Are roommates sharing rentals always a sign of a failed housing market?

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

How much is a monthly space in a garage over there? I'm guessing it's $400+/month?

yep i see $350-$450+

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

How much is a monthly space in a garage over there? I'm guessing it's $400+/month?

Yeah, I'd say $400-$450. And it could go higher. More like $500+ in the prime blocks. But there are cheaper options, if you're willing to walk a bit or do an informal lease.

There are lots of random spots like a granny who has an illegal curb cut and a few spaces behind her house. Or a development site functioning as a temporary lot.

To me, if you're gonna live in an expensive, dense urban neighborhood, and insist on owning a car, fine, but it's silly to then waste 30 minutes+ hunting for parking to save a few bucks. Car ownership is already extraordinarily expensive, you're harming your car, and life is too short to be wasting this much time.

[mrnyc]

man i used to love it when we had company cars and they paid to garage them. this went on for years, but nobody does that anymore. then we had our own cars for a while and moved them around the wv and meatpacking all the time. i even kept a car up in the bronx at times toward the end. so somehow i never had to pay to garage them. we were so glad when we finally got rid of a car for good.

[iheartthed]

I think paying for a garage makes less sense if you drive everyday/most days. You'll have to wait for the garage attendant to retrieve your car any time you want to use it, so it's almost the same as waiting to find street parking. And if you drive daily, avoiding street cleaning is less of an issue. Besides security, having to plan around street cleaning is the second most major reason I'd find a garage useful.

[dchan]

I agree with paying for parking in these neighborhoods. However, the Bensonhurst area around my ex-GF doesn't have a single parking lot or garage available within a convenient distance.

On a related note, I will be moving to the UES with my parents (in two separate apts), and we plan to garage out car. How much it will cost depends on where I plan to garage it. If in the UES, it will cost $500 per month. If at the 116th St shopping mall garage (the one with the Costco), it will cost $250, but I will need to take a bus, ride a bike, or walk 40+ blocks to get the car.

[yaletown_fella]

Being financially forced to live with roommates is absolutely a sign of a failed housing market. As is having to spend more than 33% of a minimum wage income on housing.

But people who opt to live with friends or family to caretake or spend quality time with aging parents or save for a downpayment down the road are a totally different story.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by yaletown_fella

Being financially forced to live with roommates is absolutely a sign of a failed housing market. As is having to spend more than 33% of a minimum wage income on housing.

No and No. Roommates are your ticket to financial freedom. You can make $20/hr delivering pizzas. I did it part-time for 13 years. I made well over $200,000, maybe $250,000.

I've pocketed at least $40,000 "house hacking" my house:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MDR2hMw_o0

In this video we see one guy after another who earns professional wages living with roommates in houses that they own. The tenants get a good place to live for cheap. You have much of your mortgage offset. Everybody wins.

[homebucket]

What? No it's not. People have roommates all the time. It's not a new concept at all. Some homeowners even rent out their spare bedrooms. It's an easy way to save money.

[DePaul Bunyan]

Depends. If everyone had roommates by choice to save money and because they enjoyed the sociability aspect, then no. But not everyone has roommates by choice, especially in unaffordable markets like SF, NYC, etc. When working adults (especially professionals who have been out of school for a while) have to live with roommates because there is no suitable housing then that's a problem. Co-living is not for everyone - we're not all urbanists. If you have to rationalize housing prices by saying it's not that bad if you just get roommates, you've kind of just admitted that it's a sign of a failed market.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by DePaul Bunyan

When working adults (especially professionals who have been out of school for a while) have to live with roommates because there is no suitable housing then that's a problem.

No. We don't live in Singapore or other places "housing advocates" like to point to, like Vienna, where a country's citizens don't have many options other than a single city. We live in the gigantic United States of America, where one can live in 5,000 places other than New York, San Francisco, or the 15 other expensive places.

It's like saying it's a problem that some new cars cost $100,000 when you can buy a good used car for $10,000.

Co-living is not for everyone - we're not all urbanists.

"Co-living" is an elitist term. It's a term invented by and for the upper class who dabble in the travels and trevails of the working class, not unlike the situation outlined in Pulp's Common People from 1995. No working class person who lives in a multi-generational household has ever heard the term or thought that their improvised living situation is in need of a new piece of terminology to impress people who read The Atlantic.

[DePaul Bunyan]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

No. We don't live in Singapore or other places "housing advocates" like to point to, like Vienna, where a country's citizens don't have many options other than a single city. We live in the gigantic United States of America, where one can live in 5,000 places other than New York, San Francisco, or the 15 other expensive places.

It's like saying it's a problem that some new cars cost $100,000 when you can buy a good used car for $10,000.

Your point would be valid if every local job paid enough to afford adequate housing. You can't commute from a mid-sized sunbelt metro to NYC or SF. These cities are unaffordable for vast swaths of essential workers.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by DePaul Bunyan

These cities are unaffordable for vast swaths of essential workers.

Yeah, those cities. The United States has well over 300 million residents and 250 million of them live in dirt-cheap places. An owner-occupied single-family home is often a money-loser. Millions of people will lose money on the sale of their rural homes this year, or even over-upgraded city homes, despite it being a white-hot market in about 15 cities.

If you actually want to make money with your owner-occupied house, you need to rent the spare bedrooms, year after year. Millions of millions of spare bedrooms are sitting empty as we speak. The bedrooms physically exist to absorb a much larger population. With enough market pressure, people will start moving back in with their family members or rent to strangers.

The term "house-hack" was coined awhile back by the FIRE crowd. It simply means the more crap you're willing to put up with as a property owner, the higher the profits. The house hackers know that they can get a house with 10% down, live there for a year, save up another 10%, and buy another house. They get the savings by renting out the spare bedrooms to strangers. Anyone can do this if you're willing to put up with some crap, since no roommate situation is entirely frictionless.