WelcomeBear

@WelcomeBear@lemmy.world

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WelcomeBear ,

Nope. There’s a video in the article. He’s driving in the middle lane, sees something shiny to shoot at, swerves over a couple lanes, pulls over (blocking the rightmost lane so people have to go around him), gets out of the car and pops a few cap at the sky. Definitely not any method to this madness, just the classic YOLO shenanigans I’ve come to expect from modded WRX drivers.

WelcomeBear , (edited )

Taxes, maintenance, a management company but probably most of all the interest on the insanely large loan you took out to get it. We “bought” a house with a 30 year loan and if we were to rent it out right now at market rate, there would be no profit. We would probably take a small loss other than the opportunity to hold the property hoping that the price of housing continues to rise. It hasn’t risen since we bought the house a couple of years ago. If you’re old enough to remember 2008, then you also know that it doesn’t always go up. Sometimes it goes down pretty dramatically and you’re left holding the bag.

If the house sits empty between tenants, those costs don’t go away. So for me, in my one bathroom house, that would be $2,400 a month (not including maintenance.) Where is that money gonna come from? I don’t have it because I’m paying rent somewhere else to try and make more money to dig my way out of this hole in this hypothetical situation.

So why not sell? To sell it, we have to pay 6% to real estate agents. If we actually owned the house, not just a massive soul-crushing loan, fine. But we don’t. So that 6% is a SHITLOAD of money when you borrowed all of it besides the 15% down payment that was two people’s life savings plus begging for more from relatives. So selling means half your combined life savings and the money you begged from relatives, poof gone.

Most people have a mortgage like this and amortized interest rates mean that in the beginning, 90% of the money you give the mortgage company goes straight to interest because you pay off 30 year’s worth of interest up front so that they’re sure they get their profit (and because paying the full 5% interest on a note that big every year would be impossible for most people.)

People who bought recently, have a mortgage and a single home that they rent out are not making any profit in areas with expensive housing. It’s not like houses are cheap to “buy” in the first place. They get you good.

Why buy at all then? Because I don’t like landlords telling me what I can and can’t do. So much so that I gambled it all on “buying” a place.

WelcomeBear , (edited )

“Loan interest payments are absolutely not something that should be covered by rent - you just take someone’s labor and to pay for something in order for you to eventually own it.”

Where will the money come from then? I’m not rich, I can’t afford to lose money every month renting out a place for less than it costs me. I also can’t afford to sell it.
The concept sounds great to me though, I shouldn’t have to pay any interest just for a place to live. Hell, I shouldn’t have to pay anything at all. Help me go burn down the mortgage company and tax office and then I can let people live there for free if I have to leave town for a few years. Everyone wins. Except the people with money to lend of course, so you’ll need to have cash to buy a house, which means only the rich will have houses.

“Wait, why would people buy houses with 30y loans just to rent them?”
Because you didn’t buy it to rent it, you bought it to live in, but your situation changed. You need to move for work or family and that move may be temporary. You can’t sell your house without taking a massive loss and anyway, you’ll probably just get laid off again in the city you moved to to find work. Or maybe the aging parent you left to care for finally died and you want to come home, maybe you took a 2 year gig in another country to try and make more money. Maybe you dream of coming home to retire there after you spent all your good years working somewhere shitty.
The alternative is to sell your house and buy another one in the new place which can be financially disastrous (ask me how I fucking know) or sell and rent, knowing that you might well never be able to afford another house due to interest rates rising.
I’m not selling my only home and taking a massive financial loss to help reduce housing prices by 0.00001%. Fuck that.
For the record I’ve never rented my house out because I dislike the idea of renters as much as I dislike landlords. But in retrospect, I wish I had done exactly what we’re talking about in this thread because then I could at least go home, even if the renters trashed the place, at least I’d have a place. Now I can’t go home, I’m just trapped in this new place.
Some people on Lemmy seem to be under the impression that everyone who “owns” a home is a French Duke lounging around in Ibiza eating soft cheeses and drinking fine wine with your rent money. It’s weird and I don’t understand it because if you’ve ever tried to buy a house and used the “what will my monthly payment be” calculator, then you would know that being a landlord is not profitable unless you have a lot of cash, a lot of houses and/or decades of time.

WelcomeBear ,

“I would actually like more people to be ready to go "burn things down", literally is optional, figuratively is a must.”

That’s one thing we agree on for sure! The way things are trending is not sustainable and people will only put up with so much, so things will have to change at some point.

Thanks for letting me vent haha. I hope you get your own money pit and plant some nice trees in the yard someday.

WelcomeBear ,

Great, now I’m gonna be looking even more like a crazy person when walking in the woods, as I crawl around sticking my face up to every Turkey Tail (Trametes Versicolor) that I pass looking for these. Jk, thanks for sharing!

WelcomeBear ,

To add to your excellent point (that there are more democrats in Texas than the entire population of many states), very, very few people are actually a part of this “movement.”
This isn’t a real thing that normal people actually endorse, it’s a bumper sticker you see on an old beat up truck in the wal-mart parking lot.
It’s like the Texas version of flat earthers or ghost/alien hunters or Bigfoot researchers. They do exist but they are massively over-represented in the press because it’s so stupid that people can’t help but “tune in.”

WelcomeBear ,

If people had to move states every time a relatively tiny group of idiots advocated for something stupid that’s never going to happen, there would be nowhere on earth to live.

WelcomeBear ,

What do you think is happening in Texas?!?!
You sound like my in-laws talking about Portland as if it’s constantly on fire with ANTIFA checkpoints throughout the city.
Cities in Texas (where most people live) are the same as every other city in America, overpriced housing, tech bros, craft breweries, overpriced coffee, tapas bars, suburbs filled with church-going pearl-clutchers. It’s literally the same exact shit with slightly different food and ethnic background of blue collar workers.
The rural areas are significantly more fucked up, economically (and I would argue socially) but that’s true of absolutely every blue state. Go to rural California, Oregon, Washington and you have the EXACT same people as rural Texas.
Go to LA, NYC, SF, Portland and you have literally the same people as Austin, Dallas, Houston, because a lot of people you meet are from those cities.

WelcomeBear , (edited )

Texas isn’t some dystopian hellscape like your examples, nor will it become one in our lifetime.
It’s just another example of a gerrymandered state with loud-mouthed shitheads riling their base up and clinging to power despite their declining poll numbers.
47% of Texan voters chose Biden in 2020, 52% voted Trump. Meanwhile in California it went 64% Biden, 34% Trump. Not that different. Also interesting to note, 6 million people voted for Trump in California, while only 5.9 million people voted for Trump in Texas. Seems like California has a bigger problem than Texas, maybe we should give them to Mexico or have them secede or whatever as well?

Texas has a good chance of being blue in our lifetime as cities grow in population and the demographic continues to skew… younger and less “white.”
Texas is trending blue
Source

Edit to add: let’s say for fun that your Gaza/Hmong/Rhohingya comparison is true and a liberal holocaust is coming. One stereotype about Texans that actually is true is that most of us (left and right, urban and rural) own guns and generally like guns for sport, hunting, defense, etc. Attempting a liberal holocaust in a densely populated, urban environment full of gun fanciers that don’t like authority would not go well for the invaders.

WelcomeBear ,

Deadly Galerina likes to grow on dead conifers.

Here it is on a tree

Death Cap grows on tree roots, not sure if that counts.

There aren’t a ton of mushrooms that grow on healthy living trees I think, so it’s kinda hard to find a poisonous example but maybe
Jack O’ Lanterns count. They can grow at the base of living hardwood trees. They won’t kill you but you will have a very bad time. I think there’s another closely related species that grows on both conifers and hardwoods.

WelcomeBear , (edited )

Witches’ Butter! (maybe)
I’ve never been brave enough to eat it, looks kinda… not good.
Edit : here’s a better article

WelcomeBear ,

“Just 63 people made it to the South in 2021, more than 90% down from 2019, when 1,047 arrived. The number stayed low in 2022, at just 67.”

Boomers won’t part with their homes, and that’s a problem for young families ( www.cnn.com )

Buying a family-sized home with three or more bedrooms used to be manageable for young people with children. But with home prices climbing faster than wages, mortgage rates still close to 23-year highs and a shortage of homes nationwide, many Millennials with kids can’t afford it. And Gen Z adults with kids? Even harder....

WelcomeBear ,

It’s not even close to true.
Here’s an article about it

WelcomeBear , (edited )

I agree with most of what you said but that 44% number is wildly wrong.
Article about it
Also, anecdotally, I’ve gone through a couple of houses in hot markets the last 5 years (had to move for work) as both buyer and seller. The vast majority of people looking weren’t corporate or institutions. Most were couples looking for a place to live. Cash buyers above asking are a real thing though and they suuuuuuuck for the poors like myself.

WelcomeBear , (edited )

“ When combining closings between both larger, private equity and smaller, independent operations, investors accounted for 44% of the purchases of flips during the third quarter”

That figure is talking about only flipped (i.e. remodeled) houses bought in a specific quarter, October 2022. Most people (myself included) can’t afford freshly remodeled homes and brand new cars.
That figure also lumps small landlords together with big investors which really isn’t the same thing in my opinion but some people around here think that all landlords are evil so that’s somewhat subjective I guess.

Institutional investors “purchased 25% of the homes flipped” “as soaring mortgage rates push traditional buyers to the sidelines,”

That still sucks but it’s not 44% of all homes being bought by big corporations throughout 2023.

Here’s a recent Business Insider article that goes in depth on who’s been buying houses over time

WelcomeBear , (edited )

So no rental properties at all? You either buy or you’re homeless? That doesn’t sound great to me. Owning is a lot of work, risk and commitment. If anything goes wrong, you better have thousands of dollars ready to dump into getting your roof fixed or your plumbing fixed or whatever. If you decide you want to go to a different school or accept a better job offer in another city, you’re probably gonna lose tens of thousands of dollars to the real estate agents when you sell. It’s not the right choice for a lot of people.

I’ve lived mostly in houses owned by landlords with less than ten properties and they were all pretty cool for the most part. Way better landlords than apartment complexes or property management companies. The biggest annoyance was surprise visits by them early on the weekend to plant flowers/bushes in the front yard, water the tree, replace edging, typical homeowner crap like that. I guess worse than that, a couple of times their situation changed and they decided to move back into the house, so they didn’t renew our lease and we had to move out. That kinda sucked but it’s their house, if they want to live in it and your lease is up, that’s the way contracts go.

All that said, property management companies and large landlords can get fucked. Regardless of housing cost, they’ve always been scumbags to deal with.

WelcomeBear ,

Selling chocolates is so much worse though. That always creeped me out because it’s either A) kids learning how to hawk wares on the street outside of stores, B) kids learning how to be door-to-door cold call solicitors or C) run a MLM pyramid scheme by convincing their parents to push their product at work.

Maybe even D) a combination of all of those for the ultimate street hustler training.

This is just kids “playing house” for a few hours. Most probably love that shit. I would have killed to see what the buttons on the register do and how the fries are made.

WelcomeBear ,

For a few hours? Sure, why not. They’re not actually useful labor. The store is doing you a favor. Your average 8 year old peeled away from Minecraft and told to do a task is going to fuck up more than they help. I know, because I was that kid and I fucked up a lot. Sometimes in very expensive ways. My only worry would be that they would leave the job thinking every day will be fresh and new like that day, and that people are gracious and polite.

For a few weeks? Oh hell yes, now we’re talking. Then they’ll see the monotony and how much corporate sucks. Even more, how much customers suck. At that point, the value of learning a skill that keeps you out of the fast food/retail mines will be obvious.

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