Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market • Hacker News Board

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#81

Post by tptacek » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:48 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #73

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because this doesn’t magically solve the housing crisis It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) [1] http://censusreporter.org/pr…

> It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) That is only if you believe that more capacity does not induce more demand, which really…

Induced demand can only function if there's a scarcity to begin with, and it's premised on increased supply increasing affordability (that's the mechanism by which it works), but these axiomatic derivations don't matter because we have case studies (in MN, in TX, and now CO, a story we're literally commenting on). Empirical observations win.

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#82

Post by JumpCrisscross » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:51 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #73

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because this doesn’t magically solve the housing crisis It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) [1] http://censusreporter.org/pr…

> It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) That is only if you believe that more capacity does not induce more demand, which really…

> only if you believe that more capacity does not induce more demand

No, it doesn't. What you're describing is elasticity. It's a well-studed concept, and means that a 5% increase in supply will probably reduce prices by less than 4.8%.

(An interesting side effect of a government committing to a zero real-price increase housing strategy is it eliminates whole categories of speculative demand. I wouldn't count on this for policy effects. But it's another feather in the cap for pro-housing policy.)

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#83

Post by hdgvhicv » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:52 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #73

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because this doesn’t magically solve the housing crisis It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) [1] http://censusreporter.org/pr…

> It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) That is only if you believe that more capacity does not induce more demand, which really…

Is you idea that people will be renting multiple units just for the fun of it? In large enough numbers to be impactful?

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#84

Post by JumpCrisscross » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:52 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #81

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) That is only if you believe that more capacity does not induce more demand, which really…

Induced demand can only function if there's a scarcity to begin with, and it's premised on increased supply increasing affordability (that's the mechanism by which it works), but these axiomatic derivations don't matter because we have case studies (in MN, in TX, and now CO, a story we're literally commenting on). Empirical observations win.

> Induced demand can only function if there's a scarcity to begin with

I don't believe this is true, assuming scarcity = shortage. Ad absurdum, if Denver overbuilt such that one could pick up a parcel for a song, you'd see opportunistic demand where there previously was none.

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#85

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:53 PM UTC

FredPret wrote: post #77

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) That is only if you believe that more capacity does not induce more demand, which really…

That's why you have to allow large-scale building everywhere. Then the market will find its own level. The inverse of this situation is that everyone lives somewhere they consider unpleasant because the rent is affordable there. The megacities you mention are enormously economically productive per capita. All sorts of efficiencies pop up when a huge number of people live near one another.

[deleted]

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#86

Post by davidw » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:53 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #73

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because this doesn’t magically solve the housing crisis It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) [1] http://censusreporter.org/pr…

> It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) That is only if you believe that more capacity does not induce more demand, which really…

This argument always comes up when discussing a specific place.

"Everyone would move to ________ because it is the best place in the spiral arm of the Milky Way", where ________ is Boulder, Bend, Austin, Portland, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Hawai'i, Santa Fe, etc.... etc....

It cannot be true for all of them. So they all need to build and people will figure out where they actually want to live.

Bozeman, Montana, a small city of 50K people, is seeing falling rents because they built a lot of housing:

https://montanafreepress.org/2025/06/23/has-bozemans-rental-...

And it's very much the kind of small place where "everyone wants to live there".

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#87

Post by Jtsummers » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:54 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #40

throwmeaway222 wrote: post #14

yeah well, the last time things were affordable the price was 1200. 71 dollars off 1850 isn't going to do anything

I recently denounced some Boomer for this exact comment at a Berkeley public hearing. Unsurprisingly, $71 per month at the margin is quite useful to many people.

In Colorado, that's about 5 hours of labor for minimum wage employees (ignoring taxes, but at that income taxes are low). If you're working full-time, you average 174 working hours a month so that's about 2.9% of a minimum wage earner's gross income, which is nothing to scoff at for those folks who are earning at that level. And when you consider taxes (payroll which can't be easily avoided, and whatever level of income tax they have to pay) it's probably pushing closer to one day of work to take home that $71.

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#88

Post by czhu12 » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:56 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #73

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because this doesn’t magically solve the housing crisis It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) [1] http://censusreporter.org/pr…

> It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) That is only if you believe that more capacity does not induce more demand, which really…

Giving significantly more people a way to live a lifestyle they seek, while holding the cost of housing flat -- if thats the worst case outcome, that seems totally fine, and arguably a better solution than trying to crash the cost of housing.

I would imagine for most people, this is what "solving the housing crisis" means

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#89

Post by JumpCrisscross » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:56 PM UTC

bearcobra wrote: post #46

It's really encouraging to see these kinds of success stories. I really hope people who are concerned about affordability start to view things from more of a "yes and" point of view. We can work on reducing the barriers to building more housing of any kind while also advocating for more social housing development.

> We can work on reducing the barriers to building more housing of any kind while also advocating for more social housing development

One of the NIMBY lobby's greatest wins was putting these options on the ends of a policy spectrum.

They're not. They're complementary. If it's cheaper to build, it's cheaper to build social housing. And if you have a vibrant construction sector, you can build more public housing faster.

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#90

Post by tptacek » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 10:01 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #89

bearcobra wrote: post #46

It's really encouraging to see these kinds of success stories. I really hope people who are concerned about affordability start to view things from more of a "yes and" point of view. We can work on reducing the barriers to building more housing of any kind while also advocating for more social housing development.

> We can work on reducing the barriers to building more housing of any kind while also advocating for more social housing development One of the NIMBY lobby's greatest wins was putting these options on the ends of a policy spectrum. They're not. They're complementary. If it's cheaper to build, it's cheaper to build social housing. And if you have a vibrant construction sector, you can build more public housing faster…

They're not always complementary. For instance, IZOs are a social housing intervention, and work against the goal of increasing supply.