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Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

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Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#191

Post by manquer »

rconti wrote: post #11

Meanwhile, California is also trying to build housing near transit, but Menlo Park wants to preserve the character of downtown by preserving dirty, cracked, flat, surface-level parking lots like it's 1950.

To be fair it is not the city/elected officials who wants to retain the parking lots. The downtown redevelopment would probably make the city a lot of money.

It is the businesses around downtown who are pushing the save downtown campaign. I imagine the businesses contribute a fair chunk of revenue to the city now and have some influence .

Relative to say parts of Redwood City, or Palo Alto. Menlo park has a fair amount of student-ish 4 Unit lots, so it not all zoned SFU.

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#192

Post by xboxnolifes »

nomilk wrote: post #118

Dumb question, many cities suffer from extremely high property (i.e. land) prices. I understand the NIMBY barrier. But I don't understand why it isn't more common to simply.. start a new city. Especially in countries like Australia where property prices are sky high and alternative places for setting up a new city are abundant. Maybe internet connectivity was previously a barrier, but now.. starlink. I put this quest…

In this hypothetical, who is the individual or group of people that you envision would take the initiative to start a new city? What is their incentive to do so?

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#193

Post by eszed »

rgovostes wrote: post #144

I'll admit ignorance here, but I've been skeptical of the claim that new construction drives rents down. What I actually see is: a luxury apartment building goes up, surveys the market, and sets its rents 30% higher for the privilege of living in a new building with a gym for dogs or ball pit or whatever. Then the older buildings say, "Well, we can raise our rents 20% and still be the best deal in town," and so on. M…

> if you flood the market with 30% more housing units like Austin you get the Econ 101 effect

According to TFA, it seems so.

Which is great, because it's further evidence that we should do the same thing everywhere.

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#194

Post by kristopolous »

nemomarx wrote: post #3

Good news - experimental verification of the law of supply and demand! I'm sure the analysis is welcome though and I hope policy makers try to learn from this. We could densify most american cities quite a lot more.

No it's not. It's 2 cherry picked data points with a sample size of 1 of a complex system with multiple confounding factors such as a pandemic

You can look at other neighborhoods such as palms in Los Angeles, which has the most aggressive housing build out in all of California. Median rent has increased - sometimes more housing can create more demand

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#195

Post by pclowes »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #54
strbean wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone in the transaction wins Nobody ever thinks of the poor banks!

Usury-as-a-Service.

At scale banks only win as a facilitator of economic growth. As the adage goes they can only 3-6-3 if someone is making at least 7.

For the everyman banks not winning is catastrophic.

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#197

Post by amarant »

idontwantthis wrote: post #76
odyssey7 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the Bay Area really dealing with ticket machines? The global capital of technology? Just bill by plate or something.

Or develop 12 competing apps that each only work in different lots.

A fellow Swede I presume?

It's extra silly cause I once parked in central Oslo and got the ticket mailed to my sthlm address. No fuss, no problem, super easy!

We got a lot to learn from our neighbours....

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#198

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

pclowes wrote: post #176

Its wild how the solution to housing costs is really just: Build more housing. Keep law and order. No it doesn’t need to be “affordable”. Yes rent control is a terrible idea. Just build more housing. Note: that the US already has plenty of housing and housing costs basically go up in areas of low crime relative to economic opportunity. If you build housing, but allow crime to rise, you have wasted everybody’s time.

Multiple things can be done at once. The policies you laid out are not mutually exclusive, and have different utility for different communities. But yes, fundamentally more housing is needed for growing populations. Conversions and rezoning are also important parts of the urban equation to “build more housing”, not just exurban McMansion developments.

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#199

Post by AngryData »

nomilk wrote: post #118

Dumb question, many cities suffer from extremely high property (i.e. land) prices. I understand the NIMBY barrier. But I don't understand why it isn't more common to simply.. start a new city. Especially in countries like Australia where property prices are sky high and alternative places for setting up a new city are abundant. Maybe internet connectivity was previously a barrier, but now.. starlink. I put this quest…

People move to where there is jobs and money. You can't build the housing first, in our society you need capitalists to invest into building businesses to make people want to move there. And because we have spent decades killing small business in favor of corporations, you need corporations to decide to build where there are no people and they have to pay a small short term premium to attract workers. Except corporations don't like doing that because it is a longer term investment and they are worried about next quarter's numbers and maximizing executive level bonuses which means short term planning.

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#200

Post by knappe »

nomilk wrote: post #118

Dumb question, many cities suffer from extremely high property (i.e. land) prices. I understand the NIMBY barrier. But I don't understand why it isn't more common to simply.. start a new city. Especially in countries like Australia where property prices are sky high and alternative places for setting up a new city are abundant. Maybe internet connectivity was previously a barrier, but now.. starlink. I put this quest…

You can, but it is damn difficult.

https://www.volts.wtf/p/is-the-brand-new-city-in-california

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