Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

Re:Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real est... by horsawlarway on Saturday August 13, 2022 @09:36AM (#32449736)

It's not about regulation, it's about replace-ability. Food prices stay low because corn is corn, regardless of who grew it - it fills the same need. In many cases, even food that's not a direct match is still a perfectly valid replacement (ex: I need to eat 2000 calories, but it doesn't matter all too much what food is providing them).

This is utterly untrue for real estate, which is about as non-fungible as you can get.

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Re:Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real est... by Blackstone4 on Saturday August 13, 2022 @10:08AM (#32450029)

You raise an interesting point regarding fungibility…I wonder that with growing insitutional involvement, whether housing may move down the spectrum and may become more fungible… probably not by much tho

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Re:Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real est... by horsawlarway on Saturday August 13, 2022 @01:10PM (#32451781)

Yeah, I think that's an interesting point - if the goal is just to have a roof over your head close to where you work, institutional involvement may be able to help there (large apartment complexes and high rises are the old school methods of creating housing units that are mostly the same as each other).

I think the issue is that housing is intrinsically tied to real estate, and real estate (at large) likely won't become much more fungible. Land is just really complicated, and the uses for it aren't all that exchangeable.

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