Slartibartfast wrote:RedImperator wrote:And how, exactly, does one get this bonanza of apartments for sale? The landlords, I gather, don't own the buildings for the fun of listening to tenants bitch.
In a privately-owned apartment building, there's no "landlord", what you have is an association of neighbors that each own a share of the building.
This is the first of several points that sailed over your head. I'm aware of the concept of co-op apartments. The problem is, if the majority of the rent stock is already in the hands of landlords (many of them large companies whose entire business is renting apartments),
where are the privately owned apartments going to come from? You have to build all new apartments or buy out current landlords. Both are possible to a limited extent, but it would take decades to convert all the rental stock in the United States to co-op apartments. Your "so change it" suggestion completely ignores this fact. But hey, you've built apartments wherever the hell you live, so that qualifies you to comment on the American real-estate market.
Yes, that's why it's impossible to sell a Manhattan brownstone, or a rowhouse on Beacon Hill, or a condominium in downtown Philadelphia. Oh wait...
Dense neighborhoods in the United States are either blighted or priced out of the middle class market.
If there was a demand for apartments, the price of apartments wouldn't be prohibitive.
What in the fuck are you talking about? A Manhattan brownstone, a Beacon Hill (Boston) rowhome, and a downtown Philadelphia condominium sell for over million dollars each and are virtually impossible to buy because demand is so high. The first two are single-family homes in urban neighborhoods, that share side walls with neighboring houses. Your "Americans all want to live in a wood house in the suburbs with a yard" argument totally collapses in the face of the fact that the highest housing prices are actually in the cities.
Ironically, the lowest property values are ALSO in the cities, in the virtually the same style buildings that go for seven digit numbers in other neighborhoods. This is the result of 50 years of horrendous urban planning, Federal housing policy, lending practices, the War on Drugs, and corrupt, incompetent municipal governance. This is another fact you ignore--housing stock in the cities is either prohibitively expensive or in a lousy neighborhood. This trend is just now starting to reverse, and will take decades to correct, if it ever fully does.
That leaves the suburbs, and the developers have been selling exactly one product out there for 50 years--freestanding wood frame houses with a lawn. And they've been building them bigger and bigger because that's they can't increase the number sold anymore.
If buyers weren't buying, sellers wouldn't be selling. There's this thing called "market analysis" and it has nothing to do with magic powder. In fact it's related to a prediction if people are actually going to buy your shit.
You God damn idiot, if all they've been building for 50 years are freestanding wood frame houses, in cul-de-sac residential neighborhoods with no transit access and outside walking distance from commercial and industrial areas, what else will people buy? The housing industry has engineered a "market" where there's only one product.
And when they DO build houses in dense, walkable neighborhoods with transit access? They get bought so fast the middle class is priced right out of the market. So much--again--for your analysis of the motives and desires of American home buyers.
Unless and until you get some elementary knowledge of the history and economics of the American housing market, how about you stop trying to psychoanalyze the people who live here? You'll save yourself the embarassment.
translation: you don't know shit about America so shaddap!
You plainly DON'T know shit, at least not about how American housing works. As for shutting up, I merely offered a suggestion. If you'd like to continue to parade your ignorance about for all to see, far be it from me to stop you.
Cities are cities, buildings are buildings, money is money. I happen to have been directly involved in the construction, sale, and a lot of the paperwork of several apartments, and in the ownership of at least one. I know how we all are supposed to pay for the water, services, property taxes, etc.
"I know about Western European apartments! Therefore, I know all possible relevant facts about housing anywhere in the world!" I don't give a fuck if you're Donald Trump himself; you plainly know precisely shit about housing in America, and even less about the psychology of American home buyers.
But alright then, apparently only if I live in the US, I can talk about how fucked up it is
You can talk all you want about how fucked up the situation here is. What you CAN'T do is shoot off your mouth, start an argument with people who know more about the issue than you, appeal to your own authority as an apartment owner on another continent, and expect to not get called on it.
