We need to make it so that most neighborhoods are developed by homebuyers rather than large conglomerates. My 1920s streetcar suburb was platted by the original farmer/owner and then sold off in lots. Today, this would be illegal / cost-prohibitive. It also leads to nicer / more varied neighborhoods where people actually own their land. Instead of yet another branded neighborhood where everything looks the same and the HOA board thinks too highly of themselves
It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices
101–110 of 223 posts
Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems a lot like a tax on unrealized gains. You’re taxing something that might have value in the future, rather than it’s actual value now.
And that's a good thing, because unlike other valuables, you can't just create or mine more land. Land is inherently valuable based on its location, you can't just get more of it somewhere and import it in. There needs to be pressure to actually make productive use of land so that people don't just uselessly sit on it.
> you can't just create or mine more land
Sure you can [1].
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reclamation_in_the_Neth...
Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices
#103>And I realized that to call these businesses “homebuilders” is misleading. It’s striking how little of their business has to do with, well, building. For instance, here’s D.R. Horton in 2023: “Substantially all of our land development and home construction work is performed by subcontractors.” Here’s Lennar in 2023: “We use independent subcontractors for most aspects of land development and home construction.” I sus…
Don't forget the Lennar tax they impose permanently on the land deed (runs with the land) they sell you you pay each transfer. https://labusinessjournal.com/news/lennar-forces-donation-on...
Never heard of this, and I'm glad I know now. I'm putting this right under HOAs as things to avoid at all costs.
Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Property values are a small-to-none factor. I don't want more noise. I don't want more traffic. I don't want more students at my kid's schools, which are already at a 35/1 kid to teacher ratio. That's it for me. I think that's it for a lot of people, whether they live in cities or suburbs or far out in the country. Very few people want more crowding. The people who like living in dense cities already live there. Blam…
Presumably double the density you also double the size of the school and double the teachers. If you don’t, the problem isn’t the density.
There are a lot of problems, none of which are going to be addressed if the only focus is property values.
A school was knocked down in my neighborhood to build a pricey apartment complex. The district and the developers made a bunch of promises about how current schools would be expanded and more resources would be available. Those were all lies, of course. Apartment complexes make money, public schools do not. Guess which one wins.
Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
You missed a costly part of grabbing a chunk of land: utilities. Getting them onto your land, so you can live with modern creature comforts, some of them dictated by law, is often prohibitively expensive. You can DIY with the alternative being a well (hit or miss), a septic system, and setting up a solar/battery farm, which isn't cheap either.
> You missed a costly part of grabbing a chunk of land: utilities. There is a 15 acre lot down the street. A good spot for another small housing development. But one issue with it is that it has legacy utility and power poles on the periphery. Anyone wanting to develop that space is obliged to route all of that underground, which easily add several M$ to the project. Eventually, someone will bite, buy the lot, and de…
What is wrong with powar poles? They are reliable and work well.
Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Property values are a small-to-none factor. I don't want more noise. I don't want more traffic. I don't want more students at my kid's schools, which are already at a 35/1 kid to teacher ratio. That's it for me. I think that's it for a lot of people, whether they live in cities or suburbs or far out in the country. Very few people want more crowding. The people who like living in dense cities already live there. Blam…
I could never understand why some people don't understand that people buy into a community because they like the community in the state when they bought into it. And that making large changes to the community would alter the community and what people liked about it will be diminished. Not to mention the practical aspects like utilities, road capacity, schools, etc. as you've pointed out. For some reason, some people…
> For some reason, some people outside a community believe they should have a voice on what the actual community wants. As if a community should be expected to want to ruin what makes their space attractive so interlopers can infest it?
I don't understand the notion that that community exists in a vacuum where they're entitled to be insulated from the world changing around them.
Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices
#107No shortage of land in the US, but everyone wants to live in the same few places (for good reason), and those places have a lot of restrictions on what can be built where. It's satisfying to blame a big bad "them" for this, but the problem is "us". We all want our properties to increase in value so we collectively conspire to suppress supply that would make our properties less valuable.
> It's satisfying to blame a big bad "them" for this, but the problem is "us"
Yep. People want a bogeyman so bad, but time after time, I show up to hearings, read about efforts to build housing and the problem is local NIMBYism: https://bendyimby.com/2024/04/16/the-hearing-and-the-housing...
My own take on the 'bogeyman' theories: https://bendyimby.com/2023/01/11/the-bogeyman/
Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices
#108We need to make it so that most neighborhoods are developed by homebuyers rather than large conglomerates. My 1920s streetcar suburb was platted by the original farmer/owner and then sold off in lots. Today, this would be illegal / cost-prohibitive. It also leads to nicer / more varied neighborhoods where people actually own their land. Instead of yet another branded neighborhood where everything looks the same and t…
That's a pretty good formula for unsustainable sprawl.
Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not borne out by the evidence. https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/topics/food-and-hunger https://www.propublica.org/article/food-desert-grocery-store...
Those are about rural communities. It makes perfect sense that a very low-density community doesn't generate enough demand for a robust grocery store. The 2nd article mentions that the community used the newly built grocery store for a while, before going back mostly shopping at a Walmart 30 miles away. My guess is that those people were going to that Walmart anyway for this or that in many cases. So at that point, w…
Food deserts also exist in urban areas, particularly poor and historically disadvantaged communities. No magic to capitalism - the local communities don't get a grocery because they can't pay (and, of course, other reasons), even if the population density is high.
Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
You said: > The neat thing about capitalism is that stores will be built to serve the community if there's a market for it. I am pointing out that this is not a given, magic that will just happen. Capitalism is not always efficient nor reliable, based on the evidence. > before going back mostly shopping at a Walmart 30 miles away. My guess is that those people were going to that Walmart anyway for this or that in man…
> I am pointing out that this is not a given, magic that will just happen. Capitalism is not always efficient nor reliable, based on the evidence. I said 'if there's a market for it'. The simple fact is that these rural communities are just not as economically viable as they used to be. Most rural communities exist around 'base input' types of industries that made money by exporting stuff extracted from the land. Far…
This is why I'm very pro remote work for the broader economy.
It's much easier for remote workers who want to live in rural areas to patronize these local bars, stores, etc, when they're not already commuting to places with a much larger collection of services.