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

Paying for Dirt: Where Have Home Values Detached from Construction Costs?

buildzoom.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 118 posts

Re: Paying for Dirt: Where Have Home Values Detached from Construction Costs?

#41

Post by kevinburke »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #40
dtech wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will building more units / appartments/ houses bring the price down? Ballooning housing prices are a prime example of demand exceeding supply leading to increased prices. Increasing supply will decrease prices or at least limit further price increase.

But it's not like demand is inelastic. Do we know how much additional supply would have to be built to saturate demand? Is that even freasible? It seems like an intractable problem to me because it's not like anything we do, in these big popular cities, is going to have much of an effect in the next 12 months to 5 years. Personally, I solved the problem for myself by moving away from the big city I was in to a sub 10…

You’d need 5,000 units a year in San Francisco to keep rents steady. This is the goal SF’s mayor just set for the city, google “Ed Lee Medium” to find it.

It is definitely not an intractable problem given SF built 5,000 units in 2016. Upzoning, lowering impact fees, speeding housing approvals for things like ADU’s, making discretionary review tougher (it currently costs $700 to delay a project by three months), electing pro-housing candidates, having places like Brisbane choose apartments over another office park - all of these will help, it’s not intractable by any stretch.

Re: Paying for Dirt: Where Have Home Values Detached from Construction Costs?

#42

Post by barsonme »

victor9000 wrote: post #28
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ll see how long Washington can maintain its income-tax free environment [1]. 1. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-c...

Except this law violates various state laws, as well as the state constitution, so it will be struck down upon judicial review.

> as well as the state constitution

Given the current makeup of the state supreme court, it's a coin flip.

Re: Paying for Dirt: Where Have Home Values Detached from Construction Costs?

#43

Post by jacobolus »

kevinburke wrote: post #41
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not like demand is inelastic. Do we know how much additional supply would have to be built to saturate demand? Is that even freasible? It seems like an intractable problem to me because it's not like anything we do, in these big popular cities, is going to have much of an effect in the next 12 months to 5 years. Personally, I solved the problem for myself by moving away from the big city I was in to a sub 10…

You’d need 5,000 units a year in San Francisco to keep rents steady. This is the goal SF’s mayor just set for the city, google “Ed Lee Medium” to find it. It is definitely not an intractable problem given SF built 5,000 units in 2016. Upzoning, lowering impact fees, speeding housing approvals for things like ADU’s, making discretionary review tougher (it currently costs $700 to delay a project by three months), elect…

If we just slightly upzoned the whole western half of the city, and added public transit to go with it (even better if streets were narrowed a bit and street parking reduced), San Francisco could fit a whole heck of a lot more people without ever needing new buildings taller than 4 or 5 stories.

San Francisco zoning through huge swaths of the city is restricted to single-family houses and scattered duplexes, with only a few mixed-use areas. It’s supposed to be a booming city, but more than half of it is zoned to be a sleepy beach town. (And a lot of the Bay Area is even worse.)

Here’s the SF zoning map. All the pale yellow part is very low density; If it were up to me we would change half or more of that pale yellow area to some mix of darker yellow, orange, and purple. http://default.sfplanning.org/zoning/zoning_map.pdf

Re: Paying for Dirt: Where Have Home Values Detached from Construction Costs?

#44

Post by kurthr »

rspeer wrote: post #37
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will building more units / appartments/ houses bring the price down? Have other cities seen home prices move toward affordability when more housing has been built? I'm not saying it isn't a good idea, just that the logic seems flawed.

I'm not up on the sources, but a moderately pro-development candidate for Cambridge City Council has often quoted a statistic saying that there are only two ways to bring down house prices: 1. Make the city suck 2. Get the housing vacancy rate to 5.5% And of course he says this to encourage everyone to work toward #2, and the way to do that without displacing anyone is to build new housing. I don't really understand…

Actually, you get double bonus wherever you add housing, because you'll never add enough transportation or parking as necessary so that neighborhood will also start to suck! Also, housing people is a net drain on the tax base so the city services get worse or taxes increase.

Win, win!

Yeah, that's why NIMBY... on the other hand add transit, jobs, or retail somewhere and house prices go up locally with it because people want to live there (reduce their commute and buy $#&+) and it pays enough taxes. Retail moves where people flow. It takes planning and not just building.

Re: Paying for Dirt: Where Have Home Values Detached from Construction Costs?

#45

Post by nowarninglabel »

wheresmyusern wrote: post #32

hey, i'm looking to buy a small plot of land and build a house on it in the next few years. my goal is to be able to have land and a house of my own without taking a loan, or a very big one at least. ive been looking at land in northern california and there seems to be a lot of promising deals. lake county california seems to be a pretty good spot. if anyone has experience with buying land to settle on, in northern c…

Check out the book "County Property: Dirt Cheap". It has some good tips.

Note Lake County is high in fire danger, so depending on where you buy you'll want to take that into account for insurance cost or building style. Neighbors are also pretty critical to whether or not you'll be happy with this dream of yours.

Re: Paying for Dirt: Where Have Home Values Detached from Construction Costs?

#46

Post by mamon »

kevinburke wrote: post #41
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not like demand is inelastic. Do we know how much additional supply would have to be built to saturate demand? Is that even freasible? It seems like an intractable problem to me because it's not like anything we do, in these big popular cities, is going to have much of an effect in the next 12 months to 5 years. Personally, I solved the problem for myself by moving away from the big city I was in to a sub 10…

You’d need 5,000 units a year in San Francisco to keep rents steady. This is the goal SF’s mayor just set for the city, google “Ed Lee Medium” to find it. It is definitely not an intractable problem given SF built 5,000 units in 2016. Upzoning, lowering impact fees, speeding housing approvals for things like ADU’s, making discretionary review tougher (it currently costs $700 to delay a project by three months), elect…

5000 units, and you think that's a lot? Last year in Warsaw (which is smaller than SF) there were almost 20,000 new apartments built. You now see how much impact all those zoning laws have.

Re: Paying for Dirt: Where Have Home Values Detached from Construction Costs?

#47

Post by Brotkrumen »

kurthr wrote: post #44
rspeer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not up on the sources, but a moderately pro-development candidate for Cambridge City Council has often quoted a statistic saying that there are only two ways to bring down house prices: 1. Make the city suck 2. Get the housing vacancy rate to 5.5% And of course he says this to encourage everyone to work toward #2, and the way to do that without displacing anyone is to build new housing. I don't really understand…

Actually, you get double bonus wherever you add housing, because you'll never add enough transportation or parking as necessary so that neighborhood will also start to suck! Also, housing people is a net drain on the tax base so the city services get worse or taxes increase. Win, win! Yeah, that's why NIMBY... on the other hand add transit, jobs, or retail somewhere and house prices go up locally with it because peop…

So people move to reduce their commute, effectively their use of roads, but that shorter commute will not reduce their use but increase it? Tough proposition.

You also posit that people hold parking at a premium and that new house will not try to capture that premium. Mhhhh

Re: Paying for Dirt: Where Have Home Values Detached from Construction Costs?

#48

Post by bhickey »

rspeer wrote: post #37
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will building more units / appartments/ houses bring the price down? Have other cities seen home prices move toward affordability when more housing has been built? I'm not saying it isn't a good idea, just that the logic seems flawed.

I'm not up on the sources, but a moderately pro-development candidate for Cambridge City Council has often quoted a statistic saying that there are only two ways to bring down house prices: 1. Make the city suck 2. Get the housing vacancy rate to 5.5% And of course he says this to encourage everyone to work toward #2, and the way to do that without displacing anyone is to build new housing. I don't really understand…

You probably remember a few years back when the well-heeled Green candidate ran on a platform of bussing in homeless.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CambridgeMA/comments/3pd9k3/my_note...

Re: Paying for Dirt: Where Have Home Values Detached from Construction Costs?

#49

Post by mtberatwork »

Retric wrote: post #16
rayiner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can telecommute a lot, I recommend Maryland b/w D.C. and Annapolis. You can get a 4BR house for what a 1BR apartment costs in D.C., you can be at a farm in 20 minutes in one direction and a downtown bar in 10 minutes in the other, and I've got two different fiber providers available (I'm getting 2-gig installed soon). Unfortunately, the tech scene in the DMV area seems to be mostly in northern Virginia, which…

Northern Virginia has very low unemployment and high paying jobs. The area also has all 4 seasons fairly balanced, zero significant natural disasters, plenty of rainfall to stay green in the summer etc. Granted, you may not like that tradeoff, but it has a lot going for it. Sure I moved to MD due to my current job, but I am seriously considering moving back.

Even with high paying jobs (if you are fortunate to have one), NoVA also has incredibly high housing costs unless you decide to live in the less desirable locations (which come with their own problems) or move far out and give yourself a massive commute.
Post reply on HN