there because someone said you live in a “hot area” or whatever.
Pardon, I don’t get this - “The developer can position themselves as the “highest bidder” by an extremely small margin over the property’s historical value, denying the current owner the windfall from the recent removede in land value.” - Wouldn’t ask/bid and transaction value determine the land value? Why does the land value tax increase a lot if the best offered purchase value will be only slightly higher than historical?
I think that’s what they are saying is exploitable. It comes down to who sets the value? Is it all just speculation. Speculation isn’t a price tag.
I don’t enjoy the whole foreign investor solution, I think it’s a scape goat.
It matters little to me if the person fucking me was born in China or 10 miles from me. Being born in this country doesn’t mean you can screw over the rest of the population.
I’d rather see hard limits on how much property one can own. There is no reason for anyone other than the state to own those huge apartment complexes. Dismantle the land barons class, no one should own enough to house thousands.
I think a less heavy-handed way of doing that is, every person can have 1 (one) permanent residence, and all other property you own incurs a much higher property tax. If you’re filthy rich and want a couple of houses, fine, but you’re gonna get taxed for it. But that will stop speculative house buying, more or less. Of course, this will never happen because states race to the bottom to offer low taxes to attract rich people. Another issue is, what if someone wants to live in a house but can’t afford to own it? Renting is the best option for a lot of people. I think that is solvable, but my idea would inevitably take a lot of property off the rental market.
I don’t think it is a scape goat. For example, many people from China are not trusting Chinese Yen, they often purchase property purely to hold value and won’t even rent it to others, because it would cause wear and tear. So it is basically a wasted unoccupied unit.
As for your suggestions I totally agree.
The house price just fluctuates continuously and when the “investor” or “scalper” purchases it, it was available at that price for everyone.
That doesn’t mean everyone (or people who needed it) have the ability to purchase it. The down-payment is simply too high that most people who want a house cannot afford it.
This is the same as scalping other goods, they have a unfair advantage in the market, and then they can make back all their money via rent and selling the house. They have nearly no way to lose in this game.
The unfair advantage is what making people angry; they are not making money by labor, insight, or even luck. The only reason these people are becoming richer is because they started rich.
I absolutely agree with your solution BTW, just arguing that people scalping houses are very much brain-dead scalpers. Many of them probably don’t even care about the basic human right to shelter.
restricting corporations from purchases, banning Airbnb (yes, they drive prices up, and if you use them, you are contributing to it), penalizing if unit is not occupied (though enforcement of this will be hard), or banning foreign investors.
Agreed, we should be doing all of those things. Corporations should not be able to own any kind of housing at all, and multi unit buildings should be under non-profit co-ops.
And to penalize unoccupied housing, we should have a georgist taxation system.
The only time it makes sense for me for a corporation to own a residence is if they have a need to put up their own employees in that area regularly, or if I needed a manager living on site (like some storage facilities have). Corporations should not make their money renting or buying/selling single family homes.
I don’t think there are enough such edge cases for it to make sense for it to be legal.
If a corp needs an employee to be that close, then they should hire local, and/or rotate staff.
At a bare minimum, I agree, no corp should profit off of housing.
I’m not sure I’d agree that corporate ownership is necessarily bad If you want to rent an apartment because you don’t want to buy into a co-op then how do you go about this? Someone needs to own the apartment to rent to you Personally I don’t mind if that initial investment comes from a person or a corporation
The house price just fluctuates continuously and when the “investor” or “scalper” purchases it, it was available at that price for everyone
The goods from manufacturers are available at that price for everyone too, right?
And then as another commenter said, sometimes down payments on housing are outside the budgets of certain groups in society - a point I suppose you can also make for the manufactured goods too.
I think the difference with the first 5 is that a manufacturer sets the price, scalpers purchase it by that price and sells it at a much higher one.
I don’t see the difference here with housing. If a real estate owner buys a property then sells that property for higher than they purchased it, the market will either respond by buying or not. The same is true for manufactured goods: if the price set at MSRP doesn’t not elicit a response from the market, then the manufacturer may lower their prices until a response is drawn - or hold out until the rest of the economy shifts (a gamble on the part of the manufacturer).
I don’t think your reasons substantiate your claims.
I feel like North America could fix its housing issue by simply abolishing the single family housing zones
they could fix the housing crisis by regulating the market.
Zoning laws in the US are particularly fucked. This video breaks it down quite nicely, I find.
Here is the thing North Americans love single family homes.
How would you know, North America is literally missing the opportunity to have new development of things other than single family houses or apartment big buildings, bet you there would be a lot of demand for midrises, row houses, mixed neighborhoods in general
Row houses maybe, but there’s an adversity to condo fees which usually come along with every other source of housing. A lot of people want to feel like they own their home outright, so that once their mortgage is done being paid off, all they need to worry about is the hydro, water, and property taxes. There’s a lot of stories about condo groups doubling condo fees that put others off those types of places.
I feel like every single family home has HOA dues, these days, so that comparison is kinda moot. Whether it’s condo fees, HOA dues, or the local cartel extorting you for protection, you’re gonna get nickel and dimed.
Both are true, she point is those with the single family homes now wont get out of them
I’m actually a huge fan of scalping and hope it happens more. Here’s why: many of your more dim-witted, more or less middle-class “free market” bros will gladly tell you that the value of a good is set by supply and demand. Hospital care is so expensive because there are comparatively few doctors, MRI machines, etc. in comparison with the entire population. Houses are so expensive because everyone wants a house and it’s an appreciable asset. I’ve seen these people my entire life. They’ll decry socialism and make the age old joke that “socialism is when no potato.” But the second a PS5 gets a street price of 700 bucks, suddenly they become walking “Homer Simpson fading into the hedge and coming back out wearing a different outfit” memes. They’ll say things like “scalping should be illegal” or “the government should step in to make sure that the actual consumers who want one can get one - nobody should be allowed to buy 500 of them and just sit on them forever.” Suddenly, market economics produces a state of inequality that doesn’t directly benefit them, and the guiding hand of the government should be used to ensure equitable distribution of resources. Not that they’d ever reflect on this in any way or consider how their personal experiences indicates a larger set of structural problems with the economic systems that produce such a state of affairs.
It’s free market exploitation. If you believe a free market can exist without regulations, you’re imbecile.
Just imagine: People need fridges. All fridge manufacturers agree to raise prices of a fridge by 2000%. So what, people are going to stop buying fridges? No - because they need them.
You would say: it’s a free market, some new manufacturer is going to offer fridges at regular prices. Well - no you dumb fuck. What’s the incentive for the new fridge manufacturer to sell at lower prices, when people are going to buy fridges anyway, because they need them? The answer is - none. It would be a dumb business decision, because your supply is limited, and you’re going to sell it at market price, because that item is essential.
So how does the economy even work if that’s possible? That’s right idiot - because it’s price fixing and it’s fucking illegal.
The incentive here would be that a new company could sell far more fridges when reasonably prices compared to their competitors and take all of their market share
But yes of course govt regulation is required when there is actual price fixing going on. I’d also like to know the alternative way of pricing goods/services from people with the alternate view
Your goal as a company is not to sell as many, but to make the greatest profit. So let’s say that the new market price is $3 000.
You’re the new company. Your supply is 20 000.
Do you
a) Sell fridges @ $2 950/each, undercutting competition while selling whole supply, because of demand being higher than your supply, making $59 000 000?
or
b) Sell fridges at a reasonable price of $400, selling the same amount, because your supply is limited anyway, making $8 000 000?
The company still has no incentive to go B route. They only need to undercut the competition, not make prices reasonable.
Free market self regulates, provided nothing artificially screws with supply and demand and there are competitors. Both scalping and price fixing screws with it. It is literally the cancer of free market, and people screwing with it call themselves “investors”, while actually destroying the economy.
It is the government’s responsibility to prevent those situations before they happen, otherwise these changes may be irreversible.
Btw. A situation like this was happening recently in the GPU market. Nvidia had a crazy high demand for their GPUs because companies invested in AI were going to buy these cards no matter the price. So they bumped the prices like crazy, and they were instantly sold out.
Meanwhile Nvidia’s competitor - AMD - didn’t have nearly as strong GPUs for Ai as Nvidia. Do you think AMD’s prices stayed the same? Nope. They bumped it just like Nvidia, barely undercutting them, because there was still demand, in fact growing demand, for GPUs for gaming, while AMD’s supply was obviously limited.
2 years later, lower demand, GPUs actually in stock, but prices are still fucked (though not as much) because people got used to it.
I don’t think you ever took even economics 101 in school because for almost all products there exists a price where you can actually increase your profits by decreasing the price because the larger sales volume offsets the revenue lost. Applies to your fridge example as well. You just assumed the same sales in both scenarios which is not even close to being realistic. And your Nvidia/AMD example ignores the high inflation seen during that period.
They are making the assumption that demand is constant because the product is a necessity (such as with something like insulin). Profit at higher volume and lower prices only happens with products with elastic demand.
man that’s a lot of words to say that a theoretical person is a hypocrite
I’d rather have retailers and manufacturers agree on a way to start prices high, then bring the price down towards the target MSRP every time the item is back in stock. That prevents scalping, let’s consumers decide exactly how much “get it early” tax they’re willing to pay, and gives the money to the people that did 99% of the work.
The simple reality is that if there are more people interested in a good at the current price than there are goods available, you must select a way to figure out who gets those scarce items. Raising prices and lotteries where you verify everyone participating is a distinct human are probably the most fair options.
I don’t know why this is controversial. It’s just a fact at this point.
It’s not scalping if you bought them on the secondary market, it’s hoarding.
We’ll you see if you’re making people pay extra for their human rights that’s called investing. Not puny recreational items.
This is a joke. But it is a pattern I noticed in this sample.
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You don’t think people are actually going to read this with all those ridiculous emojis, do you?
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I read it all. Why do the emojis offend you so much? They’re just tiny pictures.
I mean this sincerely and not as a hollow insult: you’re too cynical. Give the internet a rest for a while and get some endorphins flowing. You’d like it…and we’d appreciate it.
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I flip items all the time, but they are items that very few people want, so I’m providing a service to the few people who need the things that I sell. If anybody needs any vintage vacuum tubes, I have several hundred. I have a Pentium III laptop. Good luck finding these things out in the wild if you’re looking for them.
I think they are specifically talking about housing as that is a basic need.
People don’t understand the difference between reselling and scalping.
What’s the point of the laptop?
They aren’t manufactured, you have to buy them from people second hand.
Just an inherent consequence of capitalism. If people are willing to pay much more than the price that was set by the manufacturer, it’s their loss and a business opportunity for third parties.
Yep, so we should abolish Capitalism.
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So you will own nothing and be happy?
Who will produce things without incentive as monetary gain through which they can acquire things? Noone
That’s Capitalism, buddy. I’m advocating for Worker Ownership of their own labor, and collective ownership of the Means of Production. Personal Property is fine, but the end goal of Capitalism is everyone renting everything from a few Capitalists.
They tried it and people just sold their shares immediately to some guy buying them all and bought vodka and cigs
All I want nowadays is just equal opportunities to everyone to amass capital which probably would abolish inheritance first and then regulate market to protect from monopolies.
It’s a race and war but at least make the rules fair. Then those who win they win and lose they lose but it was a fair fight
Just make workers share ownership and unable to have unequal shares. Ez.
There are systems with private property and property rights, this anything other than capitalism = the most extreme version of communism shit is getting real old and people should be shamed for persisting it’s hyper-bullshittery.
I blame reddit for nurturing extreme thinking
They’re all investments. Most of these products are specifically setup by artificial over demand and under production to be profitable, basically exploiting the fact that there are 8 BILLION humans and a small group have most of the money.
Shit like this wouldn’t work in a stable global economic system that wasn’t headed for collapse on a bullet train
They intentionally produce too few and demand goes up due to fomo.
Cirno doll > house
A scalper too. 🤌
So either all are wrong or all are right. Which is it? Cuz I know people who complain about house flippers, but are totally willing to scalp products like these.
Scalping is wrong, and scalping houses is worse.
No, all is just as bad. Scalpers are preventing people from getting things that they want unless they pay a premium. They’re not contributing anything to society at all.
The difference is want vs need. You can live without a ps5, not so much without housing.
Yes, but luxuries are not as bad as necessities.
Scalpers trying to justify scalping. Nope. Please find something better to do with your time.
I don’t think this is a pro-scalper meme, more like an anti real estate “investor” mene
I’m not so sure. It’s just one home that’s been posted. Then again, the nuance of predatory property ‘investing’ isn’t easy to represent in one picture.
In any case, I don’t get the feeling that the meme is saying that they’re as bad as each other, it’s making excuses for scalper exploiting consumers.
No it’s definitely that housing is being treated like scalping when it’s a basic need and the others are not.
That makes it even worse, if it’s comparing buying a house to ripping consumers off.
Hardly the same comparison. People buy houses when there isn’t demand and sell when there is.
Touched a nerve here and gotta say I find it funny.
My opinions nobody asked for:
I really don’t care if people want to scalp non-essential goods tbh. It sucks but my life intersects with those items so seldom that it doesn’t impact me. I make a slight exception for things like electronics (i.e. GPUs a few years ago) because some peoples’ livelihoods are directly tied to being able to access those goods.
If you try to flip houses for profit, you’re neither a scalper nor an investor. You’re a sociopath at best and a murderer at worst
I have to disagree with the first part, the principal applies unilaterally. Second part, you’re bang on.
Appreciate the disagreement. Honestly, I just don’t care. I’ve basically sculpted my entire life to avoid high-demand, low-supply luxury goods. It just doesn’t impact me whatsoever whether or not two consenting adults want to buy/sell an action figure for 10x over MSRP.
Yeah I get what you’re saying. Here’s the thing though, scalping only exists in scenarios where there is a large difference between MSRP and true market value. That doesn’t usually happen, and when it does, it’s usually for a good reason. Like take concert tickets- most artists don’t WANT to sell to the highest bidder, they want all (or at least more) of their fans to have a chance. So, assuming there’s a reason for the price gap beyond the manufacturer being dumb, I think it’s a scummy thing to do.
I get what you’re saying and I don’t disagree with it, but it also doesn’t contradict my thoughts on the matter. I just do not care, like, at all. I have no strong opinions whatsoever on concert tickets being sold for 20x their retail price because I don’t go to those kinds of concerts and I don’t interact with the type of people who do. Its not a problem for me or anyone I care about, so i just dont care about it one way or the other. Sort of like how I have no strong opinion on bridge building regulation in Ecuador. At the end of the day, I believe in the agency of most consenting adults to manage their lives and decide between/for themselves what they want or don’t want when it comes to non-essential luxury goods.
Perhaps we have a different definition of “flip” but the one familiar with is taking a home in bad shape then fixing it (usually yourself, because hiring a contractor would cost more than the profit). I don’t flip myself, but I don’t see this as a negative. Someone put effort to improve the house and gets profit from it (yes, there’s an issue that they might use the cheapest materials, because they won’t live there and just want to make it look good, but that’s a different issue).
The biggest issue in driving prices up is low supply and high demand.
We should change zoning laws to allow building more houses and also place restrictions on houses purchased by corporations and international investors. Oh yeah, Airbnb is another one that drives prices up.
That was the old way - this meme is good b/c it is aware of that and discounts those situations, while the person you are replying to did not display that awareness.
I mean if you manage to make money flipping houses, go for it. But I don’t know how in the hell that’s possible in this market.
On a small scale, I agree. I don’t have much issue with individuals or local groups of people buying run down houses, repairing and modernizing them, and selling them on market for a bit of profit. But a terrible positive feedback loop has formed in the past ~10 years where everyone wants to flip houses^1 and no one wants to take a loss. It’s been terrible for lower income people who can’t even afford even the cheapest housing on the market. Therefore, it’s just easier for me to discount housing flippers indiscriminately.
- Read: painting walls grey, cabinets white, and replacing carpet with shitty grey vinyl faux wood flooring.
That’s today’s Lemmy Moment of the day.
Besides, don’t house flippers generally renovate the house, and generally make it more presentable?
See my other comment about positive-feedback loops. The House Flipping trend of the late 2000s was never sustainable.
On the matter of more presentable, I disagree strongly. Late-Stage Professional House Flippers are concerned with nothing but profit. The quality, fit, and finish of their renovations are tastelessly bad. In almost every case, I refuse to believe that House flippers do a better job cosmetically than if the home had sold to people who would be living there who would then be able to work with a contractor to fix up the house into exactly what they want.
Source: I’ve spent more hundreds of hours than I can count doing sub work for house flippers. There’s nothing defensible about what they do.
The home investor pays pretty harsh taxes for flipping a house less than a year. Unless the scalper actually puts their own money into it to improve the home, the taxes alone would make the investment bad.
Basically there is usually some sort of value add an investor does to maximize profits.
