5 ms·

so as a society, it would be better to have a handful of house owners collecting the rent of everyone else? Is that a good allocation to you?

• aianus 10y ago
  Yes. Owning your own home is like cooking your own food. It might be cheaper but only if you don't value your own time or have anything better to do. There's a reason why even rich, successful businesses rent office space instead of buying. They just can't manage a property as efficiently as the companies that focus on that.
  • standel 10y ago
    Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, HP and many others would certainly not agree with you. They cook their own food, own lot of real estate and I am pretty sure they don't think it's time they lost. These big companies do not manage one single house (office). They manage a real estate portfolio. Most of big companies have a mix of rented and acquired office space. Ultimately, owning real estate or not is an investment decision. Some big companies, like HP recently, went from owning most of its real estate to sell large chunk of it ... Reason is to get some cash flow and to rationalise some expenses. But not because someone else could manage better their real estate.
    • Veen 10y ago
      That's because they have a lot of superfluous capital and cash flow that needs investing somewhere. If your profits aren't like Apple's it's often smarter to rent and use the capital for something else.
    • Grishnakh 10y ago
      It's not just real estate. I'm not sure about today, but in the 2000s when I worked at Intel, they owned their own jet planes. They had so many employees flying between certain cities they had locations in, that it was more cost-effective for them to operate their own mini-airline. Outsourcing stuff always costs more, because you have to pay for the profit of the company you're outsourcing to. It's worth it when it's something you don't do that much of, or aren't very good at, but if you do a lot of it, it's worth it to do it yourself. For an extreme example, think about printing: is it worth it to outsource all your computer printing needs to a specialized printing company? Or should you just buy a laser printer for $100-500 and do it yourself? It doesn't take very much printing for it to be a massive waste to pay someone else to print stuff for you.
  • criddell 10y ago
    > It might be cheaper but only if you don't value your own time or have anything better to do. No way. My family of four eats around $250 of food every week. That works out to $3 per person per meal. The other expenses would have to total more than $600 before we would break even eating fast food every day. The food we make at home is considerably better than fast food, so I think it would cost an extra $1000 to eat out than cook at home.
    • aianus 10y ago
      It takes ten minutes to earn $10 doing software engineering. In no universe am I cooking a better meal in less time.
      • Jtsummers 10y ago
        If you strictly want to maximize your money, you're probably making the best choice for yourself. For many of us, time with family, friends, hobbies, is a relaxing and physically/mentally/emotionally healthy thing to engage in, rather than trying to exploit every waking hour for income.
        • aianus 10y ago
          So instead of spending time with the family, friends, and hobbies you'd rather slave away in front of a stove to save $600/mo?
          • Jtsummers 10y ago
            I don't slave. It takes me 30 minutes or so to have a complete meal most nights. But only, perhaps, 10 minutes of my time. I start the rice as soon as I get in from the gym. Meats and vegetables get prepared after my shower. If it involves the stove, they're done in approximately ten minutes for most of my recipes. If it involves the oven, I may spend up to ten minutes in total on prep before tossing them in to bake. I guess I don't make the most involved meals, but they certainly taste good. EDIT: Besides, why can't the time I spend cooking be with my family or friends? Not like my home is big, if my girlfriend doesn't want to be in the open floor plan kitchen/living room/dining room and would rather hide in the bedroom, I guess she can. Would be awkward. Similarly for when friends are over. It's not like I need intense concentration while I cook, just enough to not burn/cut myself or burn the meal.
  • wahern 10y ago
    Businesses often sell their real estate on leaseback terms because it allows them to book one-time profits that boost the executive's bonuses or as a way generate cash that private equity firms can easily extract. They don't typically sell to third-party investors, but often finance the debt of the newly created property owner. For many businesses it absolutely makes sense to own your own property. For example, if mid-way through a 20 year lease on a building the economy goes bust, do you really want to be paying the same rent that was negotiated during boom times? It could destroy you. There's textbook theory, and then there's reality. The real world is an incredibly complex system with innumerable variables, and can't be reduced to simple concepts like "specialization". It all depends on context. Obviously for most companies it doesn't make sense to own their property. There's no disputing that, and your point stands. But for rich companies, it often actually makes a lot of sense, notwithstanding insiders trying to extract value for their personal benefit.
  • DougN7 10y ago
    IMHO it's crazy to think of every minute as either earned money or spent money. Second, very few people can arbitrarily trade any amount of time\effort for any amount of money. That's not how the market works. So how exactly would I go make $30 instead of cooking dinner for 30 minutes each evening? I assure you that whatever answer you have doesn't scale for my free time, or to everyone in the economy.