Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes • Hacker News Board

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#201

Post by mrep » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

helen___keller wrote: post #130

MarketRateSucks wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real galaxy brain take there. “Housing prices have always fluctuated, therefore these fluctuations are unrelated to this other highly correlated factor”. Not that I disagree much with the substance of pointing out Prop 13, etc, but you should also definitely blame tech for loading an entire industry into a metro area.

> definitely blame tech for loading an entire industry into a metro area Supply and demand gonna supply and demand. It's weird to "blame tech" for existing and injecting a massive amount of jobs into our economy; there's no metro region that could have handled that growth without the same effect on price, and there is no singular entity responsible for concentrating tech into a single city instead of distributed more…

I'm biased since I grew up in Chicago, but I think Chicago could have handled it fine with the endless farmland to develop with housing especially if the companies put their offices in high rises downtown as Chicago has double decker trains that go from the suburbs to downtown [0]. We also love high rise architecture so there are plenty of high rises to live in downtown if you want to.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metra#/media/File:Metra-System...

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#202

Post by mc32 » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

jlmorton wrote: post #177

mrep wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you. Granted, I do consider it an investment in the sense that every month I pay off part of the principal and thus I can get some money back when I sell it whereas I'd get nothing if I was renting but I don't expect greater than inflation appreciation on the house. However, this could just be because I grew up in Chicago where there is endless farmland that can be developed and thus expecting greater than i…

> but I don't expect greater than inflation appreciation on the house. Even expecting the house to hold its value is rather strange. You would naturally expect the value of a home to decrease by some amount each year. Most of us would prefer a modern home to an older home. The only reason it does not is because supply of new homes is restricted. In well functioning markets like Tokyo, that's exactly what we see: home…

Housing in Tokyo is also built to have a useful lifespan of 30 years, so framing it as them being “new” lacks background information.

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#203

Post by sujNansnam » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #165

MarketRateSucks wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real galaxy brain take there. “Housing prices have always fluctuated, therefore these fluctuations are unrelated to this other highly correlated factor”. Not that I disagree much with the substance of pointing out Prop 13, etc, but you should also definitely blame tech for loading an entire industry into a metro area.

> blame tech It confuses the issue to anthropomorphize an industry category. I don't think it's fair to blame rank-and-file tech workers . In today's scary economy, you can't blame anyone for entering a growth industry and taking a good job that's offered. Who wouldn't want a great salary, good benefits, a safe comfortable workplace, and a stable work-life balance? The more interesting question is why are there so ma…

If a company is spending some revenue as wages, they aren’t paying taxes on that revenue at all.

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#204

Post by StacyRoberts » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #5

The whole topic of conversation around housing affordability is backwards. Specifically, housing affordability is 100%, entirely, a problem of artificial constraints on supply by city councils. (1) Americans consider housing to be an investment. An investment is only an investment if you expect a positive return over time. We generally want that investment to match or exceed inflation. (2) That's antithetical to the…

This is a very urban viewpoint. There are millions of people in rural areas who can't afford to buy a home as well. Cheap mortgages are a huge factor,I agree with that.

I think city policies are a problem but nowhere near 100%. Banks and cheap risk free lending massively dwarf the impact of city policy.

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#205

Post by fortran77 » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

ummonk wrote: post #167

fortran77 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people who own houses don't want the value/price of their homes to go up, because that means property taxes will go up.

Not in California, thanks to Prop 13. Homeowners can have their cake and eat it too.

I live in California. I don't like the fact that house prices have risen so much faster than wages.

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#206

Post by mywittyname » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

zhoujianfu wrote: post #128

treis wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't really save all that much money by building a barely livable pod vs an actual apartment. The big cost items are kitchens and bathrooms. Those are mostly fixed costs, i.e. it costs the same to plumb a toilet, shower, and sink in a 50 sq foot bathroom as a 100 sq foot one. Only when you get to stupid high real estate cost does a ~300 sq foot pod start making sense over ~600 ft 1 bed or ~1000 sq ft 2 beds. It'…

Yeah, I think it’s silly when people complain about developers not building affordable housing. Nobody expects car manufacturers to build new run-down clunkers they sell for $200... they build new cars and people who can’t afford them generally buy cheap used ones!

People complain about the lack of cheap new cars too. They also ignore the fact that a nicer used vehicle is a better value than a new cheap one.

Houses are the same way. A nice house built in the 80s is going to be way better than a cheap house built today. Outdated looking quality construction > modern looking cheap crap.

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#207

Post by BurningFrog » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 6:15 PM UTC

maxsilver wrote: post #137

BurningFrog wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price of housing is determined by supply and demand, not the developer. Building new housing lowers prices for all preexisting housing.

> Building new housing lowers prices for all preexisting housing This is not true in the US. Housing in the US is valued solely by the value of the housing around it (called 'comps' or 'comparables'). Building new luxury housing raises the price for all preexisting nearby housing, because your comparables will now be based on whatever the luxury housing prices are (even if your own house is very modest, even if your…

> Building new luxury housing raises the price for all preexisting nearby housing

If this was true, you could create infinite wealth by just building more and more "luxury" housing.

You will not find any economist agreeing with this "folk wisdom".

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#208

Post by shuckles » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 6:16 PM UTC

sujNansnam wrote: post #203

munificent wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> blame tech It confuses the issue to anthropomorphize an industry category. I don't think it's fair to blame rank-and-file tech workers . In today's scary economy, you can't blame anyone for entering a growth industry and taking a good job that's offered. Who wouldn't want a great salary, good benefits, a safe comfortable workplace, and a stable work-life balance? The more interesting question is why are there so ma…

If a company is spending some revenue as wages, they aren’t paying taxes on that revenue at all.

Only on wages for employees classified as R&D.

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#209

Post by pertymcpert » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 6:20 PM UTC

afpx wrote: post #135

whack wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a model that can predict the effect? Yes, the model is called supply and demand. When you increase the quantity supplied, the only way the extra quantity can be sold, is if the price drops. If you increase the quantity supplied without reducing the price, the extra units will never be sold. Why would they... anyone who was willing to pay the previous price, would have already done so and will already have…

Obviously. But, are you expecting a 10% decrease in prices, or 0.5%? Why so defensive? I’m asking Because if it works, I’d like to sell the idea to skeptics. We all lean scientific here, right?

It's not him/her being defensive, it's basic economics that shouldn't have to be explained...

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#210

Post by DubiousPusher » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 6:20 PM UTC

goosehonk wrote: post #156

DubiousPusher wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. This is a false dichotomy between the status quo and Judge Dreddesque super towers. I think changing zoning at the edge of the current sense areas could help a lot too. You'd likely need an increased investment in public transit to make that work.

We've already spent the money on the transportation and forgot the upzoning that should have accompanied it. For example we poured billions into BART to serve dispersed areas full of detached single-family homes. All areas within half a mile of a BART station should permit 5-story multi-family dwellings without mandatory parking. This was the point of SB50.

I don't live in SF so I've only been on the BART in downtown. I didn't realize it ran out to so many suburban areas. Definitely seems like a no brainier to up-zone in at least a mile radius around every one of those stations.