It’s only investing because there’s practically no risk.
This is how I learn there’s a lego death star now?
you haven’t seen spider man?
lol 😂
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.
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.
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
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
Arbitrage is a practice as old as the world. I don’t see where is the problem in that
Lots of practices are as old as the world. Doesn’t make them right
Yeah y’all should stop breathing, NGL
What an intelligent and thoughtful contribution.
???
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.
Shelter is a basic right. And private landlords have been disastrous for the price of housing.
A home is 1 form of shelter. The luxury form. Much in the way a Ferrari is a form of transport vs a bike. The meme doesn’t show shelter in the context of a basic right. It’s showing a luxury good among other luxury goods.
Maybe I missed it, but I think the OP is about how home “investors” are also scalpers. So the topic is home investors.
If them buying it denied other legitimate buyers with the same purchasing power from doing so, then yes. A home is too unique a purchase to be scalped though. It’s like art in that the house is the only 1 one available exactly like it. The same exact house built on a corner or further in on the block have different values.
2 pairs of the exact same sneaker treated the same from the same production run are practically identical. Market manipulation through scalping is the only method to raise it’s price at the time of market sale.
Tickets have a limited duration they hold ANY value so their prices can be manipulated through scalping too.
Houses just shouldn’t be in the same conversation.
This take only makes sense when there’s more houses than needed she people can be picky. That’s not this world.
There are as many houses as people want but not all the the quality or location they want. Manufactured homes can be dropped on lots for a fraction of the price. People live in the central valley and commute so they can have a home for much less. The world will never have everything everyone wants the way they want it. Thats not this world.
This world also usually requires you physically reach your place of work, which is typically inside cities. Long commutes cost lots of money and waste a large chunk of your life. And hey, if those cheap houses were available in cities, people would buy them, but they’re not. You can’t blame buyers for a supply shortage.
I think you fundamentally don’t understand the issue. The issue is land, not the houses built on top of them. Land is limited, and the investors scalp the land first and foremost. There’s usually enough land to house people well, but scalpers prefer scarcity so they can profit. Also, a lot of land is used very stupidly, just look at American-style suburbs.
All that shit’s gone to garbage except for houses, don’t ask me how I know. <_<
“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.
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.
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
Unable to see the argument behavior. The government, the other commenter is saying, must provide a viable alternative in order to prevent this behavior.
That’s why they are held in higer regard
👏👏👏
Not the Fumo
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.
People shouldn’t be able to buy summer homes and weekend retreats? Fuck that.
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.
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.
Exactly. Good housing can be done.
Shortages are an issue, and desirable only by capitalism – because it drives up prices.
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).
Im advocating for pushing the wealth from the top down. Make it financially non viable to own hundreds of houses, make it seriously sub optimal to own dozens over the long term.
A lot of new development is driven by investors, to build a new house you need to live somewhere while its built, and pay for the land and pay for the build in stages as it goes. That pretty much requires you to be able to cover two mortgages at once. Most investors I’ve met are buying off the plan when its a block of dirt or an unleveled paddock and consequently getting it CHEAP. They pay say $500k for a house that will sell for $800k when its finished because average working people cant cover the difference. But the house gets built and adds more supply to the system.
If you destroy property investing as a market, you will seriously hamstring new development and make the problem worse. You need to make owning thousands over the long term nonviable but make investing and adding to the supply be the money maker.
The problem is most houses are being bought by huge companies, not people.
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.
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.
For sure. But we don’t even consider water a basic right and concede unlimited water rights to mega corporations before reserving water access to the local population. So I have no hope for that to happen with housing…
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.
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.
Don’t buy something meant to be used and insist you must make a profit for not using it. Rent it out at least.
You can indeed make money by selling it at a higher price without ever using or modifying it, and even if you do use or modify it, profits from the sale still come directly from not using or modifying it.
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.
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.
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.
fumo is a basic human need
While not as basic a necessity as housing, live music is also an extremely important thing to many people.
Just saying “don’t buy it” is kind of shitty and enables the predatory practices of the likes of Ticketmaster/Livenation…
An Important want for sure, but not a necessity in any way shape or form. You won’t die or get sick by not attending a concert or a guitar would be listed in survival guildes
Sustenance for the spirit.
Yeah. Not to mention that a lot of people’s social identity, social activities and sense of community are all tied up in going to concerts together…
I’d bet if you were a lego fan you’d say the same about legos.
Housing and concerts are orders of magnitude apart in “importantness”. All of the items above are not needed to live. A home is needed.
Define a “home”. A cave? A tent? A huge loft? What is really necessary to survive?
A place where you won’t get sick, at a minimum
That’s a good classification to have.
The apartment I lived in until June this year was my or my friends home for 20 years, but I stayed sick after the new neighbors moved in and started destroying the place. I couldn’t have food anymore because of the rodents, roaches, bedbugs and diseased water that started running down the walls and leaking through the ceiling.
I’d add a place where you won’t get attacked or threatened while sleeping, and maybe where you can store your stuff that also won’t get stolen easily
Housing and concerts are orders of magnitude apart in “importantness”. All of the items above are not needed to live. A home is needed.
Which I conceded in the very first sentence. Seems like neither you nor the people downvoting paid enough attention to catch that, though.
Blaming customers and scalpers for a problem caused mainly by Ticketmaster can be a bad thing without it being anywhere near as important as housing or anywhere near as bad as inflating the price of same. It’s not a binary.
You haven’t paid enough attention to notice that the tropic of conversation is that scalping is bad and property scalping is worse, which you seem to agree with, so I don’t know why you’re arguing with people.
People who buy Lego to sell in the future actually do call it investing by the way
It’s scalping if you have a quick turn around, it’s investing if you take care if it to sell farther into the future. Seeing a recently released limited set for double the price on ebay is scalping, seeing a 20-30 year old mint set for double the price is investing.
If it’s a limited edition and someone buying it to “invest” denies another person’s ability to purchase and enjoy it then fuck the “investor”.
If enough are available at the time that anyone who wants it can acquire it then I have no problem with someone keeping a copy in good condition to sell later.
I’m not defending it by the way
I agree that “just don’t buy it” is not that easy for culture in general, it could be applied to hypermonetized events.
I’m not sure I get your second point. How is Ticketmaster enabled by people boycotting events that get scalped?
How is Ticketmaster enabled by people boycotting events that get scalped?
They aren’t by that specifically, but they are by transferring the blame to scalpers and the victims of both scalpers and Ticketmaster…
