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

International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

news.mccombs.utexas.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 65 posts

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#11

Post by legitster »

ripley12 wrote: post #5

Awful headline and I doubt it's what the author would have chosen, given that her comments are much more to do with supply: > “In San Francisco, demand is reflected in increased prices,” she says. “In Charlotte, demand is reflected in increased quantities.” > “A big takeaway is that cities are in control of a big portion of their supply sensitivity,” Gorback says. “It’s cities that control zoning. It’s cities that co…

It's kind of insane that you look at a city like San Francisco that's on a tiny bit of land in a desirable location and they absolutely refuse to build up.

I get that their Victorian houses are pretty, but they're only about a 100 years old and they are now crammed full of people and cars. It's too young of a city to be sycophantically in love with its past self.

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#12

Post by fragmede »

kurthr wrote: post #8
ripley12 wrote: post #5

Awful headline and I doubt it's what the author would have chosen, given that her comments are much more to do with supply: > “In San Francisco, demand is reflected in increased prices,” she says. “In Charlotte, demand is reflected in increased quantities.” > “A big takeaway is that cities are in control of a big portion of their supply sensitivity,” Gorback says. “It’s cities that control zoning. It’s cities that co…

Some 10-15% of San Francisco housing is unoccupied. The exact why and how to fix it are arguable, but I'm doubtful the investment is actually helping. https://www.pacificresearch.org/time-to-ask-why-so-many-san-...

Taxing empty housing seems like the obvious answer. Make it more expensive and more work to keep it empty than it is to fill it.

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#13

Post by khuey »

kurthr wrote: post #8
ripley12 wrote: post #5

Awful headline and I doubt it's what the author would have chosen, given that her comments are much more to do with supply: > “In San Francisco, demand is reflected in increased prices,” she says. “In Charlotte, demand is reflected in increased quantities.” > “A big takeaway is that cities are in control of a big portion of their supply sensitivity,” Gorback says. “It’s cities that control zoning. It’s cities that co…

Some 10-15% of San Francisco housing is unoccupied. The exact why and how to fix it are arguable, but I'm doubtful the investment is actually helping. https://www.pacificresearch.org/time-to-ask-why-so-many-san-...

https://socketsite.com/archives/2022/02/there-are-not-40000-...

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#14

Post by legitster »

kurthr wrote: post #8
ripley12 wrote: post #5

Awful headline and I doubt it's what the author would have chosen, given that her comments are much more to do with supply: > “In San Francisco, demand is reflected in increased prices,” she says. “In Charlotte, demand is reflected in increased quantities.” > “A big takeaway is that cities are in control of a big portion of their supply sensitivity,” Gorback says. “It’s cities that control zoning. It’s cities that co…

Some 10-15% of San Francisco housing is unoccupied. The exact why and how to fix it are arguable, but I'm doubtful the investment is actually helping. https://www.pacificresearch.org/time-to-ask-why-so-many-san-...

2 things:

- this article is out of date. The market has changed a lot since the AI boom. - That's a 10%ish of all housing in the city. Right now, of available units SF has one of the smallest vacancy rates in the country right now. The difference is (as the article alludes), apartments that are undergoing renovations, not currently permitted, etc.

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#15

Post by roenxi »

BobbyJo wrote: post #9
kurthr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some 10-15% of San Francisco housing is unoccupied. The exact why and how to fix it are arguable, but I'm doubtful the investment is actually helping. https://www.pacificresearch.org/time-to-ask-why-so-many-san-...

When a good's supply is constrained, it becomes a store of value. See: gold. Strangely enough, if housing got built in response to price increases, there would likely be less unused housing, because it would be seen less as a way to store capital.

> When a good's supply is constrained, it becomes a store of value. See: gold.

That doesn't make sense as stated, because every physical commodity is supply-constrained to some extent, even and especially the ones that are extremely bad stores of value. Picking on Fermium (it has a nice atomic number) - Fermium is supply constrained and it makes a horrible store of value because it rapidly morphs into something else.

Gold is a well-liked store of value because it is absurdly stable (about as close as we can practically get to indestructible) and roughly the easiest to physically store out of all the durable candidates.

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#16

Post by Scoundreller »

someperson wrote: post #3

The US also drastically stopped constructing new houses after 2008

Because they got cheaper for quite a while.

Meanwhile vs Canada (turn on your ad blocker): https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2023/09/the-u-s-housing-mar...

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#17

Post by jstanley »

khuey wrote: post #13
kurthr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some 10-15% of San Francisco housing is unoccupied. The exact why and how to fix it are arguable, but I'm doubtful the investment is actually helping. https://www.pacificresearch.org/time-to-ask-why-so-many-san-...

https://socketsite.com/archives/2022/02/there-are-not-40000-...

The table in the article seems to contradict its own headline.

The headline says there are not 40k vacant homes, but the table breaks down the reasons for vacancy of just a bit over 40k homes. So it sounds to me like there are in fact 40k vacant homes.

And it goes on to say:

> Yes, 40,458 units of housing in San Francisco were classified as “vacant” in the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) for 2019.

However it also says:

> an occupied unit is actually classified as “vacant” for the purposes of the ACS if the person living in the unit is planning to move within two months of being surveyed

But this doesn't appear to match any of the categories that sum to 40458, so I am not sure if this is even applicable.

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#18

Post by derriz »

I would have imagined that an influx of any type of money - not just foreign money - into a market with limited supply growth would push up prices.

Probably I am getting overly sensitive about what seems to be creeping casual xenophobia even in mainstream media. The way the story is presented, the sketchy “foreign” aspect of the money is apparently central to it having this undesirable outcome.

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#19

Post by tasuki »

rho138 wrote: post #2

> An influx of foreign money during the 2010s drove up housing costs in the areas with the greatest concentrations of purchasers from outside the U.S., finds Caitlin Gorback, assistant professor of finance. This just in, water is wet.

A friend of mine got a PhD in economics with "building a bridge across the fjord increased property prices on the other side of the fjord".

Re: International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

#20

Post by pydry »

legitster wrote: post #11
ripley12 wrote: post #5

Awful headline and I doubt it's what the author would have chosen, given that her comments are much more to do with supply: > “In San Francisco, demand is reflected in increased prices,” she says. “In Charlotte, demand is reflected in increased quantities.” > “A big takeaway is that cities are in control of a big portion of their supply sensitivity,” Gorback says. “It’s cities that control zoning. It’s cities that co…

It's kind of insane that you look at a city like San Francisco that's on a tiny bit of land in a desirable location and they absolutely refuse to build up. I get that their Victorian houses are pretty, but they're only about a 100 years old and they are now crammed full of people and cars. It's too young of a city to be sycophantically in love with its past self.

That's partly the effect of prop 13. When land (or its proxy, property) is detaxed then property becomes a valuable commodity to hoard and guard the value of jealously.

So, it attracts the foreign investors looking for stores of value and encourages NIMBYism.

If the tax bill of properties in high value locations went up with land value then it would encourage people to stop hoarding and to sell up and have their properties redeveloped.

So, blame Howard Jarvis and his taxpayer's foundation.

Post reply on HN