headgasketidiot t1_ixn9nam wrote on November 24, 2022 at 7:15 PM

Reply to comment by somedudevt in Best heating oil company to use? We need kerosene but can't afford $7/ gallon at the company we called. New to this type of heating and kinda struggling to figure this out. Company says minimum of 100 gallon order. Our tank is 275g . 275x7= omg in gonna freeze to death. by [deleted]

>I know countless people who in central and eastern VT have been outbid by cash offers at or over asking price by out of staters who have remote jobs, or have accepted a local job, and are fleeing stuff in other places.

Those out-of-state cash offers are basically always investors. Private equity firms usually don't say they are private equity firms when they're buying houses, and people who lose out on houses don't get to meet the people who outbid them. What you're hearing is what your friend's realtor heard from the seller's realtor who heard it from the other buyer's realtor who probably heard it from the buyer's lawyer, because they're an investment firm, and not a person.

It's gossip, and it's gossip that suits the investors because it distracts from what is happening. I wouldn't even be surprised if they are telling sellers' agents that they're out of state remote workers just to muddy the waters. Seriously, this isn't even an anecdote - it's a rumor. This is why we use data to understand what is happening, and not what the local rumor mill is saying about it.

I believe you that your friends have had that experience, and that REALLY FUCKING SUCKS. I am SO MAD on their behalf. I don't want to live in a world where my friends and neighbors are priced out. I want to fix this problem, but like I have said over and over, you are angry at the wrong people. Your friends keep being outbid by investors, not by people like OP, because there are not enough people like OP to even come close to explaining your friends being constantly outbid. Your friends don't know they are losing out to investors because why would the investors go around advertising that? How would your friends even know? They are reporting the best information that they have, which is a rumor they heard from their realtor.

Corey307 t1_ixnvjn8 wrote on November 24, 2022 at 10:02 PM

So I’m originally from Los Angeles and still have friends there. A few of them have been trying to buy a condo or townhouse for a couple years and consistently get beat by cash bids and a lot of those cash bids are coming from investors or companies that run massive amounts of properties. Investors aren’t content to just own apartment complexes now, there’s plenty of money to be made from owning individual units or slowly buying up an entire condo complex. Same thing is happening here and the more real estate that is held by a handful of people or companies the higher prices go.

headgasketidiot t1_ixop8q2 wrote on November 25, 2022 at 2:22 AM

Yeah exactly. This is happening all around the world. The world's rich have been getting steadily richer since 2008, and they're moving that capital into housing. This is why it bothers me so much that people here blame "out of staters." It's an international crisis, not some hyper-local niche situation in our little backwater.

Corey307 t1_ixowxht wrote on November 25, 2022 at 3:32 AM

The NIMBY assholes and all the red tape you have to cut through to build a house here certainly doesn’t help. Chittenden county desperately needs affordable housing and the most cost effective and efficient way to do so is to build some medium rise apartment complexes. The working class and lower middle class people who work in Chittenden county need a place to live that isn’t some shitty house build 150 years ago subdivided into studios that won’t get to 67° inside with the heat on full blast. It also shouldn’t be so difficult nor expensive to build a house in this state. Just the permitting and environmental impact bs to put in a septic system cost as much as the system. It’s urine and feces not radioactive waste or coal ash for crying out loud both do not hurt the environment much.

Corey307 t1_ixoz3id wrote on November 25, 2022 at 3:51 AM

So this is extremely rough math but one could build four 250 unit apartment complexes on about 4 to 5 acres of land total depending on if there was below ground parking or not. I’m talking about very simple housing with 500 ft.² units in a 5 story building. If you make it five stories the footprint is about 25,000 ft.², add another 2,000-3,000 ft.² for paths, exterior building dimensions and whatever.

That leaves you with about 16,000 ft.². Your average parking space is about 320 ft.² you’ve only got parking for about 50 cars at max. One level of below ground parking would easily add another 50 cars. If each building lot was 1.5 acres you can get to about 200 cars between above and below ground parking, still a little short so maybe bump up to 7 acres for 1,000+ cars.

So yeah it’s not as simple as building a single family home on .08 acres but there has to be 6-7 buildable acres somewhere in this county. Hell build all four together, makes building parking easier. Or get a shuttle bus or two running nonstop into Burlington, that would be great for people who can’t afford, don’t want or can no longer drive a car.

Is it perfect? Hell no but I look at my little neighborhood and we have about eight houses on about 25 acres housing maybe 25 people on the outskirts of Chittenden County and my roughed out idea houses 40 times as many on 30% as much land. And yes I’m talking about very basic accommodations but that would work fine for a lot of working class people and young people. They’d still be close enough to commute to work without breaking the bank and if it was financially feasible a shuttle system would help even more. It doesn’t solve for all problems but it definitely helps.