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

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

#301

Post by asdff »

jerf wrote: post #187
jlmorton wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"You would naturally expect the value of a home to decrease by some amount each year." If you deduct maintenance from your home value, it more-or-less does. I don't see why a maintained home "should" decrease in value, though. A lot of the value of a home is in the structure, which tends to wear much more gracefully than, say, a car's body.

There is little that maintenance can do to prevent a 100 year old foundation from 'settling' in a pretty precarious way. Or finding out one day that the water pipe is a 100 year old wooden pipe that is now rotted through. As a house gets older, maintenance ($) turns into renovation ($$) then critical overhaul ($$$), even in the houses with good bones.

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

#302

Post by asdff »

mc32 wrote: post #202
jlmorton wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

A 40 year old house in tokyo is probably half mold by weight at that point. No wonder.

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

#303

Post by asdff »

fortran77 wrote: post #132
hanniabu wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big cost items are kitchens and bathrooms Why does a pod need a kitchen and bathroom? If it had those it'd be called a studio apartment. A pod is essentially anything from a dorm room styled apartment to a half-height room big enough to have a bed to sleep in and a shelf for a few items (like the Japanese have). In any of those cases you'd have communal kitchens and bathrooms. This would actually also be good s…

Years ago, they had what were called "SRO" (Single-Room Occupancy) apartments. These often had shared baths or showers on each floor. These all went away by the late 60s in New York. They wouldn't be legal now. For one thing, buildings, or floors, were restricted to either men or women. And they didn't allow children, or more than one person/room. But they allowed people just getting started--working clearing tables,…

Dorms are essentially that. Not sure why that is illegal and dorms are fine.

EDIT: just looked it up, xenophobia of course. New Yorkers didn't like immigrants living in Manhattan in 1955.

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

#304

Post by asdff »

sampo wrote: post #37
huntertwo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two thoughts 1) Isn't a developer also making an investment when they build these high as hell micro-apartment apartment buildings? 2) How do you avoid a race to the bottom in terms of housing quality when you allow said micro-apartments? Do we want a culture where the poor are living in barely livable wage slave pods while the rich are living in abundant villas? I'm all for affordable housing but it seems too nuance…

> Do we want a culture where the poor are living in barely livable wage slave pods At least the poor would have the choice between the barely livable pod in downtown, or a house 2 hours commute away. Currently they can only choose the latter.

You forgot the third choice:

Fit the whole extended family into the 1br unit.

I've seen a craigslist ad in LA for barracks style bunk beds for rent near downtown in a shitty looking room, 500/mo.

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

#305

Post by asdff »

MarketRateSucks wrote: post #96
raldi wrote: post #8

See also: Friday's “Don’t Blame Tech Bros for the Housing Crisis” column: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/opinion/sunday/housing-cr...

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.

All through human history up until the last couple of decades, housing has followed the jobs. When they built the great pyramids they build an entire city for the workers. You build an office building in manhattan in 1860, and what do you know an apartment building of similar size is going up in the next lot. You build a factory then you build the town; that's how it's always been done.

What we are seeing is cities eager for job growth and commercial business to call their city home, but the other half of the equation is given no thought. Upzoning residential areas to match commercial growth is not being done. Even when tech companies promise to build some housing with their new office space, it's never 1:1, so it too is a net strain.

When looking at the problem in those simple terms, it really seems like insidious profiteering on the local government's part, considering LA councilmen all own at least 1 property and therefore all stand to benefit from housing price surges.

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

#306

Post by edoo »

marcinzm wrote: post #19
edoo wrote: post #2

They forget the human cost. Increasing density decreases quality of life. The people are the product of the cities in the commercial sense. The well being of the people is lost in the drive for infinite growth.

You opinion on density is just that, your opinion, not everyone agrees. Density means a larger selection of jobs, increased variety in entertainment (ie: more likely to find something you personally love), increased selection of medical professionals, increased variety in food, ability to avoid driving commutes, kids who can self-manage without being driven everywhere, etc. To some people that's worth more cramped li…

Please remember saying this and reflect on how you feel the quality of life has changed when the city you live in doubles in population. Portland is going to be a great case study for this. They just outlawed single family residences. I will be highly surprised if in 30 years people think the place is better than now.

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

#307

Post by satyrnein »

nybble41 wrote: post #296
satyrnein wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a tax on the (arguably undeserved) gains in the market value of your land that come from other people's efforts as opposed to your own.

LVT makes no distinction between value resulting from your own efforts outside the property itself and value resulting from others' efforts. In any case, recognizing the potential in a piece of land and investing resources to secure it and hold it in reserve until that potential can best be realized (i.e. "speculation") is also effort worthy of reward.

Yes, this is why I called it "arguably" undeserved. It's not totally black and white.

The best argument against LVT that I came across was from Bryan Caplan concerning prospecting for oil; once a person finds oil and builds a well, LVT would not charge her for the well, but it would charge her for the oil. She didn't make the oil, but finding it does take effort and you don't want to disincentive that.

I still like LVT conceptually but I don't know what the best solution is for this kind of case.

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

#308

Post by Nasrudith »

maxsilver wrote: post #263
Nasrudith wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gentrification is perfectly possible without new construction. Boston found apparently that luxury condos had a containing effect on gentrification overall - they reduced demand for other areas. Also wouldn't it be authentic inflation of value? The tax bill objection also strikes me as odd given that it is synonymous with a windfall to owners - the renters it makes perfect sense for.

> synonymous with a windfall to owners It's not. It's just inflation. If I double your salary, but jack the price of everything up 50%, you "got a windfall", but have in real-world dollars earned nothing. If you own a house worth $100k, but a luxury condo goes up next door full of $600k/each units, and your old house is now "worth" $300k, have you really gotten a windfall? You still need somewhere to live, the windfa…

You don't pay extra on your mortgage. A mortgage is a loan to buy the house with the title to the bank as collateral plus some bundling like insurance. Otherwise people wouldn't walk away from "underwater" mortgages.

It may come with inconveniences of linked job changes and relocation but that is a real gain of wealth. The locational value has gone up - which is why they can even afford to "displace".

Assuming that buying a home elsewhere will automatically have comparable price or displacing is also a bad assumption. Despite the rhetoric a single person with a collegd degree in a neighborhood won't cause appreciable rises in real estate value.

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

#309

Post by earlINmeyerkeg »

danans wrote: post #268
earlINmeyerkeg wrote: post #145

The reason midwestern cities hardly have housing bubbles like the coastal areas do is because old housing is cheap and competes with renting. Landlords can't afford to not be lenient. Although the only change I wish to see is that tenants could more easily enforce their rights and Landlords had to follow the law. Most midwestern state governments are very laissez faire about the whole thing which is incredibly annoyi…

> The reason midwestern cities hardly have housing bubbles like the coastal areas do is because old housing is cheap and competes with renting. Sure, but isn't the reason that housing is cheaper because those cities don't have anywhere near the level of demand that coastal cities have.

Yes and I'm not denying that. Also the midwest hasn't seen radical overvaluation of property that the coastal areas do. Since demand is so high there, the value of the property is not determined upon is "worth," but on someones ability to pay. You can see how that becomes a major issue when things crash. Suddenly many people lose out on the value of the place they paid for.

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

#310

Post by clairity »

treis wrote: post #81
sampo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do we want a culture where the poor are living in barely livable wage slave pods At least the poor would have the choice between the barely livable pod in downtown, or a house 2 hours commute away. Currently they can only choose the latter.

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'…

a pod would be more like 50-75 sq ft, just enough for a bed and maybe a side table (with communal bathrooms; shared kitchen optional).

300 sq ft is a quite livable studio apartment, with enough room for a bathroom and (compact) kitchen.

with that said, yes, any additional housing is better than none.

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