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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

#501

Post by laserlight »

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.

Nowhere in the economic theory there is a proposition stating that prices should fall below affordable levels, given enough competition.

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

#502

Post by sharkjacobs »

danavar wrote: post #402
wcfrobert wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NIMBYism has never been about preserving neighborhood characteristic, or noise and traffic concerns. Menlo Park is not Big Sur. Sure, some concerns are reasonable and should be investigated, but most of the time they're bureaucratic distractions that's been weaponized by people who want to delay progress and protect their investment. For most Americans, A house is their primary savings account, retirement plan, and p…

>For most Americans, A house is their primary savings account This is true for California, where people (foolishly) rely on their home value as their retirement plan, which further incentivizes NIMBYism. But in places like Texas (and other areas with affordable housing), the house is just treated as something you pay off to have a low housing cost in retirement. And your investments are your retirement+savings accoun…

I'm not from Texas or California but it doesn't intuitively feel true to me that Texans are better at investing and saving for retirement.

According to the first relevant search result I can find https://www.cnbc.com/select/average-retirement-savings-by-st... the retirement savings per dollar of median annual income in California is $1.44 and in Texas is $1.17

Do you think that's wrong? Or do you think it's a misleading statistic and doesn't contradict your belief?

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

#503

Post by idontwantthis »

amarant wrote: post #197
idontwantthis wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

No not a Swede at all this is funny! That was my experience parking in the Washington, DC area last year.

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

#504

Post by solatic »

bluegatty wrote: post #431
hahahacorn wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be far more efficient to simply tax away all rent collected from land instead of grossly warping markets and creating terrible incentives for all involved. The reason is that you can’t produce more land. Fixed supply will also warp economic markets and create terrible incentives (land speculation). If you want the best solution, you implement a land value tax. If you want the 2nd best solution, tax property…

Rent control is not 'warping markets' - it's the notion that 'homes are markets' that is 'warped' - that's the basis of the problem. The workaround is to build more dwellings, and rc generally is not an inhibitor there. Funny enough 'wealth taxes' may actually be the worst of tax of all - aka a double negative - like a double negative. What we want to do is make it so that 'rich people get rich' not from rent-seeking…

> it's the notion that 'homes are markets' that is 'warped'

A market in this case isn't a literal street market with vendors hawking their goods. The word "market" describes the relationship between people who have more than they need selling to people who need and would prefer to exchange their money (or vouchers etc.) to acquire it.

Housing can't not be a market anymore than food or labor could not be a market. It's like saying it's warped that water evaporates and becomes clouds and turns into precipitation. It's a word that describes one of the natural systems of how the world works.

Even in communist societies where the State owns all the land and all the housing and decides how to distribute it, you still have a State-owned-and-directed market between citizens who need housing and a State that has excess housing and provides it to citizens.

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

#505

Post by Sl1mb0 »

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.

The good ol' invisible hand;

Literally an appeal to ignorance.

"What else could it be?"

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

#506

Post by hunterpayne »

fogzen wrote: post #397
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.

It's possible to build more housing and have rent control. Rent control is the only thing allowing working class families to live a dignified life in the USA's most desirable cities. Land value tax and social housing are simply not politically feasible – rent control is.

That is simply not true in any way. Have you ever lived somewhere with rent control? Working class families who have members working jobs in rent controlled areas commute in from often over an hour outside of the city. There are only 3 types of people who live in those cities: those in public housing, upper middle class and wealthy. Their plumbers live in Tracy.

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

#507

Post by solatic »

bluegatty wrote: post #409
jmyeet wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent control is the wrong solution to the right problem (ie affordable housing). It creates all sorts of problems that wouldn't exist otherwise. For example, if you've been in a rent control house or apartment for 10+ years and are paying significantly less, what happens if you want to move? Or just need a bigger place? It's a huge impeediment to mobility and flexibility. Also, you have an adversarial relationship wi…

The problems that rent control creates are far smaller than the problems that exist without it. To start - your 'very first example' is not even really 'a problem'. 'Without rent control' - you get kicked out of your abode every few years if your salary doesn't keep up with housing inflation. With rent control, you have the option of 'having a home; you decide when you want to leave (for the most part). The answer to…

> 'adversarial tenant/landlord' is that the theory doesn't line up with reality

So disconnected from reality that it beggars belief.

Anytime you put two or more adult people into a relationship together and at least one person feels like they do not have the option to leave if things get bad (e.g. landlord feels like the tenant is wrecking the property but has no right to evict, tenant feels like landlord is not taking care of maintenance but feels pressured to stay due to artificially low rent), the result is toxic suffering.

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

#508

Post by throwaway2037 »

estearum wrote: post #221
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.

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?

    > already-near-zero margin on real estate development
I did a little bit of research. I looks like 15-20% is a normal target margin for the United States. Is this really "already-near-zero"? I disagree.

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

#509

Post by vkou »

TurdF3rguson wrote: post #495
vkou wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes rent control is a terrible idea. When you aren't building more housing, for whatever reason, rent control is the only thing that prevents domestic 'immigrants' into your city from making all the residents homeless. Since cities can't stop migration into them, it's the only tool they have to protect their existing residents. --- PS. If you believe in trial-by-combat for housing, why not a similar approach to bor…

The problem is, rent control scares away developers and traps tenants in apartments that they've grown out of. Also why should cities prioritize protecting residents based on how long they've lived there? Everyone counts the same.

> Also why should cities prioritize protecting residents based on how long they've lived there? Everyone counts the same.

That's a great question. Why do countries prioritize existing citizens over all people who want to move into them? We are, after all, all the same. Two legs, two arms, just under a dozen fingers, most of us aren't destructive shitheads.

If we just let in anyone who wants to emigrate, you wouldn't be trapped in an apartment, or home, or city or life you were born into. You would always have the chance to 'upgrade' to one that's worse!

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

#510

Post by jjmarr »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #494
tirant wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is theoretical MBA101 speech: In reality, those ideas do not apply to the housing market, esp. as there is no real competition; and because the demand is absolutely inelastic (if we are already applying in MBA-wording universe) Also, that this is true you can see if you compare to housing markets which "are more free than the Australian"

The regulation is single family zoning. Zoning makes it impossible to stack high rise apartment buildings in the areas that people want to live in.
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