Ideas: December 2024 Release

THE MOTIVATION

The ideas section is a place to offload and share various ideas I’ve come up. Although these are only the ideas that have already been implemented, tested, something I’m not interested in doing, or technically incomplete (meaning there’s various technical progress that needs to be accomplished before it’s applicable), however, it has definitely been conceived by me independently. It serves to share the kind of practical imagination I have but also to share the journey into the future:

Drastically different housing model

The core idea is that you’re never just paying rent without gaining any equity, every time you pay for housing it’s going towards ultimately savings/wealth. How I propose that works is that there’s a company that builds housing, and you buy a certain number of shares in that company each month. When you buy enough shares in the company to which the value is equal to the house you’re living in, you no longer need to make monthly payments. You can move to another home within the network, and if it’s cheaper then you can sell some shares to get money back, if it’s more expensive you just need to keep buying more shares each month. The company can charge a premium on homes to recoup a profit and expand. If housing appreciates in value (via market changes, improvements, or etc), you get additional shares for free. If the housing depreciates in value (via market changes, damage, or etc), some of your shares get taken away for free. Since the demand for houses with this kind of ownership style would be high, it can command a higher price, which offsets some of the issues with “not in my backyard” by keeping property values high. I think renting should be limited to when you’re visiting someplace not when it’s a long term residence. Also the common situation where you buy a home and then have renters essentially pay off the mortgage is kind of the rich taking advantage of the poor. Overall, I think this is a pretty solid idea.