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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

#511

Post by otherme123 »

locknitpicker wrote: post #479
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.

> 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 s…

Why the investment funds have to build the houses? Houses has been built/funded from zero by the future owners since forever, either individually or through cooperatives. That way, "investors" don't need a positive ROI, and they happily lose money overall if they get a home.

I know some people that are currently "willing to invest" in buying a ship container or two and transform it into a house to get costs down. The problem? Regulations don't allow them to put the container in their own property.

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

#512

Post by bluegatty »

culopatin wrote: post #457
bluegatty wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Who builds them? Private party. What’s their incentive? Making money.

It's not the 'building' that's the problem - it never wars.

It's property ownership this is the core problem.

It's a zero sum game, of no value creation and mostly just economic rent extraction.

It's the 'property problem' not the 'thing on it'.

We have no problem getting people to 'make stuff and sell it'.

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

#513

Post by hunterpayne »

chii wrote: post #432
greyface- wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 house is built. Alice wants to own it to live in it. Bob wants to own it to rent it to Alice. 2 people want to own the house.

> 2 people want to own the house. and so how do you decide who gets it? 1) morally. Alice deserves it because her intention is more pure. 2) financially. Bob gets it, because he can pay more for it than alice. Which choice above you make as a policy direction is a reflection of your world view. I'm voting for 2), but i can understand the POV of 1), even tho i disagree with it.

You are entirely missing the point. The correct answer is to build 2 houses. The problem with these policies is that they artificially restrict demand. If they didn't do that, nobody would have a problem with them.

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

#514

Post by alephnerd »

jen20 wrote: post #496
alephnerd wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The majority of it is not Bel Air... Menlo Park was never a "middle class" town. The 101 was always the (literal) redline. The median household income is $210K [0] and it's the same demographic, unlike historically lower middle class but now upper middle class San Mateo [1]. A Menlo Park home address that is on the correct side of the 101 opens the same doors in the Bay that a Bel Air address does in Los Angeles or…

> opens the same doors in the Bay that a Bel Air address does in Los Angeles or an Austin Hills address does in Austin. West Lake Hills perhaps (which is not technically Austin) - Austin Hills is not remotely prestigious.

> West Lake Hills perhaps

Yep! That's what I meant - Rob Roy, Westlake Hills, Barton Creek around the country clubs, and Lost Creek. Those are the equivalents of much of Menlo Park and Atherton, and I know of a number of people who lived in Menlo+Atherton and moved to those areas of Austin in order to front-run taxes in the run-up of some significant exits.

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

#515

Post by hunterpayne »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #290
triceratops wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you invent a scenario where the mortgage is half the rent then buying is a no-brainer. Does that reflect reality?

Maybe not half, but it’s pretty common around here (generic midwestern city) for renting to be more expensive than a comparable mortgage. Many landlords seem to expect to pay their mortgage and property taxes and maintenance with the rental income, and still net a profit, if r/landlord is to be believed.

You do know that the posters on r/landlord are often selling services to landlords and thus have a financial incentive to make being a landlord seem attractive. Its a pretty safe assumption that reality isn't that rosy.

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

#516

Post by tirant »

adrianN wrote: post #333
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?

There is the possibility that the government builds housing, since the government doesn't have to care about direct profits and can include the overall economic effects of affordable housing in its calculations. We don't expect much direct profits from roads either, but we keep building more and more of them.

Because they don’t care about profits, they always end up overpaying and taking way longer time than necessary.

And who pays for that? The whole society: Either the government raises taxes, gets more in debt, or they print more money driving inflation up.

The most basic commodity, food, is a great example. The moment the government has ever step into controlling production of food, we’ve only seen subpar performance and starving people as a consequence. Ultimately killing millions (USRR, China, Korea…)

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

#517

Post by aorloff »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #238
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…

Water. You need clean water to grow a city. There isn't much of that to spread around anymore.

Except in the oceans, and near the oceans

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

#518

Post by b0rtb0rt »

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.

in america, more density and more people always means more crime

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

#519

Post by foltik »

jfoster wrote: post #186
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…

> Crazy that the reason we can't have an order-of-magnitude reduction in the cost of the most important thing people need (shelter) is not due to resource constraints, but man-made ones. You say that as though reduction in cost of housing is a universal desire, but it isn't. Suppose a couple of years ago you took a $500,000 loan to buy a $700,000 house, which you'll be paying off for the next 10 years. Would you like…

Always comes back to the good ol “fuck you, I got mine.”

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

#520

Post by hunterpayne »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #502
danavar wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 mislead…

It all depends on how those things are calculated. Are you including home value in retirement savings or not?
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