Almost everyone in tech now agrees that running your own servers is a bad idea. If the internet in your office goes down, or if a server crashes, or software upgrade is done wrong your website crashes. It is far easier and cheaper to simply host it on AWS or 1and1 or any of the hundreds of other providers who will guarantee uptime and take care of all of these issues for you.
Why then is owning your own home the American Dream? I have been a homeowner for a year and it is a gigantic pain compared to renting. As a renter, every issue was taken care of for me. Now as a homeowner, I have had to deal with a leaking pool, ants colonizing my living room, an AC unit not working properly, and other stuff… And that’s just in the last month. When I moved in I had to spend thousands redoing the ventilation along with a long list of other work.
I hate being a homeowner and would rather have a fairly priced rental market. Laws in America though force people towards owning… The mortgage interest deduction, the incredibly painful regulations that prevent building of good, cheap new housing, etc.
I wish there was an AWS for home renting or some form of ownership where I didn’t have to do hours every day maintaining a house.
Tokyo is a fantastic city, I spent two weeks there and loved it. It is extremely clean and safe, loads of good restaurants and entertainment, and good outdoor spaces. If I could speak the language and work there, I would move in a second.
California is in no danger of being overpopulated… Single family homes are a brain dead way to live. Every homeowner has to spend hours a day maintaining his house… We stopped running our own internet servers after the first ten years of the web. Why can’t we do the same with housing? Convert everything to medium (4 story buildings) or high (10+ story) density housing. You would completely get rid of suburban sprawl and everyone rich and poor could live within a mile of the ocean or mountains, walk or ride a five minute train to work, and solve climate change at the same time.
The real solution is to greatly loosen building regulation and make getting permits much faster and easier statewide. Then entrepreneurs will double or triple the housing supply and drop the costs of renting or buying a home by 80%. You could see rents go from $2500 per month in LA to $1000 a month or less.
Did you not do your due diligence BEFORE buying your home? The TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is obviously MORE than just the mortgage in both time and money. Did you have the home inspected before the purchase? Also how many HOURS do you spend in a day maintaining your house? I might spend HOURS a month performing maintenance (including mowing the lawn). You also seem to gloss over the fact if the state (or anyone for that matter) DID build clustered housing the entire infrastructure for the area would have to be designed to allow for the increased traffic, parking, utilities, etc. While find the idea a cool idea for a second vacation home, not everyone might share your desire to move into such a structure. Finally, you can’t “loosen” building regulations for building designed to contain large clusters of people or you get mass casualty event the first time a strong earthquake, utility explosion or a fire occurs. The regulations are there with the intention of protecting people who do not have the knowledge to properly protect themselves.