Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Household size and the housing stock

kevinerdmann.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 149 posts

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#51

Post by bdjsiqoocwk »

crooked-v wrote: post #8
underlipton wrote: post #6

I don't buy it. One thing that stands out to me: he has a ton of charts, but this crucial bit: >But, since 2008, vacancies have been declining steeply. is missing one. It looks like this statement is based on his estimates. So... original research. I'll leave it to an actual statistician to analyze his methodology, but that statement doesn't jive with my experience. I continue to suspect that the "housing shortage" (…

The "housing shortage" is due to a shortage of housing. This is entirely self-inflicted by various cities that have illegalized all the easy ways of increasing density (see San Francisco for the reductio ad absurdum case), at the prompting of deeply NIMBY voters who oppose anything that will increase construction regardless of claimed political beliefs.

I'm not an expert, so forgive if this is a stupid question...

What you just said might be absolutely true in the US. However, housing is at historic levels everywhere in the developed world. How do you explain that? Surely not all cities in the world made the same mistakes?

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#52

Post by all2 »

thanksgiving wrote: post #28
geodel wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why enough housing is not getting build in Europe, surely they don't have crazy american rules but still facing severe housing shortages all over.

Where would you build them? You’d need to first “seed” new neighborhoods with subway stations “in the middle of nowhere”…

As soon as you announce a new subway station the vultures descend and prices will ratchet up as speculators by land and sit in it, waiting for the hither bidder.

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#53

Post by aidenn0 »

ben_w wrote: post #42
zbrozek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Builders build bespoke one off things for crazy people. Developers build bulk housing to try and make a profit, and they maximize FAR.

The options are not limited to {"bespoke custom house", "one size for all"}. These ones from this builder vary from 80-320 square metres (~10 square feet per square meter): https://www.heinzvonheiden.de/hausfinder It would be hilarious if the famously choice-filled capitalist USA has a building industry limited to Cold War DDR "commie block" identikit construction.

In the US, price per square foot is an important metric for appraisal. If the appraiser puts too low a price on the house, the buyer can't get a loan. Therefore if you are building in the US to sell the house, then you will maximize the square feet to maximize the appraised value.

In addition, it is relatively rare in the US for an individual owner to commission a custom house to be built. Particularly in the more populated areas, it is more overhead to build one house vs several houses, so people buying new houses are typically buying a new house in a development with mostly cosmetic differences as their only choices.

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#54

Post by tompccs »

All other things being equal, an expansion of housing stock which tracked population growth would keep prices steady.

The big shift is immigration expanding the pool of working-age people, and longer lifespans increasing the time it takes for family homes to be released back onto the market. People having fewer kids now self-evidently does not affect housing demand (except perhaps to reduce square footage needed per working person)

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#55

Post by tmnvix »

mastax wrote: post #41
underlipton wrote: post #6

I don't buy it. One thing that stands out to me: he has a ton of charts, but this crucial bit: >But, since 2008, vacancies have been declining steeply. is missing one. It looks like this statement is based on his estimates. So... original research. I'll leave it to an actual statistician to analyze his methodology, but that statement doesn't jive with my experience. I continue to suspect that the "housing shortage" (…

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHVRUSQ156N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRVRUSQ156N

Your links don't measure underutilised and vacant property (e.g. AirBnBs and second homes, or land banked properties).

From the links:

The homeowner vacancy rate is the proportion of the homeowner inventory that is vacant for sale.

The rental vacancy rate is the proportion of the rental inventory that is vacant for rent.

So essentially this is a measure of how many properties are vacant and available for rent or purchase.

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#56

Post by BaculumMeumEst »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #2

In the 1950s, average size of new homes was about 1200 square feet. In 2000, it was more than 2400 square feet and held one less person (iirc: 4.5 VS 3.5 people). We are building 1950s suburban homes on steroids in a post-baby-boom world where average household size has shrunk. There are a lot of problems with this.

We don’t live in the 1950’s anymore. When you and your spouse are working from home and have 2+ teenagers 1200 ain’t gonna cut it. Insisting on horrible conditions to raise a family in the modern world is not going to encourage people to have children.

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#57

Post by throwaway22032 »

It's always struck me that housing regulation (well, a lot of regulation really) is written by rich people for rich people.

When I moved out of home I'd have been perfectly willing to live in a minimally insulated log cabin, shipping container, etc of sorts with basic running water and wiring that consisted of me running conduit up the walls. I could then upgrade it slowly over time with insulation, stud walls, etc etc time permitting.

There's tons of land in the UK that'd be cheap enough to do this.

You just can't, though. It has to be done "to code" and with planning permission and a billion other legal things, which basically means forcing everyone into a level of luxury/"modernity" that most actually can't afford.

So you end up with basically nonsense like van life, people sleeping in their cars, homelessness etc, because as soon as you build a permanent structure it becomes a huge nonsense.

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#58

Post by bojan »

BaculumMeumEst wrote: post #56
DoreenMichele wrote: post #2

In the 1950s, average size of new homes was about 1200 square feet. In 2000, it was more than 2400 square feet and held one less person (iirc: 4.5 VS 3.5 people). We are building 1950s suburban homes on steroids in a post-baby-boom world where average household size has shrunk. There are a lot of problems with this.

We don’t live in the 1950’s anymore. When you and your spouse are working from home and have 2+ teenagers 1200 ain’t gonna cut it. Insisting on horrible conditions to raise a family in the modern world is not going to encourage people to have children.

Whatever we are doing now is also not encouraging people to have children. I'm sure many young people would rather choose a 1200 sqft home than no home at all, which is currently the case.

Your example of two teenagers is only relevant for 6 years of a family's lifetime. Why should we optimise for those 6 years?

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#59

Post by 2four2 »

underlipton wrote: post #6

I don't buy it. One thing that stands out to me: he has a ton of charts, but this crucial bit: >But, since 2008, vacancies have been declining steeply. is missing one. It looks like this statement is based on his estimates. So... original research. I'll leave it to an actual statistician to analyze his methodology, but that statement doesn't jive with my experience. I continue to suspect that the "housing shortage" (…

Another point overlooked is that the main focus of the article cites fewer people per household, then discounts things like AirB&B, which directly contributes to this statistic. It seems like a casual dismissal of the statistic, painting it as simply no one having children.

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#60

Post by thanksgiving »

all2 wrote: post #52
thanksgiving wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where would you build them? You’d need to first “seed” new neighborhoods with subway stations “in the middle of nowhere”…

As soon as you announce a new subway station the vultures descend and prices will ratchet up as speculators by land and sit in it, waiting for the hither bidder.

That means the demand is very high and we need to build even more subway stations until the “vultures” can’t arbitrage the market anymore.
Post reply on HN