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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

#471

Post by hunterpayne »

maest wrote: post #259
estearum wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you see, we clearly need to armor the parts of the planes that have bullet holes in them upon return!

I get what you mean, but I doubt corruption is good for building good housing

Corruption isn't prevented by regulations; its enabled by regulations. That's the flaw in your thinking. If a market's only players are really rich, there are 2 possible reasons for that: 1) the market is really good and more players should be entering or 2) the market is highly regulated which prevents more players. Guess which happens a lot more than the other in RE development?

PS Most of the people who build houses aren't very rich, just the CEO/big boss who owns the entire company is. The other 99.9% of people are middle class/blue collar.

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

#473

Post by nodesocket »

pclowes wrote: post #470
nodesocket wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, if you dig through the various comments on HN over the years regarding SF housing costs the overwhelming conesus is more rent control. Sometimes, the most common sense solution turns out to be the correct one.

Hows that working for SF so far?

To be clear, I'm not advocating for rent control. :-)

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

#474

Post by ekkeke »

gorgonian wrote: post #462
rayiner wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand your sentence. What’s the subject of the verb “housing.”

The subject is “people”. Parent is suggesting that the equilibrium point of housing supply and demand naturally leaves some people unhoused.

That is the object of the sentence. He is asking who the subject is, in other words the thing or person that is doing the housing of the people. Is it the government? Is it you? I'm currently responsible for housing myself, which is annoying so I would prefer someone else take on this responsibility.

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

#475

Post by Retric »

gorgonian wrote: post #462
rayiner wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand your sentence. What’s the subject of the verb “housing.”

The subject is “people”. Parent is suggesting that the equilibrium point of housing supply and demand naturally leaves some people unhoused.

Which isn’t quite accurate as for example people prefer to move out of their parent’s homes while young adults but aren’t necessarily homeless if they don’t.

Basic housing is a necessity, but people also huge homes and 2nd homes etc. So housing policy should therefore be more complicated than simply subsidizing anything you can call housing. Capping the home mortgage tax deduction at ~median home prices for example is probably a better use of government funds.

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

#476

Post by FireBeyond »

hunterpayne wrote: post #471
maest wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get what you mean, but I doubt corruption is good for building good housing

Corruption isn't prevented by regulations; its enabled by regulations. That's the flaw in your thinking. If a market's only players are really rich, there are 2 possible reasons for that: 1) the market is really good and more players should be entering or 2) the market is highly regulated which prevents more players. Guess which happens a lot more than the other in RE development? PS Most of the people who build hous…

> just the CEO/big boss who owns the entire company is. The other 99.9% of people are middle class/blue collar

Yup. I did some IT integration work for a man who owned a local construction company and was very effectively vertically integrating it. In addition to their other work he'd buy land, personally, his company would build at cost prices, and his office staff first informally and then more formally became property managers.

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

#477

Post by slopinthebag »

bluegatty wrote: post #378
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.

Rent control is one of the best ideas, and it may be a civilizational, foundational idea. Property ownership is at the very core of entrenched power, and the foundation of rent-seeking and wealth asymmetry. If you look at even the Monarchs of long past - it wasn't their 'titles' that made them powerful - it was the economic rent that came along with the land ownership. Even in more open market economies, property is…

> our housing problems are about screwed up management, it's actually not even an ideological problem underneath

Broadly, our housing problems are bureaucratic in origin and I think bureaucracy is indeed an ideology.

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

#478

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

pclowes wrote: post #444
slg wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Affordable housing used as an incentive or way to overcome other barriers to housing (density limits, height limits, zoning etc) I'm not sure what type of affordable housing program doesn't meet this definition. They are almost always tied to incentives for developers, including sometimes in the form of a removal of other housing restrictions. Or are you specifically objecting to financial assistance on the renter/b…

See San Francisco. Also generally anywhere else where prices are rising and developers can’t develop and yet there are a lot of affordable housing policies. CA as a whole has mismanaged this so badly they have a net migration outflow. Also removing other housing restrictions that ostensibly were put in there by constituents is a valid reason for constituents to oppose AH. They get called NIMBYs for this but if the lo…

> if the local populace wanted more high density development then the density limits wouldnt be there to be excepted by AH

If people didn't want housing there, it wouldn't be built. If they didn't want the exemptions to be codified, then they wouldn't be.

The only way your statement makes sense is if you restrict "local" to a sufficiently small subset of the people (a town? A block? One single address?), but in that case, a greater number of people within a greater definition of "local" seem to disagree.

If the state gifts a locality power to impose zoning restrictions, then the state can usually alter (or withdraw) that gift when it stops being beneficial to the people of the state, even if a small subset of those people living in that one locality don't like it.

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

#479

Post by locknitpicker »

tirant wrote: post #467
idiotsecant wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do when that equilibrium point is hopelessly above what the average person can afford?

That means there’s an invisible hand keeping prices up, or basically that the market is not free enough. That’s caused most of the time due to excessive regulation. Another reason is high demand in locations where offer is limited due to physical limitations. There’s always demand to live in Broadway, and offer can never catch up due to its physical limitations.

> That means there’s an invisible hand keeping prices up, or basically that the market is not free enough. That’s caused most of the time due to excessive regulation.

No. Why do you guys fall so easily for the "regulation" cliche?

The answer is far easier: unwillingness to invest.

Why are there investment funds willing to burn through tens of millions in stupid stuff like NFTs or pets.com, but investing $10m on a 5 story apartment building that can get you a solid RoI of 20% is frowned upon?

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

#480

Post by CalRobert »

idiotsecant wrote: post #406
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused by this objection, if you draw a stereotypical supply and demand curve, you can see how prices settle to an equilibrium point. Of course reality has more complications, but I think your objection is 95% answered by a supply and demand curve. You keep building houses when it is profitable. You stop when it is not. This naturally keeps everything in balance.

What do you do when that equilibrium point is hopelessly above what the average person can afford?

Remove parking minimums and work to address inequality? If that the case in Austin though?
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