Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

vox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 206 posts

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#131

Post by rconti »

shostack wrote: post #103
dragonwriter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, I know the reason is to prop up the value of their homes Yes, but not in the way you expect, which is why your comparison fails. In many cases, its not to prop up the market value of their homes, but the features of the community which supports the personal value they place in their homes: its "I live here, and I'd like to keep it the kind of place it is that led me to choose to live here".

For more recent buyers I'll bet the market value piece is pretty high on the list. If you bought in the last couple of years while things have been increasing, you want to see that trend increase. If suddenly prices drop because there's a ton more dense housing (which also impacts the other desirability factors of the neighborhood), you could easily be underwater on your $1M+ mortgage. Given the amount of money at st…

I bought in the last couple of years while things have been increasing. You're right, I'd rather not be underwater, but I can stomach it or I wouldn't have bought.

But you're making a huge logical jump to say that building housing could magically slaughter my house value and that I'd be underwater because of it.

I'm worried about being underwater because of a recession or cyclical trends or tech jobs wholesale abandoning the area, or any number of things.

The LAST thing I worry about is housing being built so fast that it'll tank the value of my house. It simply won't. If there's enough continued demand for housing, by all means, build, build, build. It means neighborhoods will get more vibrant. I see no scenario where building will tank my house value (short of building and THEN a recession).

I don't think people worry about growth hurting their home value. I agree with others here that they worry about the impact on what THEY value in their neighborhood, but most people aren't looking to sell their primary residence so a temporary slowdown in the growth rate of the equity is simply not on their radar as an important matter.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#132

Post by rconti »

arebop wrote: post #115
zippergz wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve owned several houses. The more recently I bought, the LESS I care about the value of the house. It’s just numbers on paper. Money isn’t at stake until I’m trying to sell, which I’m certainly not looking to to do if I just recently bought.

It seems you are an unusual case [ http://www.pewresearch.org/2009/02/19/oneinfive-homeowners-f... ].

The bay area is also an unusual case. Somehow I don't think anyone's worried about CURRENTLY being underwater on their mortgage here, and I don't think anyone worries about housing growth happening so fast that it drives their values DOWN.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#133

Post by [deleted] »

xenadu02 wrote: post #113

Very few people bother to vote in non-presidential elections. I keep hammering this point to anyone I meet in the startup scene here in SF. If just 1% of you reading this right now (who live in SF) bothered to vote on a pro-housing basis, we'd immediately turn into a huge voting bloc that could not be ignored. You should shame your coworkers and remind people in slack channels too. A few thousand NIMBYs currently con…

[deleted]

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#134

Post by joe_the_user »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #126
baron816 wrote: post #9

Why are people so adamantly opposed to density? Well, I know the reason is to prop up the value of their homes, but if you think about places like New York, London, and Paris, that argument doesn't exactly hold. Those cities are incredibly dense and expensive, but people love living there enough to pay the high prices. People who can live anywhere choose to live there. I'm willing to bet that SV could triple its popu…

FWIW that is the wrong question. People are opposed to change. So Sunnyvale has been building a number of apartment buildings and condos around. There has been tremendous back pressure for existing residents (not me but I'm a rarity it seems). The root of their concern is that they don't want the neighborhood experience to change from what they know (or knew) to something they don't know. I talked to some folks who h…

The thing is there is intense opposition to projects like highrises near caltrain as well.

And a project like that seems like it could result in both keeping single-family housing in many areas and solving the broad housing crisis. These directly hit against zoning limits but I suspect there's more going than inertia.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#135

Post by rconti »

disposeofnick9 wrote: post #57
Greenisus wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what rental price would get you out of the VW?

Airbnb, uber or is that an offer to cofound an app to pay to live with startup people? Personally, I'd never let someone rent it without a massive security deposit and a very profitable rate because parts are rare, fragile and expensive.

I think he was asking what rental price would have you choose to live in a rental house/apartment instead of the VW. Eg, to what extent is your choice out of economic necessity, and what are you willing/able to spend to live in a more conventional residence?

Obviously, location matters.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#136

Post by rconti »

archagon wrote: post #45
hx87 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She can take the payout and buy some place more affordable, perhaps even an apartment in the building that replaces her house. Not the best outcome for her, I'm sure, but beats the hell out of starving municipal and state governments of revenue, broken infrastructure, and forcing everyone else to pay extortionate rents and mortgages just to live there. If the law allows it and the regulatory compliance costs are low…

Any argument that boils down to "grandma should move to make room for the techies" lacks perspective and will never gain any political traction. Moving is not just something you "do" after building a life somewhere for 40 years.

Any argument that boils down to "this other argument lacks perspective" presumes that there is a preferably alternative without all kinds of unintended consequences.

We're seeing the unintended consequences of one alternative. Of course, we haven't tested all of the possible universes yet.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#137

Post by joe_the_user »

guyzero wrote: post #129
ChuckMcM wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW that is the wrong question. People are opposed to change. So Sunnyvale has been building a number of apartment buildings and condos around. There has been tremendous back pressure for existing residents (not me but I'm a rarity it seems). The root of their concern is that they don't want the neighborhood experience to change from what they know (or knew) to something they don't know. I talked to some folks who h…

Well as an actual Sunnyvale resident the fears are slightly more rational: cars on roads, kids in schools and no increase in infrastructure to go along with the thousands of new residents. Some of the buildings have less than one parking spot per apartment which in theory is supposed to help encourage people to use transit, in practice people fear it will lead to more street parking in adjacent residential neighbourh…

Broadly, there's enough space in the Peninsula to build whole high-density self-contained cities - Facebook wants to build housing at their office park and if the only condition was shops in walking distance too, I'm sure they could satisfy that requirement also.

Maybe these possibilities haven't been explained well but I sort of think there are other interests that would prefer things stay approximately as they are.

Edit: one aspect that occurs to me is that developers probably wouldn't want a process that solves the housing crisis immediately either. It seems to me that satisfying the pent-up demand for housing gradually, project by project, would allow a developer to scoop up a lot of the excess, monopoly home-value now enjoyed by homeowners whereas if a huge stock of apartments appeared in one big bang, developers could wind-up selling them at costs plus a small profit level.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#138

Post by forgottenpass »

baron816 wrote: post #9

Why are people so adamantly opposed to density? Well, I know the reason is to prop up the value of their homes, but if you think about places like New York, London, and Paris, that argument doesn't exactly hold. Those cities are incredibly dense and expensive, but people love living there enough to pay the high prices. People who can live anywhere choose to live there. I'm willing to bet that SV could triple its popu…

Why are people so fervently pro-density?

Maybe the smart move is to find a sustainable way to maintain current levels, tell newcomers that maybe a different city is right for them, and focus on improving conditions for the people already living there. There's can be more to city's goals than neverending growth, right?

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#139

Post by djcapelis »

WWKong wrote: post #130
xenadu02 wrote: post #113

Very few people bother to vote in non-presidential elections. I keep hammering this point to anyone I meet in the startup scene here in SF. If just 1% of you reading this right now (who live in SF) bothered to vote on a pro-housing basis, we'd immediately turn into a huge voting bloc that could not be ignored. You should shame your coworkers and remind people in slack channels too. A few thousand NIMBYs currently con…

Why will home owners vote for pro-housing which reduces the ROI on their homes?

1) The majority of voters in SF aren't homeowners.

2) ROI isn't the most important thing about a home.

3) Even if you value property values over other values, affordable housing that can support a strong and diverse environment that is vital to maintaining the strength of the region. If you kill that engine, you kill the thing that created the high values to begin with. You can shoot the golden goose if you want, but don't claim it makes good economic sense. It doesn't.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#140

Post by vkou »

codemac wrote: post #72
johan_larson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoning laws. And existing owners who staunchly oppose increasing density by building larger buildings. A lot of people who bought their single-family homes years or decades ago now live in appealing low-density neighborhoods with home values that are sky-rocketing. They don't want their neighborhoods to change into concrete canyons, and the ever-rising values of their homes fund their retirements very nicely. They th…

The people who bought their houses 30+ years ago I really feel for. The change the area is experiencing is brutal, and imagine if everyone just kept asking you why you don't sell and move away from the very place you built? It's futile for them to fight things, and honestly it ruins a lot of people's lives that they do. However I completely understand why they would push back on density, most people don't have to dea…

Those people are sitting on millions of dollars worth of equity.

The people who have been renting for 30+ years are the ones screwed by this.

Post reply on HN