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The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

derekthompson.org

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Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#401

Post by Gigachad »

frollogaston wrote: post #388
Gigachad wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has just lead to Boomers getting a death grip on every city. Young people are forced to pay out the nose to rent the scraps of housing left, and then also get taxed to pay out the pensions of the same boomers because they moved all of their cash out of the bank and stocks to put in to a 5 bedroom house in Sydney so now they qualify for welfare.

What do you propose instead to allow younger people to buy homes, and if it were implemented, why would young people still want to buy a home under those rules?

I propose construction approvals be managed by a higher government level than the local council which has so far resulted in disastrous outcomes.

At the state level, planning can be done for the benefit of the whole city. Entrenched groups of property owners holding inner city areas hostage won't be able to push young people to the outskirts where there is no PT, schools or facilities. Medium and high density buildings would be able to be built where they make the most sense, not just where there is the least political resistance.

Young people want to live near jobs, transport, and entertainment. But those areas are currently locked up by property owners preventing construction of appropriate housing.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#402

Post by moneycantbuy »

spankalee wrote: post #101
simpaticoder wrote: post #56

What about wealth inequality as the root cause of housing shortage? Even if supply is eased, the wealthy (those who have enough capital to earn passive income) will buy the extra supply and rent to the poor. The Piketty effect takes over, they invest their profit in more housing, wealth inequality continues to get worse, and while more housing exists, it owned by an increasingly small cohort. Personally I'd like to s…

Where's the evidence that wealth inequality is the root cause of housing shortage, as opposed to say, the real and factual lack of building? Even if the wealthy did buy up extra supply to rent out, that would only mean increased supply of rentals, which would lower rents.

The ultra wealthy don't even care if it's rented, they're just diversifying their asset portfolios.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#403

Post by jdkoeck »

munchler wrote: post #392
jdkoeck wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your own example seems to show that the culprit lies with local governance, not developers, wouldn’t you agree?

No. Let's not pretend that it's OK for developers to try to obtain undue influence over government officials.

There’s a puzzling contradiction between your claim that developers are the problem, on one hand, and then your own anecdote on the other, not to mention the article that very convincingly debunks the idea that housing shortage is the fault of developers. I must be missing something, because frankly this isn’t making any sense.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#404

Post by imgabe »

moneycantbuy wrote: post #395
imgabe wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't make sense. Each wealthy family can only live in one house at a time. Yes, they might have multiple homes, but a billionaire having a luxury vacation home in Lake Tahoe or a penthouse in Manhattan are not the reason housing is unaffordable. The type of home a billionaire would buy would never be affordable anyway.

Bill Gates owns 275,000 acres in the USA. I doubt he's even gazed upon half of it. The billionaires aren't buying homes to live in like us proles, they're buying lots of finite land and water rights and such.

That is about .01% of the US land area, and I’m guessing it’s not downtown in major cities or other places that people want to live. It’s probably mostly undeveloped wilderness for conservation, right? That has zero effect on home prices.

There is no shortage of land in the US. There are huge, huge empty spaces. There is only a shortage of housing in places where people want to live because local governments won’t let anyone build new housing.

Edit: Looked this up, and Bill Gates owns farmland, which is producing food, so this also wouldn't be available for people to live on anyway.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#405

Post by eddythompson80 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #400
eddythompson80 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not entirely true for NYT as OP mentioned. NYT is 170 years old. They have been through many phases and models. Luckily NYT is a public company and you can look up their revenue split on the SEC website going back to 1994. In 1994 they had 35% revenue from circulation vs 65% from ads. In 2021 it was 24% ads and 68% subscribers and 8% "Other"

The Washington Post is also a public company (before 2013). In their 2009 filing, they state that the newspaper's revenue (in 2008) was 51% ads, with the other 49% not attributed. At that time operating expenses exceeded revenues by 25 million dollars, though this was not an immediate problem for them because they owned several other more profitable companies. By contrast, in that same year the New York Times announc…

Why are you looking at 2009? Is it because you think it fits your narrative? What happened in 2008 I wonder that may cause companies to be struggling? NYT is a profitable company with majority of their income coming from paid subscriptions. Does that answer your question about how they are different or do you wanna check their revenue split and financials in 1928 too?

A business secured a loan from a billionaire after the GFC and paid it off in 6 years. The billionaire also acquired a significant position in the business that he has mostly exited with a significant profit generated from the business subscription model. More on this crazy story as it unfolds at 11

It's no different -> Paid subscriptions have never been a significant source of revenue to newspapers -> well, they were struggling in 2009 -> ...

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#406

Post by gboss »

munchler wrote: post #344
ThinkBeat wrote: post #35

There is an incredibly large lobby group who is fully invested in house prices rising or at least not falling, namely homeowners. and since most politicians at a high level usually own one or more houses, they are fully invested in it as well.

There's also a large lobby group that is fully invested in building new houses, namely real estate developers, and since most politicians at a high level usually need large campaign contributions, they are fully invested in it as well.

This is not the problem. We should not castigate people who want to build homes and earn a rightful profit from that endeavor. The problem is the undemocratic process that is the town hearing. It is unreasonable to expect working families and young adults to attend week day, day time hearings to state their position on the construction of new homes or anything else for that matter. The atrocities of urban renewal by Robert Moses and his followers in the 50s and 60s which wrecked many urban and black urban communities, many of which still haven’t recovered, led us into this mess. The antidote was that all movements towards progress must be debated by citizens (mostly seniors as they are the only ones with the luxury of time) in a hearing format. The citizens able to participate are most likely not going to live long enough to see the results of their positions anyways. It’s a disaster.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#407

Post by antisthenes »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #123
jerlam wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a much bigger group than homeowners. Banks don't want housing prices to fall, since then homeowners start foreclosing and then banks lose interest payments and own undesired property. Cities don't want housing prices to fall, since they were counting on money from developers and property taxes.

Property taxes are relatively independent from the absolute value of the property. Only the relative value of a property to other properties in municipality determines property taxes.

> Property taxes are relatively independent from the absolute value of the property.

In most places they are not. What would even compel you to write something like this?

Property values are regularly re-assessed according to recent sales and a % of the property value is then levied as tax.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#409

Post by munchler »

jdkoeck wrote: post #403
munchler wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Let's not pretend that it's OK for developers to try to obtain undue influence over government officials.

There’s a puzzling contradiction between your claim that developers are the problem, on one hand, and then your own anecdote on the other, not to mention the article that very convincingly debunks the idea that housing shortage is the fault of developers. I must be missing something, because frankly this isn’t making any sense.

I'm not saying that developers are the cause of the housing shortage.

I'm saying that developers are eager to build housing and sometimes are able to cut corners via undue influence over public officials. That leads to more housing (good), but it also erodes the quality of life for residents (bad).

It's really not that hard to understand.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#410

Post by loeg »

whatever1 wrote: post #264
appreciatorBus wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The population of a place doesn't have to double, or even change at all, for prices to go up. All that is necessary is for more people to want to live in a place. Those with the $ to satisfy that desire will outbid those who don't and you can easily double/triple/10x prices with no change in population.

How come more people want to live in the entire US if the population is relatively flat? Prices are up everywhere. The only answer is that the increased observed demand is a result of the increased investment demand (rather than native demand)

Your factual statements are wrong. The US population isn't flat over time, and housing (supply) decays over time. Prices aren't up everywhere, just the places people actually want to live.
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