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The U.S. Needs More Housing Than Almost Anyone Can Imagine

theatlantic.com

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Re: The U.S. Needs More Housing Than Almost Anyone Can Imagine

#31

Post by yummypaint »

zbrozek wrote: post #4
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #2

The full picture gets worse the more you look into it. The largest home builders in the nation aren’t building homes at budgets that most can afford. So you’d say to yourself, well clearly they’re targeting the affluent then. Except there are only so many high income Americans you can sell to, and not all of them want expensive homes. So what do these builders do? They build-to-rent! Yep. Those single-family homes yo…

It's a stifling regulatory environment that's landed us here. Zoning is restrictive, planning commissions are slow and restrictive, councils are slow and restrictive. All of the agencies involved want to capture value from construction projects. The net result is that very few projects pencil out, and the ones that do are expensive. We need to fix the root cause, which is lack of property rights.

The claims about zoning and property rights can be examined in the US, as Texas has no zoning. Housing costs are not remarkably different there.

The "capturing of value" that is actually happening is a net transfer of land and wealth from the general population to a handful of massive corporations and the people who control them. Once they own everything and have dismantled the market they can charge whatever they want.

Re: The U.S. Needs More Housing Than Almost Anyone Can Imagine

#32

Post by yummypaint »

zbrozek wrote: post #6
froggychairs wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoning for who? America has no issue with single family zoning. I’m assuming you’re speaking about middle and high density zoning. Since the issues you're describing are extremely common for those zoning projects.

If you're the property owner it should be easy for you to build whatever level of residential density you want and think the market will make profitable. Why is it illegal for me to build townhouses on my land? I'm in an area where it takes, on average, 1.8 acres per single family home. The next town over would put 18 single family homes in that same space. Zoning is restrictive even for single-family homes.

Move to Texas and you can literally do this. There is no zoning. Go ahead and build those townhouses on your land. Your next door neighbors might build a strip club or pesticide manufacturing plant, though.

Even if you luck out with your current neighbors, the addional risk will lead to worse terms for you if you need investors to finance the project.

Re: The U.S. Needs More Housing Than Almost Anyone Can Imagine

#33

Post by imtringued »

josephcsible wrote: post #30
zbrozek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're the property owner it should be easy for you to build whatever level of residential density you want and think the market will make profitable. Why is it illegal for me to build townhouses on my land? I'm in an area where it takes, on average, 1.8 acres per single family home. The next town over would put 18 single family homes in that same space. Zoning is restrictive even for single-family homes.

> If you're the property owner it should be easy for you to build whatever level of residential density you want and think the market will make profitable. Why is it illegal for me to build townhouses on my land? Isn't the entire concept of externalities in economics that things aren't that simple? Presumably you agree that your neighbor shouldn't be able to build a sewage treatment plant next to your house.

From what I can tell most economists will actively go out of their way to ignore externalities. For some externalities there are even market based methods for getting rid of them yet curiously almost no economist is interested in these types of institutions.

Re: The U.S. Needs More Housing Than Almost Anyone Can Imagine

#34

Post by imtringued »

BuckyBeaver wrote: post #28
BuckyBeaver wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Modded down by developer shills and clueless Bernie bros who lash out at facts they don't like... for whatever reason. Maybe they lack the confidence or gumption to believe that they'll ever succeed, so why should anyone else enjoy what he worked decades for? GIMME GIMME GIMME. Up yours. Get a job.

People have jobs but very often these mega corporations moved them into a specific location and now everyone must live there which is why they complain about housing.

Re: The U.S. Needs More Housing Than Almost Anyone Can Imagine

#35

Post by Gigachad »

jimrandomh wrote: post #11
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #2

The full picture gets worse the more you look into it. The largest home builders in the nation aren’t building homes at budgets that most can afford. So you’d say to yourself, well clearly they’re targeting the affluent then. Except there are only so many high income Americans you can sell to, and not all of them want expensive homes. So what do these builders do? They build-to-rent! Yep. Those single-family homes yo…

This is a misunderstanding of how pricing works. The homes that are beig built aren't expensive because they're fancy, they're expensive because they're scarce and people need them, so they bid against each other. Every building markets itself as "luxury", but this is in fact just marketing. In principle you could make units cheaper by dividing them up into units with less floor space, but that people are already ren…

Expensive because they are new as well. Also even if you did constantly target the top end of the market. The people moving in moved out of somewhere else which has freed it up for others.

Re: The U.S. Needs More Housing Than Almost Anyone Can Imagine

#36

Post by Gigachad »

jasonjamerson wrote: post #20

There's no situation in which the NYC subway can accommodate a 50% increase in riders. Just building housing isn't enough. I do think this article is right about a lot of things, but I think that if we could magically increase housing, we would find what NYC found building highways: building them actually created traffic, and they could never catch it. If a city's infrastructure can't dramatically increase, the city'…

No situation? What about the situation where they build more lines/stations and run them more frequently?

Re: The U.S. Needs More Housing Than Almost Anyone Can Imagine

#37

Post by iggldiggl »

BuckyBeaver wrote: post #12
zbrozek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're the property owner it should be easy for you to build whatever level of residential density you want and think the market will make profitable. Why is it illegal for me to build townhouses on my land? I'm in an area where it takes, on average, 1.8 acres per single family home. The next town over would put 18 single family homes in that same space. Zoning is restrictive even for single-family homes.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Not to mention the lack of public transportation in most areas, so now you're creating more traffic.

That's a somewhat of a circular dependency, though, because public transport requires a certain amount of density in order to be viable.

Re: The U.S. Needs More Housing Than Almost Anyone Can Imagine

#38

Post by rcarr »

fy20 wrote: post #26
rcarr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely ridiculous now. It was also in the news today that net migration was 504,000 this year. I absolutely think it was the right thing to do (mostly refugees from Ukraine and Hong Kong) but if you're going to have these migration policies and you've got a housing supply and affordability crisis, you've absolutely got to implement mass house building policies at the same time. This government is an absolute…

A better way to look at it is how much is immigration of wealthy people propping up the UK economy? If you look at the number of new £1m+ apartments in London (which even if you are a couple of well paid engineers you probably could not get a mortgage for), then it paints a pretty stark picture.

My understanding is that these apartments aren’t generally purchased by immigrants but by non-resident investors who just want a safe asset to park money in and take advantage of the ridiculous never ending house price inflation. They know that the government will never take any steps to correct the market because the severity of the after effects would make it electoral suicide. So London is just filled with tons of empty apartments and houses.

Re: The U.S. Needs More Housing Than Almost Anyone Can Imagine

#39

Post by rcarr »

Aeolun wrote: post #22
rcarr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely ridiculous now. It was also in the news today that net migration was 504,000 this year. I absolutely think it was the right thing to do (mostly refugees from Ukraine and Hong Kong) but if you're going to have these migration policies and you've got a housing supply and affordability crisis, you've absolutely got to implement mass house building policies at the same time. This government is an absolute…

But where will you go? Housing is ridiculous everywhere (except maybe Japan).

At the minute I’m leaning towards going to Australia to take advantage of the new 3 year Working Holiday Visa for uk citizens. I’ll probably get a campervan over there and do the whole nomad thing for a while or just rent for a bit. After that I’m not sure, options I’m weighing up atm:

- study German over the next few years and then study in Germany (free or extremely low cost tuition)

- as above but in Argentina or another Latin American country (have already been studying Spanish for a couple of years so not far off the standard required)

- rent in Ireland for five years (can live and work there visa free as UK citizen), become a naturalised citizen then move anywhere I want in the EU

- move to Glasgow or Belfast where property is cheaper and the people are friendlier.

- do the whole digital nomad thing in more affordable countries like Thailand, Bali, Mexico etc

The only thing I know for sure is I am absolutely done with England and don’t want to be part of it anymore.

Re: The U.S. Needs More Housing Than Almost Anyone Can Imagine

#40

Post by theGnuMe »

BuckyBeaver wrote: post #29
theGnuMe wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denser cities use less water.. Biggest consumer of water is agriculture. There are natural places to increase density as traffic increases. So think of a main road, along that main road and some of the nearer side streets can be densified. You see a lot of this along El Camino for example in the Bay area. Take a bunch of these 1950s and earlier small 2bdrm houses and build multifamily housing.

Like I said: You want to live in density, move to the dense urban centers. But covering 100% of the land with concrete and giant edifices is unsustainable and inexcusable. "Main roads" are main roads for their original levels of population. They quickly become impassable if you exceed their design capacity; in fact, a great many of them are already there. And... no. Why destroy houses and yards with concrete blocks,…

The only constant is change amigo. I suggest you get used to it.
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