A dirty secret that everybody in your industry knows about - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/girlziplocked/status/1086029171468484609 <comment><USER2> How do we know this isn't hearsay? Or completely fabricated by the OP?

This is no different than the stuff that gets posted to sites like 4chan daily.

<comment><USER3> I think we don't know for sure, but can we still find value? Does this open the door for questions to be asked? Maybe the right questions are more valuable than answers?

<comment><USER4> Unverifiable claims are always possible, I don't see how fishing for them with a question makes them more valuable.

<comment><USER3> Well since the claims seem to have come out of left field, we could ask, "are there holes in law or oversight?" I'm not looking at a fishing expedition, rather if we have heard for instance that people are becoming injured building ships. Then maybe we can look ahead to prevent the possibility. No specific place was mentioned in that instance.

I mean looking ahead, rather than looking backward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At smaller theaters on weekdays popcorn is several days old

<comment><USER6> Thank you for informing us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't this the same kind of thing that gets posted to Ask Reddit every week or so?

Still, these kinds of anecdotes have the same old issues. Namely:

1\. It's very hard to tell what's a unique/rare experience and what's commonplace, since the people complaining are a tiny percentage of those working in said industries.

2\. You can't verify if anything is true or not, so it's perfect for trolls to slip in overly controversial bullshit to stir up anger.

3\. The people posting are obviously more likely to be those who are already angry at their jobs and industries, so see points 1 and 2.

4\. This stuff can be framed in multiple ways depending on the site its posted on and the audience the topic is aimed at. Note the amount of identity politics/left wing/anti rich people/anti middle class rhetoric in some of these messages, then note what audience is more common on Twitter. Now imagine what the same topic might be like on Voat or Gab, where the audience is heavily right wing instead.

It's interesting, and some of the stories seem like they could make intriguing news investigations if taken seriously, but you have to be skeptical given its anonymous, unverified, posted on a site with a certain audience and generally posted by people with an axe to grind against a former employer or industry.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's a very nice collection of people angry at their employers.

As a general heuristic, I would take the overall severity and veracity if each of these stories, reduce by 50%, and that would probably be closer to the truth.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can someone archive these?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://web.archive.org/web/20190118144940/https://twitter.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190118144940/https://twitter.com/girlziplocked/status/1086029171468484609)</comment></comment>


Dijkstra: Reasoning About Programs (1990) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX3URhx6i2E <comment><USER2> I'm always excited when I realize that my one semester of Discrete Math allows me to understand lectures like this!

<comment><USER3> If you are tempted to dig further into these techniques there's this book:

[https://www.amazon.com/Science-Programming-Monographs- Comput...](https://www.amazon.com/Science-Programming-Monographs- Computer/dp/0387964800/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool side note, introducing Prof. Dijkstra was a younger Eric Schmidt during his tenure as a software engineering manager at Sun. I wonder where all of the other lectures are? Somebody should repost them.</comment>


Ask HN: How to deal with conflicting KPIs? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for how to define the correct KPIs for marketing and product in our E-commerce startup (we're based in SEA, we sell everything like Amazon). Currently everyone shares the same KPIs (Revenue & Conversion rate). For those who are working in similar businesses, how are these KPis set at your companies? <comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps a concrete example should help: KPis like conversion rate are affected by a gazillion factors IMO, if Marketing drives the wrong traffic then obviously CR will suffer. On the other hand if we don't ramp up the traffic then we'll have a hard time hitting our revenue.</comment>


Docker install and upgrade guide – CentOS and Ubuntu - <AUTHOR> https://knowledgepill.it/posts/docker_install_upgrade/ <comment><USER2> I was able to use the docs on the official website[0] without issues for both installing and upgrading on ubuntu. Trying to figure out what this page does extra that provides value beyond them.

[0]: [https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/](https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/)

<comment><USER3> It has mentioned "live-restore" option, which would let upgrade without restarting existing running containers

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The arch version:

        pacman -Syu docker

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think that this page gathers all commands in one place as quick reference

<comment><USER5> Looks like blogspam. Basic docker documentation already has the instructions. This page offers nothing extra.

Edit: Yup, user is spamming his own blog, often posting more than once the same article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Purpose of this blog is to provide knowledge pill - to get this info sometimes you have to read a lot - there is everything nicely described without unnesecary talking - easy to copy&paste when doing IT work</comment></comment></comment>


Advanced tricks with vim registers - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1497958/how-to-use-vim-registers/1498026#1498026 <comment><USER2> \- _How do delete without clobbering the "clipboard" register:_

Delete to the "black hole register", "_". For example:

      "_dd

\- _How to enter the solution to a quick math equation while in insert mode:_

Use the "expression register", "=". You can even use variables. For example:

      ^r=5325*30<ENTER>

\- _How to edit a macro once you've recorded it:_

Paste, edit, and re-yank its register. For example, hitting "qq" will record to register "q". If you want to edit it, you can do _"qp_ , make your changes, then visually select it and do _"qy_.

\- _How to access prior contents in the clipboard:_

Use registers 0 - 9. For example, _"0p_ will paste whatever was in the clipboard register _before_ you yanked whatever's in there now.

BONUS ROUND:

\- _In command mode, how to insert the word currently under the cursor:_

      ^r^w

(That's Ctrl-r, Ctrl-w)

\- _Insert a register's_ literal _contents:_ For example, if you have a _^m_ (newline) character in the _a_ register, but you want to input the _^m_ character instead of an actual newline while in insert mode:

      ^r^ra

\- _Insert the full path of the filename currently under the cursor:_

      ^r^f

(This only works if it's in your 'path' variable, like with _gf_.)

</comment><comment><USER3> The two "advanced" topics that I've never bothered to learn, despite my years of using vim, are registers and buffers. Thanks to the answers on SO and the comments here, I think I have a pretty good grasp of registers (the being able to paste yanked text after a delete would have saved me so much god-damn time).

So all that leaves is buffers. I've traditionally been using tabs and splits for all my editing multitasking, with NERDTree and Command-T to open new files quickly. Is there anything to be gained from me learning/using buffers at this point? I don't know what benefits they offer, and I've never had any problems with my current tab & split setup.

Any buffer evangelists out there that care to chime in?

<comment><USER2> Surprise! You have been using buffers all this time. A "buffer" is just "a file in memory"; if you have 1 split on your screen, with a different file in each split, then you are viewing 2 buffers.

The two things which will probably give you the biggest bang for your buck are:

      :ls

Which lists all buffers currently in memory, and:

      :b

Which supports tab completion, allowing you to instantly jump to any file with just a few keystrokes. You'll also probably enjoy Ctrl + 6 / Ctrl + ^, which swaps between two buffers.

You'll need to do

      :set hidden

before switching between buffers in a single window. Don't worry, though; if you try to quit without saving a modified buffer, or use _:bd_ to delete a buffer without saving it, vim will yell at you.

<comment><USER4> <leader>b is a good replacement for both :ls and :b if you're using Command-T (like grandparent is). I was surprised when I discovered that feature, since it isn't quite as advertised/popular as the file opening capabilities of Command-T

<comment><USER3> Oh wow, that's an excellent find. That immediately made playing around with buffers much easier.

<comment><USER4> Indeed! I was using BufferExplorer and accidentally 'discovered' <leader>b. 30 minutes later, BufferExplorer was dead :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A great trick I didn't know about was the 0 register. I've lost tracked of the number of times I've copied some text, and then deleted something by mistake not realizing I'd overwritten the default register. I could still have pasted what I wanted with "0p, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can also use "2p to paste the second to last deletion.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My favorite trick is using capital-letters to append to registers:

"kyy - copy a line to register k

"Kyy - append a line to register k

</comment><comment><USER6> I use YankRing (<http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1234>) which takes care of the problem of remembering yank history. Just map :YRShow to a key and you are good to go.

<comment><USER7> Give regbuf a try too: simpler implementation and features a buffer for previewing and editing registers.

[1]: <https://github.com/tyru/regbuf.vim>

<comment><USER8> To me it wasn't obvious, but with yankring after you hit p you can paste from older registers with ^p. Yankring then replaces "0 with "1. Another ^p replaces "1 with "2.

So by repeatedly hitting ^p after a paste you can cycle back quite a ways. Way easier than ":reg, now where did that go?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Vim is the tech equivalent of "line movies." A line movie is one where guys (it's usually guys) throw lines back and forth at each other, usually in the current context. Princes Bride and Real Men are line movies. I love line movies.

Vim lets geeks throw "vim tricks" back and forth at each other. I love Vim, and I love vim tricks.

Good SO thread, and good HN thread. I never tire of Vim threads.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you guys are interesting in learning vim more, checkout vimcasts.org. Drew Neil does some really nice walkthroughs that are extremely helpful for beginner and intermediate vim users.</comment>


U.S. measles cases in 2013 may be most in 17 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/12/health/worst-measles-year/index.html

<comment><USER3> [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british- columbia/story/2013/08...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british- columbia/story/2013/08/08/bc-abbotsford-measles-threat.html) .. 31 kids could've died because 1 religious zealot refused vaccinations.

For fuck's sake, get your vaccinations, and while I'm ranting stop drinking un-Pasteurized milk from dirt hippy stores illegally too. There is no elaborate conspiracy to keep nature down, it's to protect you from Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria

<comment><USER4> > 31 kids could've died because 1 religious zealot refused vaccinations.

What about the 30 million people who have died of the AIDS epidemic, which is thought to have been started because of government vaccination programs?[1]

Similarly, what about the fact that the US government has been repeatedly caught giving out fake vaccinations?[2] Or the fact that the safety standards for medicine in the US are generally abysmal?[3]

All in all I think getting vaccinated is generally a good bet, but the idea that there are no rational arguments against vaccination is completely disingenuous.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS)

[2] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake- vaccin...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations- osama-bin-ladens-dna)

[3] [http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Pharma-Companies-Mislead- Patients/...](http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Pharma-Companies-Mislead- Patients/dp/0865478007/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379046906&sr=8-1&keywords=bad+pharma)

<comment><USER5> Reading the Wikipedia article you cite for [1]:

1\. That is hardly consensus theory: it is one hypothesis postulated by a small group of scientists, which is somewhat plausible but is very far from having a compelling body of evidence in support of it.

2\. The theory is that vaccinations _in the 19th century_ may have caused HIV due to unsterile injections given to many natives. Vaccination practice in the 21st century is _much_ different from vaccination practice in the 19th century, and unsterile injections will cause all sorts of other problems.

<comment><USER4> Regarding point 1, I haven't read the book(s) so I can't speak to the extent of the evidence. It seems to be the primary theory at this point though; most of the alternative theories are just different variations on the vaccine theme, e.g. the version proposed by the book Down The River.

Regarding point 2, the lesson to be learned I think is that with vaccines there is a relatively large chance of black swan type issues coming up. And even if there were a way to catch these sorts of problems, the medical system isn't designed to even look for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems difficult to fight this directly -- prosecuting anti-vaccinators would be viewed by supporters as persecution, and might actually make them more reluctant to vaccinate.

Publicizing deaths due to lack of vaccination can work, but that lags -- by the time enough of the population is unvaccinated for the disease to spread and kill babies, it's too late.

I'm in favor of quarantining Napa/Marin and certain LA suburbs, since that seems to be ground zero, at least in California, for this insanity.

Andrew Wakefield should have been forced to personally meet every parent of a measles-infected baby as part of his punishment for fraud.

<comment><USER7> I've been thinking we should treat it as a free-rider problem. Given that eradicating diseases like this really comes down to herd-immunity, what we really have is free-riders unfairly benefitting from the slight risk that others are taking through a certain medical intervention.

What gives a certain person the right to benefit from everyone else's vaccinations while refusing to subject their own children to the minimal risk? We don't need to prove that vaccines are "safe", just safer than a frikken measles epidemic... and then tax the snot out of everyone who choses to forgo that risk and expense by pushing it off onto others. Internalize that external cost and I bet you'll see a whole lot of zealotry dry right up in the cold face of monetary reality.

<comment><USER8> I agree that if medical treatment for measles was put in a more punitive price range (depending on vaccination status, and economic background of course), I could imagine a significant drop in people who choose not to vaccinate. Use that extra money to immunize people who actually want it, but can't pay for it. Use it for programs that teach about the dangers of letting your child go unvaccinated, both for them and for other children.

<comment><USER6> The problem is the kind of fucktards who don't get their child vaccinated might then delay or avoid treatment of their highly contagious child...

<comment><USER7> This is why this cost must be front-loaded. There should be a penalty paid when the vaccine is refused, much like the penalty we're contemplating now for people who refuse to enroll in the pending national health system. The logic would be the same. By refusing this preventative treatment, you're likely to incur a public cost in the future. We'd just like you to pay for that up front.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Given that this is caused almost entirely by anti-vaccination hysteria, and that this in in turn caused mostly by a combination of ignorance and bizarre religious beliefs, it's hard to imagine an effective response. It's been said that you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into, and that seems apt here. Perhaps an attempt to shame people by presenting the young, innocent victims is best (e.g. little 8-month old Suzy died because XYZ Church members refused to vaccinate their children).

<comment><USER10> _...this in in turn caused mostly by a combination of ignorance and bizarre religious beliefs..._

It's actually better/worse than that (depending on your perspective). People were mislead by a _fraud_. And not fraud with any kind of a noble purpose - <USER2> was for money.

<comment><USER6> Yeah - if it were just religious beliefs, those would be rare (although concentrated) enough to preserve herd immunity, I think. It's Jenny McCarthy and Andrew Wakefield who have turned this into a matter of national security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let me play devil's advocate here. The article says nothing about how many people died of measles, it just gave an estimate of how dangerous some doctors think measles is. Maybe none died and that's why they don't give a solid number? If so, the danger of measles was overstated in that estimate. Meanwhile, there's nothing in the article mentioning the danger of the vaccine, which nobody claims is nonzero. Maybe the vaccine's danger is 1 in a million. So with several million refusers 1 or 2 kids' lives were saved. At the expense of how many kids dying of measles? Zero? We need more information here.

<comment><USER12> Pre-vaccine, measles would kill or seriously mess up about 1500 people yearly in the U.S. I think the vaccination rate now is in the 70% range and deaths from vaccination are hard to find. So it seems like vaccination is a win there.

[http://www.cdc.gov/measles/vaccination.html](http://www.cdc.gov/measles/vaccination.html)

On the other hand, 1500 serious cases out of 300+ million people every year is a pretty low percentage. Seems like the entire threat is highly overstated.

<comment><USER13> > 1500 serious cases out of 300+ million people every year is a pretty low > percentage

You're using the number of cases _then_ with the population _now_ if I'm not mistaken.

<comment><USER12> I didn't realize it started in the 70s. Still, 1500 serious cases out of 200+ million is low.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just a week ago there was an outbrak of mumps in NJ: [http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/05/health/new-jersey-mumps- outbre...](http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/05/health/new-jersey-mumps- outbreak/index.html)

If you only give your child one vaccine, make it the MMR. It's a lot safer that measles, mumps, or rubella.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's interesting that the vast human intelligence that created all of these vaccines may be neutralized by vast human stupidity.

<comment><USER7> It seems like stupidity but I suspect its actually greed. If _everyone_ else is vaccinated and there is zero latent disease in a given area, it makes sense _personally_ not to get the vaccine. If there is indeed _zero_ chance of contracting the disease, then any risk at all associated with the vaccine is unnecessary. Bonus points for crackpot beliefs causing misestimation of the actual risks, but the fundamental equation is unchanged.

Refuse to get vaccinated? Congrats, you're the betrayer in the prisoner's dilemma. Your train stops at the tragedy of the commons.</comment></comment>


Vi(m) keybindings and features for Xcode - <AUTHOR> http://viciousapp.com

<comment><USER2> Just downloaded and installed trail. Works really well from my initial testing. One command that most people use a lot is 'jj' for quick exiting of insert mode. Also, '$' jumps to the next to last character of a line. It should jump to the very end of the line. If you added/fixed these two things I would totally buy it!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll look into your suggestions, thank you! Contact me at email@example.com for more info if you like</comment></comment>


It's A Terrible Time To Buy An Expensive House - <AUTHOR> http://patrick.net/housing/crash1.html <comment><USER3> This is missing something that I think is (literally) the most important change since the baby boomers: job tenure.

People used to stay at their jobs for decades or their entire lives. Nowadays, what's the average job tenure? 2 years or less in tech, a touch more outside of it. So how much do you want to constrain your next job search to a commute- radius of your home (hint: research the relationship between commute distance and happiness before you answer)?

People are more mobile nowadays. My rule of thumb with real estate is "If I can't rent it out for more than the mortgage + 1% of purchase price (avg. maintenance), I will not buy a house".

(disclosure: I own two homes with mother-in-law apartments-- both are currently rented and profitable while I travel the world for bit)

</comment><comment><USER4> Point 8 is an important element of the last (or current depending on your outlook) housing bust.

 _Because first-time buyers have all been ruthlessly exploited and the supply of new victims is very low. From The Herald: "We were all corrupted by the housing boom, to some extent. People talked endlessly about how their houses were earning more than they did, never asking where all this free money was coming from. Well the truth is that it was being stolen from the next generation. Houses price increases don't produce wealth, they merely transfer it from the young to the old - from the coming generation of families who have to burden themselves with colossal debts if they want to own, to the baby boomers who are about to retire and live on the cash they make when they downsize."_

Important to remember that for every homeowner over-stretching to buy their dream house is another home-seller making a healthy profit.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the madness won't end until we stop looking at housing as an investment vehicle. Housing is an expense. We're all renters to some extent. Even when I own my home "in the clear," I'll continue to have tax and maintenance obligations forever.

There's also a very real lifestyle component. If it's a purely fiscal decision, we should all be renting in Dayton, Ohio.

That's why these sorts of articles drive me nuts. He's assuming equal inventory across renting vs. leasing. There are six people in my family, and the local home rental market doesn't support those numbers, at least not in the area where we want to live. In other markets, our only sane options would be renting.

EDIT: I should clarify that I mean owner-occupied housing. You can certainly make money in real estate that you can leverage; properties that you can rent or sale. (Still, as an investor, I have yet to add any real estate.)

<comment><USER6> I've always been confused about the housing as investment idea. We don't consider cars to be an investment either do we? I feel like the idea can only help to drive the prices up further.

<comment><USER7> Cars are not an investment because, unless we are talking about collectible antiques, cars always depreciate. That's why it's more accurate to think of cars as expenses.

Real estate can appreciate. It's not guaranteed to do so, but it can, and with significant leverage. That's why it's considered an investment.

<comment><USER6> but the appreciation only happens because everyone wants it to right?

I get that building a pool makes your house worth more, but trying to ride a bubble seems messy

<comment><USER7> There are measurable fundamentals that consistently lead to local real estate appreciation, like population growth, economic growth, increasing mean income level, school district ranking, nearby commercial development, nearby infrastructure development, etc.

Of course all of this can be trumped over short time periods by nationwide trends like the recent financial crisis. But with strong local fundamentals, such trends create more volatility than permanent depreciation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I read this, I can feel the pull of confirmation bias pushing me to nod my head in agreement, but my skeptical side longs for more citation. The author makes many claims of fact in this article, but offers no citations to back them up. For example:

> _Because there is a huge glut of empty new houses. Builders are being forced > to drop prices even faster than owners, because builders must sell to keep > their business going._

Aren't there statistics available that show housing inventory levels over time? I can't refute the claim, because I don't know where to find those statistics, but I'm skeptical of claims provided without citation.

The entire thing seems very rational, but I'm reminded of the quote, "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." I wish there were more citations to back up the facts. Maybe I'll do some of the footwork myself.

<comment><USER9> Agree. And where are the indications that interest rates will rise substantially any time soon? I'm not saying that's impossible, but this piece seems to take it as an article of faith that we're in a period of unsustainably low rates.

<comment><USER10> [http://mortgage-x.com/images/graph/fhfb_contract_rate.gif](http://mortgage-x.com/images/graph/fhfb_contract_rate.gif)

We are in unprecedented territory here, interest rates have never been this low. Is it sustainable? Who knows. Given history I'd be more inclined to believe it's not.

<comment><USER9> Doesn't that chart contradict the article? Home prices didn't decline from 1960 to 1980, as interest rates climbed dramatically:

[http://www.multpl.com/case-shiller-home-price-index- inflatio...](http://www.multpl.com/case-shiller-home-price-index-inflation- adjusted/)

There's obviously some relationship there, but it's not as clear cut as this article makes it out to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks like the same set of points Patrick has been making since before the bubble burst. They're all great rules of thumb. And all bubbles pop eventually, but the problem is that it's very hard to predict exactly what pops them and when it will happen.

So in retrospect, it would have been a terrific idea to buy a house in SF in mid-2009 and then sell it now. But if you followed Patrick's advice, there's no way you would even consider doing so. And bluntly, if you're a hacker, you probably _should_ follow Patrick's advice. SF is the land of perma-renters.

Paying too much rent now and moving when the current bubble pops and/or sticking around long enough for the Ellis Act to make your apartment a bargain both seem like better strategies than speculating to me. Focus on what you're good at to pay the rent in the short term.

It's the people whose brains are wired into local and national real estate markets who stand a decent chance of knowing when to buy or sell, many, not all, of them realtors. Now if you can give people a better finger on the pulse of this market, go for it. Zillow, Trulia, and Redfin need not apply - <USER2> attempts at property valuations are wacko.

<comment><USER12> Buy when people around you say the market sucks.

Sell when people say it is awesome.

This goes for real estate and basically anything else.

<comment><USER11> And that's just it, Patrick is mostly a perma-bear. So trotting out his recommendations when the market is stupid up makes him seem more sagely than I personally think he is.

When I used to participate in his online forum, it seemed to me that his main objective was to eliminate the mortgage interest and property tax deduction immediately so it would trigger an immediate crash in the market and allow anyone with cash on the side to clean up. Whatever floats your boat of course, but that seemed a pretty reckless plan to me. That said, reforming said deductions gradually is probably sensible, just not all at apocalyptically once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is important to weigh in many factors. The easiest to grasp is debt to income ratio. (Debt/Income) _100\. Student loans, phone bills, internet, netflix, insurance, etc. Tally it all in. Divide it by your monthly income.

For example: $650 student loans,$100 cellphones,$90 car insurance,$300 food,$250 gas,$150 electric (average over 12 months),$80 water/sewage/trash \---- $1620

($1620/$4000) _ 100 = 40.5% recurring debt to credit ratio

Note: Most lenders do not factor in utilities. You should. They will let you drown.

It is always wise to take your Good Faith Estimate and refactor your d/c ratio.

$1620 recurring,$350 mortgage,$120 home insurance,$150 taxes,$80 mortgage insurance \---- $2320 (2320/4000)*100=58% 42% of your income remains to be spent on fed taxes, benefits at work, non recurring debt, random quirks of life.

I really think 2x Household salary is pushing the limit of what you can afford. Vehicles break, pipes bust, utilities are going to have fees/unexpected jumps, people get sick, etc, etc.

Don't waste your life preparing for the unknown. Just don't dig yourself into a hole that you can't swim out of once the floods come.

<comment><USER14> I don't know, if shit hits the fan you can change your utilities budget. Change your cellphone plan to a prepaid, take the bus instead of your car, eat ramen everyday instead of going to the restaurant...

But when you have debt, you can't just decide not to pay this month or you really get in trouble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> In many places, homes available to rent are not and will never be comparable in quality to homes available to purchase.

<comment><USER16> Plus renting is basically flushing your money away each money opposed to building equity in something over time.

<comment><USER17> You're flushing money every month with the interest on a mortgage + taxes + maintenance. You just have to hope that this is less than the amount you'd be paying in rent. (assuming property prices stay flat)

<comment><USER7> Property prices never stay flat because of inflation.

This matters because the payments on a fixed-rate mortgage do stay flat; they don't adjust with inflation.

I just refinanced to 4.5%. Long-run inflation is 3% so my actual cost to borrow is 1.5%. With the mortgage deduction it is just over 1.1%--nearly free money, in other words.

It's true that I pay property taxes. In my jurisdiction they are just over 1%, so now my actual cost to own is maybe about 2.2%.

Maintenance is a bit of a red herring...most straight maintenance is inexpensive (cleaning, painting) or optional (fancy landscaping).

Most expensive "maintenance" is actually improvements. For example last year I replaced both my A/C unit and furnace. It was a substantial cash outlay, but the new units are far more performant and efficient than the old ones. If I stay in the house another 5 years I will completely recoup that investment in lower monthly energy payments. And if I don't, the modern new appliances will allow me to set a higher asking price in a sale.

<comment><USER18> "Long-run inflation is 3%"

LOL the political reported rate is what the .gov is willing to provide in COLA increases. It has nothing to do with actual costs. You're budgeting based on made up numbers provided for someone elses "pay" rate increases.

Look at say... gas prices. Double in a decade. Thats about 7% per year. Or the price of food, or medical insurance, or tuition, or price of cars, etc. Think of what real people actually spend money on.

You can get better numbers from shadowstats. Somewhere toward the low end of 6% to 10% is about right. We'll call it 7% long term average.

The problem with 7% annual inflation rates is very few people can maintain those pay increases, every year, for an entire 30 year mortgage... So eventually you end up house poor.

Lets say J6P gets a 3% pay raise but the cost of everything else increased by 7%, for a generation or so. That means the money left over after food, car, etc aka the rent either directly for land or indirectly for money to buy land, will drop by about 4% per year. For awhile you can mask that by lowering interest rates, but once you reach "basically zero" like now, problems develop.

Finally the mortgage interest deduction doesn't work like that. If you pay more interest to the bank than the standard deduction fraction then you don't have to pay income tax on the fraction above that. Basically you need low income, high interest payments, and then all you save is taxes on the portion above the standard level. You're still out the same money, just not out the income tax on a small sliver of the total interest over a certain limit. I've paid enough of my mortgage off that I no longer get a mortgage interest deduction. Oh, I could file it anyway, but I'd have to pay more in taxes than just taking the std deduction. Eventually you reach AMT range and then things get weird.

<comment><USER7> If you want to rely on some random website for your financial data, that is certainly your right, but I don't think we could have much of a conversation about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's worth noting that patrick was among the few active bloggers that noticed the housing bubble early. Ben at the thehousingbubbleblog, calculatedrisk were two others. Folks that were paying attention and shorted the banks made some money.

But of course: this time is different, broken clock, and <insert your financial cliché here>, etc etc.

<comment><USER20> The more salient part is the broken clock.

CalculatedRisk changed his opinion as the facts changed (he is data-driven, and one of the best blogs out there).

Patrick.net has essentially been a perma-bear on real estate. While that view was correct at one point in time, he never changed his view significantly when the facts completely changed.

<comment><USER19> > _CalculatedRisk changed his opinion as the facts changed (he is data-driven, > and one of the best blogs out there)._

I should have emphasized this point myself. Also, the CR comment board used to be of HN quality, but for economics and housing. (Lately, not so much.) If you follow one econ blog, I'd heartily recommend CR: [http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/](http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/)

I will note though for the topic at hand: CR has commented that there is little correlation between interest rates and house prices[1]. I believe he has neglected that most of the data from which that statement is derived had interest rates (and borrowing standards) out of range compared to where we are now.

[1] [http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2013/06/house-prices- and-m...](http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2013/06/house-prices-and-mortgage- rates.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If there was ever an article that needed a [citation needed] this would be it. There are so many statements that are either flat out wrong, but something people like to believe to things that are only right in some locations. bla, flagged

<comment><USER22> Care to list a few of the things that are flat out wrong for those not as knowledgeable?

<comment><USER23> Fairly early on he states that where rents are typically 3% of house prices and interest is typically 4% of a house price "it costs more to borrow the money as it does to borrow the house". Except that interest is 4% of the house price in $YEAR_PURCHASED per annum, and the rental rate is 3% of the house's value in $CURRENT_YEAR per annum so the comparison isn't very meaningful except in the short term: the mortgage payment is a fixed cost whereas the rental rate is a variable that will tend to rise over the course of a 25 year mortgage unless there's something _very_ strange going on with the regional housing market or US inflation and economic growth. Even at modest rates of inflation the total cost of interest paid over the course of a mortgage will tend to be lower than the total cost of renting over the same period (even without accounting for nominal appreciation in house values); whether the additional cost of renting is a _reasonable_ premium for not incurring the risks of owning that home is another matter

<comment><USER22> Makes a lot of sense, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Or 10 reasons why it is a great time to buy a cheap house. I bought a roughly ~$100k home back in 09 which I could now rent for about $800-900 per month. There is a nice little house on a smaller lot right around the corner listed for only $65k. For somebody like me that has a decent income and decent credit the opportunities to buy nice little rental properties and make a tidy rental income have never been better it seems.

<comment><USER25> What part of the country do you live in? I bet it is not in the SF bay area ;-)

<comment><USER26> Probably not, but not everything is the Bay.

I'm moving to Florida. I plan to buy a house that is 30k. Small bungelow. Just me, the wife, the dogs and a cat. At the same time I plan on buying a 55k fixer-upper.

The first I should be able to pay in cash. The second, won't get bought until my current home sells. However, that second house, once improved (by us: we do flooring, plumbing, painting and simple eletrical) should value at 160k.

Once we move to the fixed house, we'll rent the other for 500 a month. Should be doable since my wife is currently in FLA in a 300 sq/ft studio at 500 a month.

I purposely didn't want to go to the Bay for this reason. I avoid California at all cost for this reason. My long term plan is to startup a tech firm, hire college grads, train them and try to keep them with the company for 5+ years. Hard, but doable. The nice thing is they can get 45k a year, and get a pretty nice home/environment that would be hard to beat. So we'll see, but again the Bay really matters in the HN echo chamber.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Some very solid points about the market in general, but I wonder how several of these points (particularly the points about oversupply, baby boomers, etc.) apply to places like SF or Manhattan.

SF, in particular, seems to be extremely young (though that could be observational bias on my part), well-monied, in sharp undersupply of housing, with rent matching or in some cases exceeding the cost of a mortgage.

Historically, it's been a boom-and-bust sort of town as far as housing prices are concerned. And there are always places like the East Bay and the Peninsula to capture some of the demand. But it's not as if the Peninsula is cheap these days, so Oakland seems the more likely candidate to take on the burden (which then raises a thorny question of where all the low-income Oaklanders go when the gentrification accelerates).

But it's conceivable that SF basically becomes the Mahattan of the Bay Area, a playground for the rich, while everyone else gets pushed into the outlying boroughs and beyond. In such a scenario, where money is little object to the buyers determined to own in SF, what happens to pricing?

I don't know anyone who owns a home in SF right now who doesn't think the current prices are insane. (Anecdote: one friend just bought a condo in a new building, and three months later, the closing price for a _lesser_ unit in the same building was $200k higher than what he'd paid for his). But are they actually going south anytime soon? Also: while mortgages and interest rates are great indicators for the housing market in general, SF seems to have an unusually large supply of cash buyers.

In conclusion: I'm not disagreeing with the article, nor am I bullish on the local housing market. I don't fully understand why it's behaving the way it is, and that's never a great sign. But superficially, it seems to be the sort of "microclimate" that doesn't track the aggregate US market very closely. How many of these enclaves of wealth does the US have, or will it have, that seem to have a low to zero beta w/r/t the overall market? And if it's a significant amount, when will speaking in aggregate terms start to lose a bit of meaning?

On a related note, I'd love to see a comparison of urban vs. rural vs. suburban areas across the US. I suspect that concentrated urban centers are obeying very different laws of physics, so to speak, than suburbs and semi- rurals with their huge tracts of overbuilt housing inventory. Example: I used to live in LA, and when the press spoke about how hard-hit LA was during the housing crash, they painted with a pretty big and sloppy brush. The _surrounding_ areas (Inland Empire, etc.) got the plague, but housing in LA proper barely registered a slight cough.

<comment><USER28> > But it's conceivable that SF basically becomes the Mahattan of the Bay Area, > a playground for the rich, while everyone else gets pushed into the outlying > boroughs and beyond. In such a scenario, where money is little object to the > buyers determined to own in SF, what happens to pricing?

I lived in Manhattan and in SF now and I would say, yah, I can see that. Already though, the 'boroughs' are being pushed further out. Buying in SF is an all cash over asking price deal (I've heard over 25%). My wife and I have been looking around the east bay and north bay and while those prices are a little more down to earth, the same thing is going on there as well - cash. Maybe it's not so over the asking price, but those that can't buy here in the city, don't want to ruin their chances buying elsewhere, so cash is still king.

It's pretty crazy; I saw a house by us in the Upper Market around - a 2br 1ba, 900 sqft - go for over $1.2m (I pass this place as I walk to muni every day). That was a month or so ago. Last week walked by it, there was a for rent sign. Looked the place up, $5800/mo rent. Ridic. Yesterday, the rent sign was gone. I was like, wow.. Ok..

I felt like our trade up in our building from a $1500 1br apt to a $2200 2br apt was a little crazy. But I'm sure our place now would rent for $3k easy. Needless to say, we're staying put for a bit, still continuing to save.

I think the big thing on the psychology here is the fact that so many people can swoop in with a lot of cash over ask. You really do realize it's a rich people's city - to own. My wife and I have a small toddler with another kid on the way and couple the current climate with how crappy the public schools are here and it's only a matter of time before we hit the eject button. Add to that the homeless problem that never seems to get any better (I've lived here on and off for 20 years and it seems like its only gotten worse) and you have the makings of a city where families don't live (more dogs than kids here).

We still love the city and we'd never _ever_ thought we'd say we're lookin to the suburbs. But now, we are. Who knows if this will change over the next few years.

<comment><USER29> > Add to that the homeless problem that never seems to get any better...

I was amazed when I learned that Orange County busses its homeless to SF. I often wonder how many other affluent areas sweep their troubled people under their neighbor's rug?

<comment><USER30> You may have already seen, but add Reno and Las Vegas to the mix:

[http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23087181/san-francisco- probes-...](http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23087181/san-francisco-probes- dumping-psychiatric-patients-from-nevada)

[http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/SF-City-Attorney- Loo...](http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/SF-City-Attorney-Looks-into- Allegations-of-Patient-Dumping-204226291.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Most people don't buy a house for investment, they buy it because they have reached a point in their lives where they want to settle down and live someplace with their kids for 10+ years.

In that world, I think you can simplify things quite a bit. First, buying a house is more of a hedge against inflation than an investment. The market goes up? You've got more equity to move somewhere else. The market goes down? Well, you lose money, but everything else is cheaper too.

For the average person, I think the real lesson here is to make sure you can afford the house, put 20% down and it is within x2-3 your annual income. If you live in low-supply/high-demand markets like Seattle, SF, then you might end up paying more, and it is just a trade off you need to make.

</comment><comment><USER32> I bought a duplex 4 years ago. With rent from other side my total (taxes, insurance, mortgage) has been ~$500 (1/2 to 1/3 of what I could rent for. PLUS I've gotten tax benefits, and $250/mo equity.

When I buy a house shortly, the duplex will start making $500/mo + ever increasing equity amount. Until I decide to cash out.

Property/land is one of the most available avenues to wealth. But, it's no silver bullet. If you are an idiot and/or and/or make poor choices you will probably loose. No different than any other business, endeavor or purchase.

Property is so varied geographically, price bracket, types of property, condition of property, even seasonally, that blanket statements "Don't buy expensive house" lack any relevancy.

<comment><USER33> Are you factoring in maintenance? Depending on the age and quality of the construction, you might be looking at big issues lurking under the radar (ie, plumbing, roof, etc). When we bought our duplex, the house inspector didn't really go into an amazing depth of detail, I wish we'd had more focus on the foundation (sometimes acts like a sump - solution is a french drain estimated @ $5-10k).

<comment><USER34> I hear you on the house inspection. As a naive first-time buyer, I was told over and over again to get an inspection and I did. And, all-in-all, it was a waste of $300. The roof was more damaged than I was led to believe, and there were several huge "code" violations with the plumbing and electrical. Luckily, I have family handy-men who taught me how to correct these problems myself and on the cheap. If you decide to pay for a home inspection in the future, make sure you don't use one that is recommended by your realtor _(facepalm)_.

The "maintenance" issue is often misunderstood and the costs are different depending on if you live in the home or are renting it out to someone else. Case in point, my furnace started failing a few years ago. I could have fixed it on a Saturday afternoon for a hundred or so (it was made in 1986 -- they were not particularly sophisticated devices back then). If I wasn't living in the house, I would have gone this route. Instead, due to the $250/month heating bill to keep my house at a cool 65 in the winter coupled with the availability of generous tax credits, I upgraded the A/C and furnace. I now keep my home at 75 degrees and pay $80 in the coldest months of the winter.

 _Most_ of the problems I've run into have a similar theme. I could have gotten another few years out of my roof with patch work ($~100), but I replaced it because I wanted a better looking (and functioning) roof ($3000). I had a water tank problem that, I discovered, wasn't even failing -- the temp was just set too high. ($0) Due to tax credits and a desire to run more than one device that consumes hot water, I replaced it. ($800) People who are afraid of the unpredictability of these costs can purchase insurance (read the fine print and no, it's usually not a good deal). And a lot of the really expensive repairs that you hear about have more to do with people failing to inspect their home regularly, themselves (get in the attic, watch the way the water drains when it rains, etc). It's a lot cheaper to fix a downspout/gutter that's imperfect than it is to solve a foundation issue that creeps up as a result of water affecting the stability of the ground around a basement.

The article doesn't really apply to where I live. If you're renting out here, it's at a set of suburban-ish apartment complexes (900sq. ft. 2br, 1ba $800) or extremely low-end houses usually in undesirable neighborhoods vs a dearth of single family homes around 1400 sq. ft, 3br, 1.1 or 2 ba with basement space not included in the square footage. While there are homes in the million plus range, they're huge or have something that's highly unique about them (like a million dollar light house[1], supposedly the only one in Michigan that can be privately owned -- and even that's been sitting on the block for two years with the offering price dropped from 1.5 million).

[1] [http://www.oldhousedreams.com/2012/04/20/1886-lighthouse- por...](http://www.oldhousedreams.com/2012/04/20/1886-lighthouse-port-sanilac- michigan-1599000/)

<comment><USER33> > If you decide to pay for a home inspection in the future, make sure you > don't use one that is recommended by your realtor (face palm).

This x 1000.

In fact, I think that's one of the big lessons learned in my first property purchase. If I could do-over, I'd have hired a completely independent inspector (rated highly on yelp/servicemagic/angieslist) and maybe have two separate inspections. At the very least we could have negotiated some compensation from the sellers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I now do not consider buying a house a good investment due to property taxes.

The bill is coming soon for a lot of school districts (especially those with strong unions) with the rapid costs of health care for retirees.

This is going to be our next crisis as we can see it playing out in Detroit.

<comment><USER36> Rent pays property tax, too. It's indirect, but it gets paid.

<comment><USER18> You can leave the district when it hits the fan in a month (or so) if you rent. If you own, you're stuck paying the "rent" aka prop tax or you eat the obvious capital loss. A owner is a sheep ready for the shearing...

The older the district, the worse the financial conditions, roughly. If you rent and move to an exurb that didn't exist in 2005, they can't by definition have employees retiring from the local school in 2015 with 30 years experience and 30 years of benefits to pay out. Also roughly speaking the older the community the more corrupt it is in general, which is expensive. This is before we get into infrastructure expenses.

<comment><USER36> In every state I have lived, school retirement and health plans were handled at the state level. Hoping districts isn't going to shield you from your state government. The school districts pay into state plans as directed by the state legislature. It's the state legislature that's on the hook for the unfunded liabilities, not the school districts. School districts only make the equivalent of social security payments.

And it's not like the employees aren't playing into the system the same way that private sector employees pay into Social Security. Many/most state employees are excluded from participating in Social Security--the States in their infinite wisdom decided long ago that they would rather roll their own rather than submit to the tyranny of federal control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Prop 13 affects the baby boomer point in California. Even with huge amounts of equity tied up in their homes, older people can't afford to sell because their tax bill when they downsize will dwarf the gains they make by cashing out. Also, the fact that their kids can inherit their tax basis (a grossly unfair dynastic tax benefit that should be repealed) makes people do whatever they can to stay in their homes. The result: that much less supply, higher prices, and the young subsidize the old and rich with their property taxes.

</comment><comment><USER38> If you have a family, there are benefits to setting down roots and buying a house. When you rent, you never know what the future holds. The owner might want to sell the property at some point and not renew your lease. This becomes a very disruptive life event for children. Homeowners of course do relocate for other reasons, but it tends to be on their own terms and not someone else's.

<comment><USER18> "This becomes a very disruptive life event for children."

Between the ages of 6 and 12, maybe. Below that age they don't really notice or care, above that age the coverage area for middle and high schools is so immense that if you move out of the coverage area it was intentionally. There are eleven thousand household units in my kids high school. Seriously claiming I wouldn't be able to rent a single one?

The worst case scenario would be kids around 10 and you live in an elementary district that has precisely one apartment building or perhaps only one (perhaps illegal?) private house rental.

The long term effects of financial devastation to the family are probably worse than having to go to a different school "Well, you can't go to college because we don't have the money anymore to help because we stayed in our upside down house back when you were in 3rd grade; but on the bright side we didn't have to move to the apartment complex on the other side of the elementary school district"

The argument is identical to if you rent an apartment while going to university, in theory you might have to drop out of that university and transfer to another if you need to move and no one will rent to you. Very few people indeed report this tragedy..

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Rent vs buy really depends (1) what's your down payment and (2) how long you're going to stay in your house.

If you have a high downpayment, and in the extreme case buy your house in cash, you don't have to pay any interest. You can take into account the revenue you could have got from your capital, but nowadays you can't get much without taking pretty big risks.

Then there's the long term. If you end up staying 30 years in the same house, buying is cheaper. Depending on your local market, the number of years you need to stay in house to make up for the purchasing fees (interests, taxes, etc.) is different. It's this number you need to find out. Of course when the real estate price was going up fast, the increase in value made it up pretty quickly so buying was an easy choice. That's no longer the case, you need to do the math.

So it's not whether it's universally better to buy or rent. It all depends on your local market, your downpayment, and how long you're willing to stay in your new house.

<comment><USER39> Discussions about "rent vs buy", and the corollary of "mortgage vs cash", rarely address the problem of _you MUST make that payment every month_. Pay up or lose it.

The notion of paying every month, pretty much for life, is deeply ingrained in society to the point of _not_ renting/mortgaging seems downright weird. (It's kinda like the recurring threads where living on $1/meal is met with outrage by most, despite many doing so with great satisfaction.) Few start out with a primary goal being owning home & property outright ASAP. This normalizes the _dependency_ factor, reinforcing a social dynamic where people _can 't_ take long vacations or high risks, and live in fear of financial devastation from sudden unemployment or disability, precisely because that massive monthly payment ever looms.

The normalization of rent/mortgage also means social expectation of costlier dwellings. Where our culture(s) were satisfied by much humbler abodes a few decades ago, we've now grown to expect vast variants on the McMansion theme as a minimum - shocked at any suggestion that buying a brick shoebox (which our [grand]parents were content with) outright might be financially sensible. I expect downvotes based on "you can't expect anyone to live in _that_! cash purchase of real estate is absurd unless you're _rich_!" Well yeah, if you insist on buying multi-thousand-square-foot floorspace in quasi-urban settings with lots of options, sure it's gonna cost ... but you can _choose_ to live somewhere less expensive, in a smaller space, and own outright much sooner - giving you the freedom to take a sabbatical, or risk investments, or not worry about layoffs.

In retrospect, and stuck with a large mortgage (bought at the peak), I _strongly_ suggest anyone entering the housing market focus on hoarding cash until they can buy something, anything, outright. The freedom full ownership bestows is remarkable. Pity society sneers at it.

<comment><USER40> This seems to miss a large percentage of the population which live in mega- citys. People arn't putting out a million dollars for "McMansions". A million dollars buys you an 800 sq ft 1 bed 1 bath condo. We are accepting the "brick shoebox", and we are paying through the nose for it.

Edit: And, at least for me, moving far away where its cheaper is not an option. My children _will_ know their grandparents, and not because they make a 4 hour drive each way once a month or some such.

<comment><USER39> Oh, I'm not missing that scenario. My point still applies in full. Too expensive is too expensive, not just in cost but in risk and lost opportunity. Better maybe to talk the extended family into moving somewhere far less costly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I hadn't considered the impact of #3, even though I knew it was a reality. Being in a position to buy a new house but _not_ take advantage of low interest rates (because I don't want a long amortization on the mortgage), it actually makes little sense to buy right now except maybe if I planned to leverage a diminished equity in a different market.

#6 seems somewhat tinfoil-hatty.

Does anyone have some data to back up #7?

> Buyers should be rioting in the streets, demanding an end to all mortgage > subsidies.

...and we went off the deep end.

#9 is incredibly specious. Why would retired people sell? Where are they going to live?

#10 is very true, however it's so difficult to trust a new home builder. Even if you know what bad construction looks like, it takes an immense amount of effort to ensure that everything is done properly and you'll probably be adding 20% onto your cost just to babysit the construction.

<comment><USER42> _#9 is incredibly specious. Why would retired people sell? Where are they going to live?_

If a person is physically able, then a smart option is to move to a small apartment in a location close to services and shops. Downsizing reduces unnecessary energy costs, taxes, maintenance, yard work, etc. Based on my city, the equity in a median suburban home could easily pay 15 years of rent without investment, maybe 25 - 30 with really good investment.

If there's physical support required, then an apartment in the massively booming "Retirement Living" industry might be a good choice. Here's an example that costs ~$4,500/month, meaning you could probably pay 10 - 15 years after good money management from the sale of a median suburban house in these markets: [http://www.retirement.org/financial-info/home-cost- calculato...](http://www.retirement.org/financial-info/home-cost-calculator/)

The other option is to sell the house now to investors and use the equity to support living and healthcare costs. Then you simply move out at a more convenient later date (i.e. when you die): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_mortgage#When_the_loan_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_mortgage#When_the_loan_comes_due_3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Trulia has published a great analysis on this that really contradicts what the author claims: That you can get better homes for the same price by renting.

[http://trends.truliablog.com/2013/06/mortgage-rates-rent- vs-...](http://trends.truliablog.com/2013/06/mortgage-rates-rent-vs-buy/)

Moreover he claims you can get as nice of house in the same good neighborhood cheaper by renting. That's only true if you assume home prices will fall. Even if you just assume they will stay constant, backing out the principal you pay from your payment, the remainder most certainly does not buy a home of the same quality in area's I have a first hand knowledge of. Often homes that make it to the rental market are less desirable IME even if just because they are not cared for to the same standards.

</comment><comment><USER44> The part about high price/low interest rate vs the opposite was really helpful. I am trying to figure out how to think about this so it's well-timed. Thanks.

<comment><USER45> I have seen this argument (that higher interest rates will lead to lower prices), but it would be nice to see some historical (or at least anecdotal) evidence of it. I think at least one problem is that it assumes wages will remain flat. If wages start improving, home buyers will be able to spend more money on their mortgage each month which would tend to prop up prices.

<comment><USER10> The data is out there, but really it's common sense. On the margin, a buyer purchases a house with a monthly payment he/she can afford. The monthly payment is determined based on the purchase price of the house and the interest rate. The higher the rate, the higher the payment. If rates raise, the margin buyer will no longer be able to purchase the same priced house. Prices must fall to clear the market. Yes, increased wages could help make up for the gap. Wages do not have to rise with interest rates (stagflation).

<comment><USER45> I understand the theory, but when I look at the data it looks like:

[http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=mth](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=mth)

The last real period of rising mortgage rates was in the 70s. You can pretty clearly see that home prices were rising in spite of rising financing costs.

<comment><USER18> More like very early 80s.

On the other hand, the price of everything more than doubled in the 70s due to stagflation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> He's mostly right about low interest rates, but you can wait decades for interest rates to do what you want them to do.

</comment><comment><USER47> As we are on the topic, which percentage of your salary going to pay up rent would you consider "sane"?

Edit: I mean post tax. It's a cultural thing, in Italy we don't ever consider the gross salaries.

<comment><USER48> As a side note, when people say "percentage of your salary" are they referring to pre or post tax? This is never clear to me and I wish people would state it explicitly.

<comment> brown9-2 It should be post-tax, but I think a lot of people forget that their nominal salary is not all take-home pay.

<comment><USER48> I agree that it should be post tax, but nobody uses post-tax figures when stating how much money they make so it's often not clear which "15% of income" they are referring to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> "Because the housing bubble was not driven by supply and demand." .... except in San Francisco. Everyone wants to live here, and Facebook, Twitter, etc. are turning out paper millionaires by the bushel. Expect the house prices to tick up again once Twitter IPOs. There is some construction now[1] (just walk down Market street from the Castro), but I think the number of techie millionaires being minted seems to exceed the number of dwellings under construction.

Plus: there is the externality of outside money. I've heard of buyers from PRC paying cash down, sight unseen, for properties in desirable neighborhoods [2] [3]. A lot of the analysis such as the one in this article assumes a somewhat closed market; but outside money flowing in can change the dynamics significantly.

[1] [http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2013/07/25/the_40_most_notable...](http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2013/07/25/the_40_most_notable_new_developments_currently_under_construction.php) [2] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/07/10/chinese- to-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/07/10/chinese-to-spend- billions-on-american-real-estate/) [3] [http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/chinese-real- estate-b...](http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/chinese-real-estate- buyers-flocking-to-peninsula/Content?oid=2184205)

<comment><USER50> I would say the housing bubble was driven by supply and demand, just not traditional home-buying supply and demand. Houses were being treated as day- to-day commodities, which is bad for people who wish to actually live in houses and not make money off of them.

I was in Vegas during the start of the housing bubble and all I saw were investors buying houses to flip immediately for big profit selling to other investors who thought the same. Anyone who actually wanted to buy a house to live in was required to get caught up in a risky mortgage option that left many of them in serious problems when their house was suddenly worth less than half of what they owed on it.

We looked at a house at the start of the decline and offered $50,000 less than asking. They laughed at us and we stopped bothering to look. Less than a year later the same house was for sale for more than $100,000 less than our offer. The realtor who showed us houses later moved out-of-state so she could earn a living.

Someone I knew told me about his friend that bought a house, did bare updates to it, and sold it within a month for nearly a $100,000 profit. He was gleeful at the idea you could do such a thing. I told him that was good for his friend but incredibly bad for everyone else in the city. About a year or so later I was shown to be correct beyond my worst doomsday predictions.

I'm seeing the same things I saw in Vegas starting again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> So you're supposed to put at least 20% down on a house that costs no more than 3x your annual salary, and only buy when interest rates are high, home prices are low, and rents are high.

Easier said than done!

</comment><comment><USER52> Think this is all true, but when will any of these points be recognized by the masses? Never? 5 years?

<comment><USER53> Hopefully not until after my house sells ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I don't believe this to be correct:

"the renter - if willing and able to save his money - can buy a house outright in half the time that a conventional buyer can pay off a mortgage"

I don't think this is taking into account the rent that a renter pays. If a renter can just afford to pay a mortgage, then using the figures given (3% pa to rent, 8% pa to own) - that's 5% of the house value they're gaining p/a. At that, they can buy outright in 20 years. Is a typical mortgage 40 years?

<comment><USER55> You assume the 5% per annum is going entirely to equity. Consider that property taxes, HOA fees, utilities, mortgage interest and maintenance all contribute to the ~8% figure, and your p/a equity looks closer to 3%.

Now let's compare if you were to purchase stock/ETFs with that equity investment instead of investing in your house.

Let's do a housing-optimistic comparison. Let's say you get a 2% dividend (nothing special) on the stock and the stock price declines at 0.5% per year. For the house, let's say you gain 3% equity per year and the home price stays flat. Rent costs are 20% higher than your expenses for the house, so you can only gain equity in the stock at 80% the rate you do in the house.

Over the same time period that you would pay off your mortgage and get 100% equity in a $100,000 house, thanks to compounding interest, your stock is now worth $107,000. That means that you have 7% MORE value in stock--even though you paid 20% more rent for the entire period of investment AND the stock price tended to decline (slowly) over time.

If we adjust to something more balanced (3% equity per year, 3.5% dividend, stock price stays flat, rent costs are 15% higher) the result is even more dramatic: 53% more value in the stock option.

Of course, all these numbers would be better if backed up with real-world statistics, but it's something to think about.

<comment><USER54> I don't make any assumptions about that 8% - I used the figure and the assumptions from the original article.

If you rent, and put the difference into a savings account, then using the assumptions from the article, you'll be able to buy a house outright in 20 years.

I think you're pretty much agreeing with that..?

I am of course assuming that interest rates (or other return on investment), house prices, inflation and salary increases are all sensible, going in the same direction at the same rate, or near enough.

If you put your money in a pure tracker (e.g. tracking the Dow Jones, FTSE 100, or similar index), then you'll probably be better off in the long term, perhaps able to buy outright in a little less time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a lot of good technical advice here on pricing real estate, but it's colored by an absolute dislike/mistrust of debt.

Ultimately you have to ask yourself whether you see debt as a form of slavery, or as a financial tool that you can use to your advantage. If it's the former, you probably should not buy a house. If it's the latter, it _might_ make good sense to buy a house (even an expensive one) depending on the conditions.

</comment><comment><USER56> I don't know the US housing market very well but I think anybody discussing the national market as a whole is talking through their hat. Different areas are massively different and are going to react differently to stimuli like rate changes.

<comment><USER57> _Different areas are massively different and are going to react differently to stimuli like rate changes._

I agree with the first half of your sentence and disagree strongly with the second half. In many ways, a house works like a bond. The price moves inversely with the interest rate.

This is because, for most people, what determines affordability is the monthly payment. There are two factors involved in monthly payment:

1\. Amount borrowed

2\. Interest rate

Consider someone that can afford a monthly payment of $2,000 per month. That means that they can afford:

$541,097 borrowed @ 2.00%

$474,328 borrowed @ 3.00%

$418,922 borrowed @ 4.00%

$372,563 borrowed @ 5.00%

$333,583 borrowed @ 6.00%

$300,615 borrowed @ 7.00%

$272,566 borrowed @ 8.00%

You can see how the price of the house someone can afford is pushed down as interest rates go up. And here's the thing - the affordability population is a bell curve. Once you get above a certain payment per month, there aren't enough people above to replace the people disappearing below. That is, there are fewer people that can afford a $3,000 per month payment than can afford a $2,000 per month payment.

The bottom line? The article is spot on. You don't buy a house when interest rates are low and expected to go up.

<comment><USER58> You likely won't get high interest rates like 8% unless you have higher inflation rates. So someone who makes 2000/month right now, by the time the Interest rates increase to 8%, their salary would have Also increased.

<comment><USER57> I happen to be an expert on this topic (i.e. I work as the technology person on a fixed income trading desk managing $28 billion of assets including a few billion in mortgage backed securities).

 _You likely won 't get high interest rates like 8% unless you have higher inflation rates_

This is completely wrong. The only thing preserving low interest rates is the Fed purchasing mortgage backed securities (see [http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/mbs_faq.html](http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/mbs_faq.html)). When that stops, interest rates will go up dramatically. You could argue that the Fed will only stop doing that once inflation kicks in but that is not true. The Fed is on extremely thin ice as it is now. They're only supposed to purchase and sell Treasuries for their open market operations ([http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/openmarket.htm](http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/openmarket.htm)) and manipulating the mortgage market is significantly outside of their charter.

 _So someone who makes 2000 /month right now, by the time the Interest rates increase to 8%, their salary would have Also increased._

There are literally millions of possibilities that could happen that don't fit your theory. Never heard of stagflation?

My goal is not to write a dissertation in an HN comment so that's enough for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Considering the interest rate is lower than the inflation, what would be some other items to invest $100k to generate some guaranteed income? (except stock, where you could also lose money)

<comment><USER55> You make a pretty big assumption here: that anything you can invest in to earn money passively CAN be guaranteed. What you mean by "generate guaranteed income" is "to allow me to grow my investment". After all, investing $100k in a house that loses 10% of its value is worse than just keeping the $100k in dollar bills. In fact, if it is still worth $100k nominal down the line means you lost 2-3% per year on your investment. So after mortgage, property tax, maintenance, and everything else, your renters would have to cover about 7-9% of your home's value every year for you to make a 2-3% margin.

What I've found is that the reward is always proportional to the risk-- otherwise people invest in it until it isn't proportional anymore.

Please investigate this for yourself, but personally, I take a two-way split- risk strategy to grow my investments:

\- Very high risk, very high reward investments that I thoroughly research and believe extremely strongly in, using money I can afford to entirely lose.

\- Very conservative investments in indexing ETFs that have rock-bottom annual fees and decent dividends.

Here's an article you might find interesting:

[http://www.npr.org/2013/06/05/188306471/resisting-the- tempta...](http://www.npr.org/2013/06/05/188306471/resisting-the-temptation- to-win-when-investing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Nice post...I wish you had talked about market disruption and the failure of cities as agencies of change.

The realtors' lock on transactions and the lack of transparency in the marketplace is one issue.

The antiquated and closed-source zoning standards are another.

And the building industry in general, hindered by trade unions, et al, is yet another.

Just like disrupting Hollywood would (might) get us better movies, disrupting the RE industry will (might) eliminate overbuilding (and under-building, where applicable) and stabilize prices.

</comment><comment><USER61> I read this on patrick.net years ago-- a lot of it is quite outdated now. Basically the housing market nationwide is quite strong. Whether it will last is another question.

Just one example of the article's outdatedness-- the jumbo mortgage market is doing great now:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-03/wealthy-going- big-t...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-03/wealthy-going-big-to-save- as-jumbo-mortgages-are-cheapest.html)

</comment><comment><USER62> I bought a 1-bedroom condo for $500k in downtown SF and put 20% down payment. The monthly mortgage+HOA+tax is around $2500 and I am renting the place out for $2650. So you can say it is paying for itself and 15-years later I will own the place without paying anything but the down payment. Not bad?

</comment><comment><USER63> Unless it's in NYC and you got the rates right when they were at the bottom.

Article is very useful, but it's one of those that gives 'here are x reasons'. Yes, but come up with determining how to make a decision instead

<comment><USER64> Did you read the article? It actually has some nice rules of thumb on how to compare the price of a house to the rent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> a low probability, high impact tidal wave could be the switch to remote working. If remote working catches on in corporate america, it will wipe out the value of a lot of homes in higher priced areas.

</comment><comment><USER66> Shouldn't the post be renamed "10 Reasons it is a Terrible Time to Buy an Expensive House, _in the US_ "? It sounds like a general article but it's really only about the US.

<comment><USER18> If you research housing bubble related issues, its currently worse outside the US "in general". Canada, China, Europe, India especially, Dubai, Australia...

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> It's a fantastic time to buy an expensive house. Interest rates are so low due to the Fed that money is essentially free. I will be keeping my 30 year mortgage for the next 30 years.

</comment><comment><USER68> 0) I have no money.

</comment><comment><USER69> If you can pay off the mortgage quickly, the low interest rate discount works in your favor.

</comment><comment><USER70> No time is a good time to buy a house, never buy.

</comment><comment><USER71> There are a perilous lack of actual facts backing this up (and some red flags disclaimers like "in expensive areas". What does that even mean from a statistical perspective). For instance I would instant call bullshit on the rent versus owning notion based on basic economics (when rents are less than the price of the mortgage, _people don 't rent out houses_. The notion makes absolutely no sense).

Even more indicting is the description of the nationwide market as a singular, when there are _enormously_ different realities across the nation.

<comment><USER72> > when rents are less than the price of the mortgage, people don't rent out > houses. The notion makes absolutely no sense

So they're just going to let the house sit empty? Buying/selling a house is a long term proposition because of transaction costs. Partially covering a mortgage payment temporarily is better than not recovering it at all.

If the rent payments can't cover the mortgage, they're probably going to take a hefty loss on sale, if they can sell the house at all.

<comment><USER71> Awesome, so show me (I don't literally demand that you do, but rather mean anyone) actual data of rents that are lower than corresponding mortgages. Anecdotal evidence is very, very much to the contrary.

<comment><USER72> Examples are rare, because they require a perfect storm of market conditions. I'm not challenging that, just the notion that it "makes no sense".

If you don't have enough equity to cover your loss on a sale, it absolutely can make sense to take a small hit on recurring mortgage payments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> He kinda ignored supply and demand.

<comment><USER74> Point 6 in the article is about supply and demand.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you use to keep track of a backlog on solo projects? - <AUTHOR> How do you keep track of a backlog/roadmap when building something solo?  Do you find that it is even helpful to do so at all? <comment><USER2> I use gitlab's issue.

yes, helpful. I need to prioritize the issues.

Sometimes I get unmotivated on my project. I found setting a concrete and small goal and focus on the goal can help me make progress. I force myself to check off 3 bugs on the bug board everyday.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think it's generally helpful to keep a backlog of something one is building by oneself. The reason is that a solo developer is able to hold in their short term memory what they are working on now and what needs to be done after.

Backlog is good when multiple developers are working on a project because it can make tasks assignable and prevent overlap of work. But in a solo endeavor, keeping a backlog tend to become a mere formality that slows one down.

I guess my claim depends on the complexity of the project, but I think complexity of project that one developer can handle might be limited such that keeping a backlog is not really worth the effort.

</comment><comment><USER4> For short-term items, I use pen and paper.

For long-term ones, I use TODO notes scattered around my Rails codebase. I have segmented those items into 3 categories: high, medium, and low. Whenever I create a new TODO note, I append one of those categories to it (e.g. TODO[low]).

Rails has a built-in command that displays all those items (`rails notes`). To filter items by the category, I pipe the output from that command to ripgrep:

        rails  notes | rg -S low

</comment><comment><USER5> Trello. I find it quite useful, as I manage everything I need to do outside of my job there. Home repairs, coding projects, art and photography projects, and I keep a backlog of ideas I've had in case I even get time and energy to build out more things.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use Trello.

I have a public board that's a hybrid between kanban and idea board. You can see it here:

[https://trello.com/b/J7mG9H3X/world-generator- kanban](https://trello.com/b/J7mG9H3X/world-generator-kanban)

</comment><comment><USER7> Currently I'm using a combination of Google Docs for notes and todos, Google Notes for bookmarks/research and Google Sheets for keeping track of financing and marketing. Easy to use and really powerful.

</comment><comment><USER8> GitHub issues.

</comment><comment><USER9> Pen and paper.</comment>


ASK HN: Reverse Van Eck Phreaking? Van Eck Code Injection - <AUTHOR>

I've been reading up on Van Eck Phreaking, and just had a though. Does anyone think that it would be possible to force instructions to the CPU using wireless signals, or even just disrupt the pipeline using strong EM interference? <comment><USER2> You can definitely screw electronics up. Try putting a cell phone or other digital device in a microwave oven, you will blow all the transistors in it.

The same microwave tube, removed from the microwave, and connected to a horn antenna, will crash a computer if it is pointed at it. Just watch out for your eyes, because they are the easiest part of you to cook.

I think hitting that sweet spot where you could inject specific code would be impossible or hard, but definitely if you want a crash you can get a crash.</comment>


PRQ Police Raid Takes Down Dozens of File-Sharing Sites - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/prq-police-raid-takes-down-dozens-of-file-sharing-sites-121001/

<comment><USER2> Well, that's too bad. You'd hope that the more prominent sites would've foreseen these sorts of incidents and put backup measures into place, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.</comment>


Show HN: DevSpace – I made an app to stay organised with your coding projects - <AUTHOR> https://getdevspace.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

I've always had issues organising my local coding projects and finding resources I need. Almost everybody seems to have some sort of a ~/Projects directory, myself included, with all projects as sub directories.

But things are still messy.

So I set out to solve my problem. My major concern has to do with privacy and security so I made sure to be working on those areas by having a desktop app working entirely offline and that doesn't edit any of the project's file.

Ready to know what do you think AND I hope it can help some of you as well!</comment>


CareCloud Raises $2.3M - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/19/carecloud-funding/

<comment><AUTHOR> Starting CareCloud has been the ride of a lifetime. If anyone has further interest I'm open for any conversations.</comment>


This City's Overdose Deaths Have Plunged. Can Others Learn from It? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/25/health/opioid-overdose-deaths-dayton.html <comment><USER2> TL;DR: The Times tries to sell a narrative, but when you look at their sources, you find that:

1) They give no data specific to Dayton; they take countywide data and attribute all the "positives" to Dayton;

2) The data is utterly wrong. They simultaneously claim that there were 566 overdose deaths in 2016 _in Montgomery County alone_ , but their other source for Ohio as a whole says that 2016 had only 564 overdose deaths in 2016 _in the entire state of Ohio_.

Something literally doesn't add up.</comment>


You seem to be using an ad blocker... pay up - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/CDXt1 <comment><USER2> I know many people won't like it, and it may send visitors away, but it's their right to have this in place. I think it could catch on and it wouldn't really be unfair.</comment>


DataCollection.js – Manipulate data from API responses with ease - <AUTHOR> http://thestorefront.github.io/DataCollection.js/

<comment><USER2> Seems cool!</comment>


Exploit vendor drops Tor Browser zero-day on Twitter (for previous version) - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/exploit-vendor-drops-tor-browser-zero-day-on-twitter/? <comment><USER2> "This Tor Browser exploit was acquired by Zerodium many months ago as a zero- day and was shared with our government customers."

That doesn't sound good.

<comment><USER3> Selling vulnerabilites is big business. It's controversial for sure. In a panel discussion at Ruxcon years ago, Rantyben talked about how he relied on selling exploits for a living.

I wonder if this particular exploit was used in the FBI/playpen case.</comment></comment>


$30 Toll to Use Express Lanes - <AUTHOR> http://www.fox5dc.com/news/local-news/227343072-story <comment><USER2> Seems like an example of supply and demand working as intended.

<comment><USER3> Yup. The inheritors of wealth and other rich people get to ride fast on nearly-empty roads, and the rest of the population has to be crammed onto fewer, slower roads, causing a positive feedback loop.

Works just as intended, provided you're one of the ones who can afford it.

Snark aside, "supply and demand" fails to fairly set price when the demand is inelastic -- e.g. when people need to drive home in the snow after work, and there are limited other options. As for the toll road being built "for that purpose," remember when the government was supposed to build roads for all it citizens, not just those who could afford it?

<comment><USER4> > Snark aside, "supply and demand" fails to fairly set price when the demand > is inelastic

I wish more people could peek under this hood rather than simply posthoc rationalize every price increase with "demand-supply" theory. For the concept to work, you need to have many things in "control". Therefore, I simply ask everyone who uses that argument to justify me that price that they rationalize. In other words, you can use the "demand-supply" argument for any price $60, or $100. How is $30 the actual price that demand-supply has set?

<comment><USER5> The point of the supply/demand curve is that there is a price at which revenue is optimized.

In this case $30 is the price they've determined they will make the most money. Charge more and too many customers will drop out to justify the increase. Charge less and you're leaving money on the table.

<comment><USER3> > where they've determined they will make the most money

But is that supposed to be the goal of surge-pricing on a public, state-built road? Or is it supposed to be about easing congestion?

If the aim of the government was to always find the price at which they could make the most money possible, we'd live in a very different place.

<comment> nommm-nommm The road in question isn't really a public, state-built road.

[https://www.expresslanes.com/project- background](https://www.expresslanes.com/project-background)

> In 2007, VDOT finalized a long-term partnership agreement with Capital > Beltway Express, LLC – a consortium led by Transurban that would design, > build, operate, finance and maintain the $2 billion HOT lanes project. > Transurban and its partners provided a substantial upfront equity commitment > to help fund construction and financed the rest of the project through > private activity bonds and a TIFIA loan. The partnership enabled Virginia to > leverage private capital to translate every one state tax dollar into four > dollars of transportation improvements.

>Construction, managed by Fluor-Lane, began in 2008 and the new lanes opened for business in 2012.

>In 2014, Transurban invested an additional $280 million of equity to put the project on solid financial footing following impacts of the global financial crisis. The private sector has assumed the long-term financial risk for the project, including full responsibility to pay back all project debt.

<comment><USER6> The term of art is "public private partnership".

It's a ridiculous notion -- the government has the ability to raise capital far more cheaply than private capital markets, and revenue from toll-roads is one of the most reliable revenue streams that exist. It's not zero-risk, but pretty close.

It's just a scheme to move debt to somebody else's books, and make more money for various parties. It also provides fertile ground to re-direct anger from government operational incompetence or underinvestment, like plowing in such a way that you create miles of gridlock instead of doing things like pre- treating the road surface to avoid plowing during peak travel times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Almost before anyone cites supply/demand:

> the company (said) two salt and plow trucks were working on the southbound > Express Lanes on I-495 and I-95, causing traffic to slow and increasing the > toll on those lanes.

So no one was going anywhere because of salting and plowing yet the tolls were unaffected and they increased the premium - which would have changed... nothing.

<comment><USER8> So the problem here is more of a faulty algorithm?

<comment><USER9> Less a "faulty algorithm" and more a moral hazard. The intent of the rules is to limit usage during periods of congestion _not_ caused by the road operators themselves. The distinction is that human actors are not moral-free mechanisms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yet another money grab by the government, as if the nearly 60% tax rate isn't enough (federal, state, sales, fuel, DMV, etc).

They did this the classical way too, introduce it at ridiculously low prices <$1 just to get the system in place and then they've wasted very little time in raising prices.

Ive used them in the SF Bay Area and Los Angeles where they converted car pool lanes to be express ways and carpool lanes.

It would be great if they were forced to provide evidence that they actually work because to the casual observer they don't work.

To those arguing that driving is a privilege, supply demand etc, get off your high horses. It's tough getting to work in these cities without a car, it sucks seeing lanes taken away and give to the wealthy, and it sucks even more to have the government take even more money without evidence of results.

</comment><comment><USER11> I live in the DC area and what people don't understand here is last year we had a massive congestion disaster when the first snow hit during rush hour. People were trapped on the roads for hours as the conditions got worse. I had a coworker leave work at 4:00pm and didn't get home till 11:00.

I would have had no problems what so ever paying $30 to not be stuck in that again. $30 less than going out to dinner here.

</comment><comment><USER12> The crazy thing is, AFAIK, it's based on real-time demand on the expressway itself and makes it more expensive when that is more crowded. So you get to pay more, just to drive behind other people. You'd think it would be slightly different, where if it's clearer than the road it's bypassing and traffic on _that_ road is really slow, then raise the price.

</comment><comment><USER13> I take this road, and while I feel a free market is great (which this isn't, there are only really 2 choices, my way or the highway), this is absolutely ridiculous. The problem is if I decide to take this route I have to go out of my way to get there. Then if I see that it's $30 I need to turn around and backtrack for like 10 minutes to take another route.

And we aren't talking about a long stretch of road. If it was 20 miles and it saved me an hour, awesome! We are talking about A FEW MILES and for my route it saves about 15 minutes.

And I might even sing a different tune if EZPass wasn't such an awful system. When you take a trip on the east coast and you forget to fill your stupid EZPass up manually beforehand, get ready for a ton of tickets! Oh, you remembered the morning of your trip, thank god! NOPE. F U. It takes like 2 days to process your payment.

F EZPASS AND THE HORSE IT CAME IN ON.

Not that I am mad or anything.

<comment><USER14> >> and you forget to fill your stupid EZPass up manually beforehand

Why aren't you on autopay? This is a problem of your own making. I have the same, exact EZPass you have and I never have this problem.

<comment><USER13> I'm on autopay! If you use too much in one day it hits the bottom and then takes 2 days to process the new payment.

<comment><USER14> That makes zero sense. Are you sure you're tickets weren't from speeding through the EZPass kiosk?

<comment><USER13> I know, that's why I hate it! I am looking at one now and I see no indication it was speeding.

I got 4 tickets when I drove up to Maine during the summer. Luckily, since it autopayed AFTER that day driving up it was full for the ride back.

<comment><USER13> Oh, you can contest the ticket, that sounds great! So you contest it, get a confirmation email, then 30 days later they send you another bill with a late fee. Absolutely nothing happens.

Want another awesome EZPass story? They have a version with a switch so you can ride HOV if you have 3 people in the car in certain circumstances. So I got one. Since I didn't actually use that feature in the first 30 or 60 days or whatever they told me I had to send it back.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, but the EZPass flex option is pretty clearly stated that you have to send it back if you don't use it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Elastic pricing is whole point of the toll lanes. They are supposed to be stupid expensive when traffic is heavy; otherwise, it would just be another lane

That said, I use them all of the time during non peak hours so I can drive 75-80 without being 10+ over speed limit. (Most express lanes in the DFW are set to 75. The express lanes in the Delmarva area are pretty lame in this regard. They don't even give you a speed bump. It's purely a "pay to suffer less" service.)

</comment><comment><USER17> Google maps consistently attempts to route you onto these lanes if you are travelling on the west beltway, which is annoying. They have an option to "skip tolls", which might work but isn't the same thing -- there's a difference between opt-in tolls and tolls that are required to use a bridge or highway.

</comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone know of other cities / areas using this type of pricing? It sounds like this is pretty new, and I'd be interested in seeing any research / studies on the long term impact of this kind of pricing.

I could see how it is both useful and could have a disproportionate, negative impact on lower social-economic classes.

<comment><USER19> I-95 in South Florida. Currently it maxes out at $10 but I heard they are increasing it to $20.

Not sure if there has been any research, but yes I have heard on the radio how some people are against the express lanes because it does have a negative impact for those who can't afford it, and it's quite dangerous.[1] The latter might be due to a bad implementation however.

[1] [https://www.kairelaw.com/car-accidents/lane-diving- make-i-95...](https://www.kairelaw.com/car-accidents/lane-diving- make-i-95-deadly/)

<comment><USER20> It seems like a positive impact for people who can't afford it here in Northern Virgina. The express lanes didn't take capacity away from the normal lanes, but they do take away some traffic, so in theory people who don't use them should still be better off.

<comment><USER19> Ah, right. I think down here the problem is that the capacity for normal lanes did get reduced.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, that's a substantial difference. If it's purely additive then at worst there's some sort of opportunity cost. If they transform normal lanes into paid lanes then it's a whole different sort of thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Couple weeks back due to ice and accidents, the toll got up to $60. People were still willing to pay.

And they are HOT-3 lanes. With the proper EZ-pass transponder and 2 passengers, you flip a switch and pay no toll.

I used to commute to Alexandria for work. Would spend about $15 a day for tolls to use the Express Lanes. Totally worth it.

</comment><comment><USER22> At first I was appalled.. but then -- screw you and your cars (myself included). It is a horrible solution that we've had for decades, and something has to change. There's no better way than a suplex to the wallet.

</comment><comment><USER23> Wonder if there will be any exemptions for high occupancy or EVs or whatever. Not necessarily saying there should be, but wouldn't be the first time a 'special' lane has exemptions.

<comment><USER24> I was just thinking yesterday that I wish there was some way to "call in" with a time to have the toll removed when car pooling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> _Because toll prices are based on demand, it is difficult to predict exactly what the tolls will be at any given time._

Why should toll prices be based on demand?

<comment><USER20> Because the whole point of these express lanes is that they're (supposed to be) always moving quickly and never congested. The price is set to whatever it takes to achieve that. People who don't want to pay can take the normal lanes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sounds like NoVa/DC. Nothing to see here.</comment>