Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time • Hacker News Board

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#231

Post by woodruffw » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 3:25 PM UTC

kshahkshah wrote: post #198

spaniard89277 wrote: post #36

Housing and land is a non-transable good, and therefore there should be heavy state intervention on it, preferably by doing the same as Vienna, which is holding >40% of the renting stock and charging according to income, and renting to a representative distribution of tenants so to prevent guettos. Rent is the main detractor of disposable income which hurts the rest of the economy, and property owners provide almost…

IMO the heavy state intervention should be massive capital investment into FAST public transportation infrastructure. Make areas further away from city centers viable for commuting and the problem gets largely addressed.

Ironically, this was what NYC (technically, pre-NYC) did over 100 years ago -- there was a thriving network of streetcars in Brooklyn[1], which overlap almost exactly with neighborhood density. We then tore them up, leaving just the subway lines and a bus system that traces the vestiges of the old streetcar lines.

Streetcar suburbs[2] not only work, but are imminently sustainable compared to other forms of urban/suburban extension.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_streetcar_lines_in_Bro...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#232

Post by nhooyr » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 3:25 PM UTC

eatsyourtacos wrote: post #202

nickles wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should be heavy state intervention on it, preferably by doing the same as Vienna, which is holding >40% of the renting stock and charging according to income This is great policy if you want to make housing unaffordable. When supply is less than demand, prices go up. Those price increases incentivize builders to increase the housing stock (which subsequently lowers prices). Capping prices prevents the price mechani…

>When supply is less than demand, prices go up Question though... why, exactly does that have to be the case? Especially with something like housing where say there is mostly a fixed supply at any point and you can't just turn a machine on/off to produce more. The only reason the prices go up is because of greed basically- because people say "hey I can just charge more and people will pay more!". And there in lies th…

There is a machine... Of thousands of workers. If those people can't make more money, they have less incentive to recruit more and build more housing stock faster...

Such price signals are a basic element of the efficiency of the free market.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#233

Post by fny » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 3:25 PM UTC

This is a price signal. Anyone who's calling for intervention needs to wake up.

The proper response is for people to leave. If you drive across America, you'll find economically, depressed areas which have suffered from brain drain. Many aspire to attend an out of state college, go work in the Valley, join some VC-funded startup, megacorp, consulting firm, and strike it rich.

In all likelihood, you will (1) not strike it rich (2) have a worse quality of life on a cost adjusted basis (3) forgo developing a local community. Perhaps you'll enjoy more culture, but that might have been something that have developed in a smaller community had you not run off to a megacity.

Developing local communities is what America needs today. Just drive across this country and you'll find a tremendous amount of land coupled with tremendous economic depression. It's high time that price signals like rent drive people out of high cost of living areas into more depressed areas to promote broader-based growth.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#234

Post by patrickthebold » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 3:25 PM UTC

huevosabio wrote: post #204

spaniard89277 wrote: post #36

Housing and land is a non-transable good, and therefore there should be heavy state intervention on it, preferably by doing the same as Vienna, which is holding >40% of the renting stock and charging according to income, and renting to a representative distribution of tenants so to prevent guettos. Rent is the main detractor of disposable income which hurts the rest of the economy, and property owners provide almost…

Housing =/= Land. But our policies which heavily kneecap our ability to build more [0] make it such that Housing starts behaving like Land. The solution is to build more, and the success of Vienna does not come from public intervention but from the added supply. Tokyo is another city with famously cheap housing, and the secret is that they make it easy to build. I personally think that achieving affordable housing pr…

The article is about Manhattan. Do you have any idea if it has similar problems? In my mind, Manhattan is pretty dense.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#235

Post by mym1990 » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 3:25 PM UTC

toto444 wrote: post #214

TOMDM wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CMV Rent is high because the demand in large cities majorly out strips supply. All policies that attempt to address housing costs that don't increase supply are treating a symptom and not the underlying cause.

My two cents : I believe that if you increase supply and allow more affordable housing in a city, it will only marginally decrease prices but will mainly attract more people to this city. I think the solution to housing cost is to make smaller cities, towns and the countryside more attractive by having higher local tax rates in cities. This source of income could be used to build better infrastructure in the rest of…

Having higher local taxes in major cities would just expand the problem. The poor and middle class will get further pushed out, and the rich who can afford the tax and prefer living in the city will stay, in which case you just get SF all over again.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#236

Post by joshlemer » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 3:26 PM UTC

ubermonkey wrote: post #126

I keep hearing the notion that we should prohibit corporations from owning residential property, and I kind of like the idea.

Eh, I think the ability to internalize the costs and profits of an apartment building allows for a more efficient and incentive aligned situation than a bunch of condo owners with a condo board where there's a kind of tragedy of the commons to look after the building.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#237

Post by mrwh » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 3:26 PM UTC

iamben wrote: post #89

vehicles2b wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you clarify what you mean by development? As far as the apartments themselves, they can range from newly developed, to newly renovated, to very old and needing renovations. I figured the apartments along the coasts, and in particular the Manhattan area are quite old. I do think that development on a global scale has given people the ability to move to places like Manhattan, and so development outside, as well as…

One of my favourite time-sucks is watching property/design videos on YouTube. I'm constantly amazed at how expensive it is for shitty accommodation in New York. London is expensive, but the quality is (at least in my experience) far better for the money, even at the cheaper end.

Well that's a scary thought! It's been quite a while since I lived in London, but terrace houses barely converted into flats is my overriding memory.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#238

Post by TOMDM » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 3:26 PM UTC

voidhorse wrote: post #210

TOMDM wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CMV Rent is high because the demand in large cities majorly out strips supply. All policies that attempt to address housing costs that don't increase supply are treating a symptom and not the underlying cause.

Sure that’s the capitalist narrative explanation. The actual, human, explanation is that landlords see that they can get away with charging absurd rates because consumers are willing to make dumb decisions to get what they want, so they do it. I’m sick of these economic abstractions that constantly try to explain away our problems, and take away the responsibility from the human actors that cause these effects. It’s…

I mean sure, if you want to address it from the demand end of things that would work if there were a viable solution.

The hard fact is that people want to live in large cities. Even if you were to legislate that all landlords had to provide housing at cost + 5%, there would still be a demand for more housing as people desperately bid to enter those areas. Further more, you'd see people never give up those rentals because there would be a mile long waiting list for every property that is under rent control.

I have a lot of sympathy for people disgusted by the greed landlords display, but at the end of the day, the issue here is that more people want to live in these places than there are homes for them. So the wealthy bid their way in and everyone else be damned or destitute in order to compete.

If you want radical policy, eminent domain low density housing in city limits and build apartment rises on them.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#239

Post by trident5000 » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 3:26 PM UTC

spaniard89277 wrote: post #161

Spooky23 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That represents like a half million tenants. “Nothing” isn’t how I would describe it!

It is nothing. For public housing to make sense it has to be a considerable amount of the supply, and be universally available, not only for low-income people.

Its about the 70th percentile, above average. But you're not living an extravagant life.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#240

Post by voidfunc » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 3:27 PM UTC

toto444 wrote: post #214

TOMDM wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CMV Rent is high because the demand in large cities majorly out strips supply. All policies that attempt to address housing costs that don't increase supply are treating a symptom and not the underlying cause.

My two cents : I believe that if you increase supply and allow more affordable housing in a city, it will only marginally decrease prices but will mainly attract more people to this city. I think the solution to housing cost is to make smaller cities, towns and the countryside more attractive by having higher local tax rates in cities. This source of income could be used to build better infrastructure in the rest of…

At some point you run out of people that can move into the city... which might make the city huge, but eventually supply will outstrip demand.

Also no thanks to wealth redistribution. The rest of the country sucks outside the coasts sucks and its mostly because they have regressive politics. It's their own damn fault nobody wants to live there.