New Empty Units
jefftk.com
New Empty Units
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: New Empty Units
#2I’m a YIMBY activist in my spare time. One criticism of my ideas I’ve seen is that building more housing in my city will attract more professionals to my city. Those people live in the new housing, not existing low income residents. I think this is because the shortage is so bad, and that these professionals would eventually displace residents no matter what.
Re: New Empty Units
#3I'm suspicious of a plan to help the poor that depends on rich people making a bubble pop. Somehow the rich always manage to put their losses onto the poor.
Re: New Empty Units
#4I’m a YIMBY activist in my spare time. One criticism of my ideas I’ve seen is that building more housing in my city will attract more professionals to my city. Those people live in the new housing, not existing low income residents. I think this is because the shortage is so bad, and that these professionals would eventually displace residents no matter what.
At least in San Francisco, over 80% of residents in new buildings lived in the city before moving in. I haven’t heard a single induced demand argument which is actually borne out by reality.
For the one in this article: the cities with housing crises have extremely low vacancy rates. And the drop in rents during the pandemic has been most substantial in new buildings. If supply was totally inelastic due to money laundering, that would not be the case.
Re: New Empty Units
#5I'm suspicious of a plan to help the poor that depends on rich people making a bubble pop. Somehow the rich always manage to put their losses onto the poor.
No the plan to help the poor is to build enough supply that there is housing for all who desire to live in a place. That aim is eminently possible, and to the extent some of those people need subsidies no matter what, becomes easier when you have a larger tax base.
The only realistic plan to help poor people afford healthcare in the United States will necessarily tackle the enormously high costs. The opposition isn’t narrowly “rich people” though but instead a wide range of above median income white collar industries.
Re: New Empty Units
#6Those who do not understand Thomas Sowell[1] are doomed to wonder why reality never quite conforms to their conceits.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465...
Re: New Empty Units
#7I'm suspicious of a plan to help the poor that depends on rich people making a bubble pop. Somehow the rich always manage to put their losses onto the poor.
You're right, but for the wrong reasons. Aesthetics has always trumped economics when it comes to housing, and the speculators know this. The probability that this will change anytime soon is essentially zero. You're better off moving somewhere where they haven't fucked it up. I'd like to suggest Houston here, but there are still HOAs and similar stuff there.
Re: New Empty Units
#8Those who do not understand Thomas Sowell[1] are doomed to wonder why reality never quite conforms to their conceits. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465...
I am not familiar with Thomas Sowell and realistically I'm not going to read his book to figure out why you cite him here. Could you at least give a hint?
Re: New Empty Units
#9I’m a YIMBY activist in my spare time. One criticism of my ideas I’ve seen is that building more housing in my city will attract more professionals to my city. Those people live in the new housing, not existing low income residents. I think this is because the shortage is so bad, and that these professionals would eventually displace residents no matter what.
At least in San Francisco, over 80% of residents in new buildings lived in the city before moving in. I haven’t heard a single induced demand argument which is actually borne out by reality. For the one in this article: the cities with housing crises have extremely low vacancy rates. And the drop in rents during the pandemic has been most substantial in new buildings. If supply was totally inelastic due to money laun…
Land is priced at what the MAX a developer could make from developing the land.
Short of completely changing everything about property development from the financing (artificially low rates), taxes (regressive), and development (zones) - there is no solution.
If you could build more - someone would. You can't. And it's not like we can just change one thing. The entire market is forcing higher prices at every turn.
66% of the US is a homeowner, remember. Most people have an interest in NOT solving this problem.
Re: New Empty Units
#10We have a huge contingent of what I call vacancy truthers here in Berkeley and the rest of the Bay Area. Earlier this week a former candidate for city government was opining that new "gentrification tower" - actually tremendously expensive and not at all luxurious studio apartments in a 5 story building -- were all vacant! Look at all these available apartments!
But these truthers simply never understand the numbers. In the first place they always underestimate the number of occupied apartments in a building. In the specific case there are 170 apartments and 90 of them are already occupied. In the second place, they always underestimate normal vacancy rates. Zero is not a healthy vacancy rate. 10% is a healthy and normal vacancy rate in functioning markets. Finally, these people don't understand the process of leasing out a new building. It usually takes a full year to get to 90%. Again in the specific building I heard about, they only got their certificate of occupancy in September 2020, are already more than half occupied, and are leasing out at about 1 per day which is well ahead of the normal pace.