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

Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

pew.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 1001 posts

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

#481

Post by hunterpayne »

bluegatty wrote: post #394
wyager wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rent control is one of the best ideas It's funny how this question might have the greatest divergence in answer distribution between people who do and don't know what they're talking about Other candidates are "is debt good" and "is property tax better or worse than income tax"

I think it's a matter of perspective maybe more than 'knowing what they are talking about'. Like - seeing property as 'investment and ownership' vs 'places where people live' is sometimes pretty big gap. Especially when we've been grounded in 'mortgages and wealth creation' for regular middle class people. Rent control and the underlying civilization power dynamics are kind of a subtle thing, I think most folks are g…

Rent control drives up rents, not down. Since rent control was enacted in SF, rents have increased by 15x in 45 years. That's 24% a year annualized over 45 years. Its similar for other places that enacted it.

Rarely in human history has a specific policy failed more spectacularly. Yet you still hear supposedly educated people advocate for it every year.

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

#483

Post by bob1029 »

I feel like the economics around the Texas real estate markets are getting really twisted due to other factors.

The quality of construction in these new builds is generally very bad. If you compare a Texas home built in 2025 with one in 2015, I can guarantee you will find shocking differences once you pull back some of the drywall or have kids jumping around upstairs. I had a 2023 build for a year before I realized I had a hot potato situation on my hands and decided to bail.

The new builds used to command a premium, but in some communities the situation has completely inverted. Buyers are coming in and explicitly avoiding anything built in the new millennium. Information is flowing so much more freely around real estate and the unspoken bullshit scams prevalent within. We've now got home inspector influencers on TikTok showing first time homebuyers exactly what to look out for. We didn't have these kinds of information channels when I was shopping for my first home.

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

#484

Post by jrflowers »

terminalshort wrote: post #227
slg wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is phrased as if the article is confirming these points when it either doesn't mention them or even directly refutes them. First there is no mention of either crime or rent control in the article. But more importantly, it states that "A key piece of Austin’s strategy has been to encourage the construction of affordable housing." So why are you concluding that affordable housing isn't needed?

Affordable housing is the only type of housing that will ever be built. Builders aren't so stupid as to build products that their customers can't buy. Government intervention is not needed.

I like this reasoning. If there exists a person or organization that can afford to buy a thing then it is an affordable thing. Now this might sound like a tautology but that’s only because it is

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

#485

Post by locknitpicker »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #426
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?

there are many things you can do, but essentially you want to make it profitable for builders to make houses at a lower price point, or give the average person more money. Some approaches (not all of which I'm endorsing): - reduce restrictions around planning / construction / etc (because it takes time and expertise to comply, both of which cost money) - find a way to bring in cheaper labor, or make it possible for c…

> - find a way to bring in cheaper labor, or make it possible for construction companies to hire the same labor at a lower price. Maybe a subsidy, maybe reduced taxes, maybe relaxed labor laws

It's far easier than that: just have your regional/local government finance urban renewal projects that increase occupation density. You can even tie the project to the expansion of a public transportation system.

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

#486

Post by hunterpayne »

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #447
manlymuppet wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't saying affordable housing isn't needed. Just that the method for making housing affordable shouldn't be trying to make the current housing supply cheaper. And from this is where you get "rent-control is a terrible idea". Essentially: trying to artificially drive down housing prices in any way is generally inadvisable if you can just build more housing. Sure that's technically an opinion, but it's one base…

That's a pretty generous interpretation that requires you to believe rent control and building housing are diametrically opposed to each other.

rent control dramatically decreases the incentives to build and in many cases makes it impossible (read uneconomic) to do so

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

#487

Post by CalRobert »

sgc wrote: post #354
adrianN wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm under the impression that more supply=lower rents, even if execution is not perfect, but I'm not an economist.

Sure if that's all you care about, it will do that. At the price of making people's lives miserable due to substandard housing if it's done wrong. I said it's a good idea, let's just make sure we do it right.

Is substandard housing worse than no housing?

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

#488

Post by tsunamifury »

tptacek wrote: post #211
tsunamifury wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There isn't affordable housing in areas of opportunity. You can easily find cheap housing if you don't care about proximity to jobs or to good school districts.

[flagged]

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

#490

Post by CalRobert »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #436
estearum wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New construction has already decelerated in Austin due to falling prices, which compresses already-near-zero margin on real estate development. So yes, it really is "just build more housing." The problem is: why would you build more housing as prices fall?

Why let private developers build at all? The market provides perverse incentive to not house everyone.

How so?
Post reply on HN