When is owning property a good idea?

Looking to buy or sell property? Buying and owning property comes with some complications. You may have noticed some the news lately.

Confiscation of property by government

Above the fold in J.J. Sefton's Morning Report yesterday was this:

NJ smirks and cites 'eminent domain' to seize a 175-year-old farm so it can build welfare housing

Per a report at Fox News, township officials in the unincorporated community of Cranbury, NJ are in the process of seizing a historic family farm that has been under the family’s ownership for 175 years—that means since 1850—because they want to use it for a welfare housing project. . .

I absolutely hate this.

The report above is timely, because Monday was the 20th anniversary of one of the worst Supreme Court Decisions ever:

20 years ago today, SCOTUS ruled 5-4 that the government could legally take a person's property and give it to a private company using eminent domain.

The case arose when a city took Suzette Kelo's home to transfer the property to Pfizer, under the guise that doing so would… pic.twitter.com/xqBS9wakBM

— Connor Boyack 📚 (@cboyack) June 23, 2025

Information from 2010 on the case from representatives of the loser. It just looks worse and worse the more you learn:

In 2001, Pfizer, Inc., moved to New London, Conn., as part of a project that involved massive corporate welfare and led to the abuse of eminent domain, culminating in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Kelo v. City of New London. This past November, however, Pfizer announced it will close its New London research and development headquarters. This marks the end of an eminent domain error.

New London created a redevelopment plan that gave land to Pfizer at a nominal cost and provided free environmental cleanup to the site. The plan also called for redevelopment of an area called Fort Trumbull, a working-class neighborhood adjacent to the Pfizer headquarters. It housed approximately 70 to 80 homes, as well as a few small businesses and an abandoned Navy base. The plan called for this area to be replaced by an upscale hotel, office buildings and new housing. This redeveloped area would “complement” the new Pfizer facility, leading to increased taxes and job growth for New London—or so the city promised. The state agreed to provide $78 million for the project. Pfizer received an 80 percent tax abatement for 10 years.

Keep in mind, when the five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against our clients—holding that taking property for “economic development” does not violate the U.S. Constitution’s Takings Clause—the justices stressed that there was a plan in place, and that so long as lawmakers who looked to use eminent domain for someone’s private gain had a plan, the courts would wash their hands. Now, nearly five years after the redevelopment scheme passed constitutional muster, the plant that was the magnet for the development is closing its doors just as its tax abatements expire. The very land where Susette Kelo’s home once stood remains barren—home to nothing but feral cats, seagulls and weeds.

For years, the disastrous Fort Trumbull project will be Exhibit A in demonstrating the folly of government plans that involve corporate welfare and abuse eminent domain for private development.

What does this do to quality of building?

Because you don't build for the future when the state can nuke your equity at any moment by throwing up some Affordable Housing next door

Nobody owns anything, so nobody bothers building anything

It's the same reason the Borderers lives in sod huts

This brings up another point.

Why didn't the "white flight" era just result in the building of new high quality cities by the flighters?

Because that civilization was already over by the 60s.

The old cities were actually a zero sum, non-renewable, resource by then.

Any ideas about how to improve those old cities or suburbs?

The Magical Mayoral Candidate in NYC

This guy openly says he wants to tax "whiter" neighborhoods at a higher rate. I guess he fits right in with the race-obsessed Democrat party. (NY Post article) https://t.co/ldgwK7TsZI

— Bo Snerdley (@BoSnerdley) June 28, 2025

cut.jib.newsletter:

Can't wait to see what he has planned for Crown Heights, Borough Park and Williamsburg. A torchlight parade with Al Sharpton as grand cyclops, er Marshal!. Protected as free speech by the ACLU, of course!

Corporate Involvement

Grab a beer, we are going to talk markets and people who put their finger on the scale of them. (And no, this isn’t a thread about the small hat people, so just stop)

Almost all of Salt Lake City’s housing woes can be told in the story of this one house. pic.twitter.com/4UuXdkbIhS

— Voödoo 6 von Inyanga (@6Voodoo) June 21, 2025

The American residential real estate market used to be pretty simple. I invest in my house, hoping the market goes up and when it is time to sell, I sell it for a profit. Homes were huge purchases. The biggest most people made.

But somewhere along the line, corporate entities big and small learned they made pretty good investments. So the corporate entities started buying houses, in speculative neighborhoods, and just sat on them. Maybe they rented them, maybe not. But that decreases the supply.

Because supply requires the desire to sell at a fair market value. Think of it like a stock. You buy a stock and sit on it. But if that was the only stock you could buy, and had to sell it to buy another, you would accept a lower price for that stock. Same with houses.

But it has been on the market over 100 days. If you were selling your house, would you let it sit? No, you would lower the price again and again until it sold. . .

No, you would lower the price again and again until it sold. But that’s not what Carl did. They bought the house, and sat on it. Sure they tried to sell it, but no one paid the price they wanted, so they just sat. And over time, their estimated gains went up with the neighborhood

And in that time they rented it out, which doesn't help people improve, and you may say “hey Voödoo, I can’t just sit on this property for a decade, I’d go bankrupt.” You would, yes, but Karl won’t. Because he is paying on average $800 a year in taxes.

So if they bought the house for 120k, and plan to sell it for 320, they could hold it for 250 years before they lost money. That’s right.

Ideas for fixing this are proposed. What do you think?

Could you build a new small community?

How about your own home in which you could move away from some of the government and corporate complications, with room for dogs, a hydroponic garden and a pet spider?

I’ve been on many school buses, but never one like this. It’s incredibly beautiful! 🚌 pic.twitter.com/CtQu2HSVjI

— Trump Girl (@TrumpGirlLove) June 26, 2025

WEEKEND

The Week In Pictures: Bombs Away Edition

Music

Sal's got mud between her toes

Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

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posted by K.T. at 11:00 AM

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