luxury apartment buildings keep being built.

Builders aren't building reasonably priced homes anymore. They built giant houses on small lots to maximize the profit. Most people don't need and can't afford these big houses, but there are very few smaller, reasonably priced homes now.

Who can afford to drop 3K a month on a studio apartment in Phoenix?

who can afford to travel anymore?



My only trips are work or family related anymore.

I was at the vet yesterday, and picked up a copy of Conde Nast Traveler in the waiting room.
I had to put it down after a few minutes, I was so disgusted.
Nothing but articles about resorts for $600 a night.
Who the fuck is able to vacation like that?
And how does a magazine that caters to that crowd get enough circulation to stay in print?

on a credit card and then pay exorbitant monthly interest rates.

An ad pays for itself pretty quickly if it generates a few bookings of $600 a night rooms.

are corporate rentals

They're going to invest in land. It's certainly true in SoCal. Not only domestic, but tons of foreign cash. I feel bad at people around me paying rent way higher than my mortgage. Most want to buy, but there's so few places up for sale, and those up for sale you have to outbid the contractors and the investors for it.

I hardly recognize downtown Oakland any longer.

I googled "apartments in Oakland," and all that showed up was these luxury places. A studio goes for $2,700/month.

As it is - not so much.

tiny home. Lots of folks living in them now.

Just to cover our butts,we have been researching the "Vanlife" craze on the net.
Lotsa great ideas from van conversions, solar systems, places to go,hell there is even a "Rubber Tramp Rondaview" once a year for those that are into the lifestyle.

The eviction or that someone can't work at Amazon or 7-Eleven and earn enough to live. Damn, can't even work at both and make ends meet.

Bezos is working on his new mansion in DC.

"We" being our society in general. We hate poor people more than anything and we love to shame them. Humiliate them for getting public assistance. Call them out if they are wearing anything nice or are buying anything besides beans and rice, like they owe it to us to dress in rags so we can judge them even more.

I sent this to my religious rwnj cousin who went off on people who receive food stamps and medicaid. I got zero response.

I still cannot understand why Trump inspires such slavish devotion in so many people who call themselves Christian. It simply makes no sense.

If a family is paying $1,000/mo for an apartment that can be rented for $1,200/mo, many landlords/owners will be quick to pull the eviction trigger. All of a sudden they're making an extra $200/mo. It will take them no time at all to make back any money they lose during the transition (and it may even be profitable during that time if they don't pay back the deposit for whatever trumped up reason they find).

he wrote me 3 straight months worth of bad checks. So what am I suppose to do? I am not a charity, I still have to make the payments as well as pay the property taxes.

I gave him almost 6 months to set things right, which he did not and had to evict him, his wife and 3 kids. I lost not only the 3 months of rent, but another $2500 on what was damaged and outright stolen from the house. I tire of these "poor victim" posts.

Evictions don't just happen.

"This is the greatest country in the world" say the richest among us. What is so great about it? I think it is time to audit EVERY government agency, root out the corruption and waste. The Pentagon budget is bloated, but the extra cash certainly does not go to help the lower ranks. Too many chiefs, not enough Indians. Time to STOP these retirement benefits to former so-called "representatives" These people do little but line their pockets while in office, then retire as millionaires, still ripping off taxpayers for a pension (which increases every year along with the present reps. raise) plus medical benefits. How many civilian jobs still give pensions? The ones that do, do not include medical benefits. "We the people" had better start making our voices heard, before it is too late. The impeachment farce should have made it clear to everyone that we are nothing but contributors to the powers that be, with taxes. The gop backs a president who is unqualified, ignorant, crude, rude and pompous. A FAKE.

Prices and availability will always seek equilibrium.

Part of the problem is poorly thought out zoning laws, part of it is taxes as landlords have to get enough to cover tax on the profit.

The answer is to incentivize builders with below market price land and tax breaks and set a target rental price. Rent assistance targeted to the working poor is also a start.

If demand continues to grow faster than supply - prices will continue to rise

In 2008 the entire housing and mortgage casino business was due to be corrected.
A lot of us called our representative in congress at the time and said "not to bail out the banks"
Well the banks came up with this BS line about tanks in the streets to scare congress so they got bailed out.

If they had been allowed to fail and taken over by the federal reserve at that time housing prices would have corrected to a normal level by now.
Instead here we are the same banks wheeling and dealing trading loans to each other called churning paper to generate banker year end bonuses.
With the CEO`s still crapping in gold toilets just like before 2008.

Not many people know what that would have meant. If the credit system collapsed, we would have seen another Great Depression. It was bad enough as it is. My issue isn't preventing a complete economic collapse, but rather that no one went to jail.

People were committing outright fraud. My understanding is the main reason it did not happen is that the schemes were so complex that prosecutors did not feel like they could pin the blame on anybody. Everybody knew, of course, but most could claim they were ignorant of the schemes and point the finger at the next guy. We put some laws in place to prevent it from happening again, but they have been systematically dismantled. It WILL happen again.

No the Federal Reserve would of taken over the banks and that 4 trillion dollars would of kept the system afloat instead of going to bailout fraud.
The system would of returned to normal by now and yes i used to work in the financial sector for a broker.

Who would have lent money? The Fed directly? Nope. Not only is that not their role, but they don't have the infrastructure to do it.

I just can;t see what a better alternative was. My complaint was with the fat that there was ultimately no accountability, so we are guaranteed to experience it again.

I dont remember any credit unions being involved and i recall there were a lot of smaller banks not involved in the fraud of making junk loans.
We agree that Glass-Steagle should of been reimposed and it wasnt.

I still get so angry thinking about Hank Greenburg whining on CNBC about how AIG was a financial institution started by his grandfather and had to be bailed out. Well Hank you should been more diligent.

I doubt credit unions could have kept the economy afloat and businesses open, but I appreciate your point of view, Of course, we agree more than we disagree.

He said he made a good living writing "liar Loans" leading up to the meltdown. They lent people money knowing full well they could not pay it back. They would have to either sell the house for more or default.

There was no bailout, the big banks were loaned money.

Your confusing the major banks with brokerage houses, many of which did fail, or were gobbled up at liquidation prices, like Lehman.

Hahaha i call BS lets see an audit of the Fed and see how much toilet paper is still being held.
In fact the big banks got a special deal where they are now called Federal clearing houses and they dont actually have to go public hat in hand to ask for money.
If fact they are hitting up the Fed right now.

Technically it's not private land so you're less likely to get kicked out there compared to other areas. There are thousands of homeless people camped out along the freeway here in Highway 99 now and it keeps increasing. It sucks and it can be dangerous, but when you have no other choice it's all you have.

Since 1980 wage growth has fallen so far behind inflation it's just not doable for so many people now.

And the average person has no idea what homelessness looks like, the majority of homeless people are women and children.

Low wages makes home ownership less attainable. If you own your home, yes, you can be foreclosed on and end up homeless still, but the time between falling behind and being thrown out of you home is often a couple years. Really gives people a much better chance to get back on their feet.

It's getting worse with each passing year because certain assholes in power keep preventing new housing developments being made. They intentionally want the price of rent to get higher and demand to outstrip supply.

California is in a crisis because of 2 reasons that they won't build. One is that they've taken environmentalism just a bit too far and refuse to build on any piece of land that has a nice view, basically 99% of the land. And the rich don't want to build because it lowers property values. California needs about a million new modestly priced apartments.

are luxury units, and no one will stop the developers.

Gasp! If I sold my house, I would not be able to buy or rent another one in my same neighborhood.

I suspect you are not alone by any stretch of the imagination.

You can barely get a studio apartment for that.