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Return-to-office policies are driving people to sell their homes - even at a loss
(finance.yahoo.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Crash the housing market to save the office building market
The housing market needs to crash. Prices nationwide are insane. Bubble needs to pop
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(5 replies)
I'm OK with that, the housing market is in a giant bubble and it needs to crash. I say that as someone who bought a house at the lowest price point right at the start of the pandemic, combined with an incredibly low interest rate. Theoretically my home is worth almost 50% more now, 4 years later.
Thaaaaat's a bubble.
Theoretically my home is worth almost 50% more now, 4 years later.
Yep, and having your house have a higher paper value doesn't help you much at all as a home buyer that lives in the place. Your taxes go up in most localities, and it makes upgrading that much more impossible because everything else went up in price too.
It only helps if you want to move to some other place where prices are much lower, which I'm good on moving to Idaho or whatever.
It's great for your paper net worth.....yay. 🙄
tbf, this is probably suburban / rural areas to move back into urban areas that are already having crises. Won't fix any of the housing markets in high population centers.
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(1 replies)
"My sellers both work at the same company, which told them they have to be in the office three days a week or they'll lose their jobs. They have six months to make the move. They'll probably have to take a $100,000 loss on their home," Pendleton said.
Pretty sure I would rent out the home instead of taking a $100,000 loss? Rent something to live in where you're moving to until it's more favorable to sell.
Six months is plenty of time to find a new job these days.
In a lot of these WFH communities, the rental market softened with the rest of the housing market, so you might not have renters or have to take a hit on the rent. Also, being a landlord more than a commute-able distance away from your property sounds like asking for trouble, unless you hire a property manager, but that's another hit to your income.
Even if the market in some of these more remote areas softened a bit, I think taking a $100,000 hit over one year is crazy, though. Even if you lose $100 or $200 per month renting it out, that's a long ways from $100,000. Meanwhile, you're paying off the mortgage and building equity.
Rent to own is also an option.
That assumes you can get a back to ground be you two mortgages though.
This is an excellent opportunity for corporations to buy up homes.
The rich will only get richer until we stand up.
Yeah, that's nuts. Also, as a couple you both probably shouldn't be working for the same company from a risk reduction POV.
I’m pretty sure I’d stay put and not move back. Let’s be honest. An employer can and will terminate you for practically any reason or no reason at all. Selling a house you bought in a place you want to live in hopes of maintaining a toxic relationship that will end on a whim (your job) barely makes sense from an economic perspective and makes no sense from any other.
To put it in perspective… if you had an emotionally abusive boyfriend who insisted you had to sell your house and move in with him, would you do it? If you relied on him for half your income, would you do it? If the answer to those questions are “yes” then you’re gonna love selling your house because of RTO. If you have any self respect, the very notion of this would make you dust off your resume and resignation letter.
I definitely agree. I was just commenting from a purely financial perspective. Doesn't really make sense to take a $100,000 hit when you could rent it out and move and probably at least break even while continuing to build equity.
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(1 replies)
After seeing the headline, I thought it would be people moving farther away to be outside of the RTO radius. Instead its people moving closer to work because they are cities/states away with WFH.
A lot of companies (Amazon) don't have a radius. It's RTO or nothing.
nothing it is, then
I told my boss the other day my upper limit for in office time is one a week. We were 3 days a week before COVID, 0 during COVID, 1 a month after COVID, and just this month they upped it to twice a month.
Hell, if I stopped coming in at all right now there is no way in hell they'd fire me anyway. We have too much stuff to do and not enough time to do it. I know people think that but we've got contractual obligations to fill and new regulations to follow. It'd cost them way more to fire me and miss those deadlines waiting for new hires to get up to speed.
Dude, just don't go. If you're doing your job from home, why are they asking you to burn fuel and your time on earth sitting in fucking traffic???
If more people stood up for themselves, we wouldn't have this problem in the first place.
It would be a lot easier to sell RTO if rent weren't outrageously high anywhere near a downtown central business district. I prefer office personally and don't mind a 20 minute commute or so but any more than that is a real drag. It's real hard for me to tell someone to fight an hour and a half of rush hour traffic just to get to the office and be harassed for 8-12 hours and then do it all again at night.