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Interesting to note that this works out to roughly $700 per employee per month, over a ten month span.

$250M / 10 yrs / 12 months / 3000 employees = $700 per employee-month




Except that after those ten years, the value of the property will exceed $0. In fact it's rather likely to be worth more then than now, so it's actually an investment.

As Tony Soprano said, "buy real estate cus God ain't making any more". Demand is pretty certain to outstrip supply from here on out.


That quote makes a lot of sense in a country with limited land like somewhere in Europe. It doesn't make sense in the United States where we have large swathes of completely undeveloped land. Even useful farmland is only a few multiples of $1000/acre.

Your quote would force them to appreciate in price 100 years from now, but on timescales shorter than that I don't see it providing any real guarantee. Just look at Detroit.


Land isn't valuable because there is a finite supply. Only certain land is valuable because there are buildings and people nearby, which is why land out in the wilderness is nearly free. The prediction is based on the fact that individual cities grow, not that the total fraction of land occupied by humans becomes nonnegligible.


Presumably, Google's core business has better return on capital than real estate, or else Google would have become a real estate shop.


You need to ask the rate that they can borrow the money at, because they can sell the building in the end.

Given that the building can be sold for the same price that they paid:

$250M x 2.3% per year (the going rate for one of Google's bonds) /12 months / 3000 employees == $159.72/month


10 month -> 10 years

But in total it would be more, because that price won't Cover Runtime expenses


It is more typical (in the US) for real-estate to be amortized over 30 years. The real costs need to account for taxes and maintenance and depreciation: after 30 years the building but not the land is worth $zero and the "loss" can claimed as an expense.

To go even bigger, there's commonly a property tax abatement from local and state governments for large projects and often actual tax credits.


Assuming no terminal value




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