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To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

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Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#131

Post by alonmower »

Moseman23 wrote: post #97
pascalxus wrote: post #92

I know we'd all love to fix the bay area housing problem here. The most obvious answer is to increase the supply. But, fixing the zoning laws and allowing developers to build isn't the only thing that's standing in the way. The problems are too numerous to fix: NIMBYs sueing developers, CEQA, Proposition 13, AND don't forget about the underlying labor cost (all our middle class people's aren't going to come back, aft…

"The bay area has forever lost it's ability to produce cost effective housing." Strong statement, if slightly ungrammatical. I think this is a challenge to visionary thinkers and leaders to change the game. Engineering is one part, as is regulatory capture and regressive real estate laws and norms, weak state government in the state, and highly atrophied political participation. What could change that? I can think of…

Ya, as a current renter I've wondered what a giant earthquake would do to housing prices.

On the one hand, lots of people lose their investments and are forced to sell their land or take out loans to rebuild. You might be able to buy land or a damaged property for a good deal. Contractors would all be completely overbooked and the price to rebuild would likely be quite high for some time. Some who have never experienced earthquakes might get scared out of the region altogether.

On the other hand the houses that survive are now part of a much smaller pool of available, livable houses and there's still a lot of money in the region so I could see prices for these houses shoot through the roof.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#132

Post by isostatic »

austincheney wrote: post #76

If 60,000 people continue to move from there to Texas every year then 20 years from now when the area has lost over a million residents the housing prices might well flatten organically. This madness is causing housing prices to climb in Texas though.

> housing prices might well flatten organically

Presumably a big quake will do that

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#133

Post by boreas »

m0llusk wrote: post #79

What is often missing from this discussion is financialization of housing markets. As long as housing units are chips for a game among banks and wealthy patrons it is not clear we will be able to build enough homes to satiate artificially inflated demand.

Unfortunately, vague statements assigning blame to ambiguous external actors (like yours) are very much a part of the discussion. Demand isn't artificially inflated. More people want to live here than there are housing units. So we need to build more, or agree only the most privileged deserve to reside in the Bay Area.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#134

Post by isostatic »

Max_aaa wrote: post #90
nwah1 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because the supply of land is perfectly inelastic, and it already commands the highest price that can be obtained. "A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rents of houses. It would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts always as a monopolist, and exacts the greatest rent which can be got for the use of his ground." - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations "It is in vain in a Country whose great…

Actually they will be able to ask for higher rents, as with lower sales and income taxes, the renters suddenly have extra cash that will eventually trickle towards rent.

That's if there are actually reductions in income/sales taxes. If the LVT money is instead invested in say mass transit, the population as a whole benefits, but rents don't increase, because money supply doesn't increase.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#135

Post by isostatic »

jartelt wrote: post #58
snidane wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The landlord can try. But when you introduce land tax and all those vacant apartments and lots come to market suddenly, I'd wish him luck with succeeding to shift the tax burden onto renters. It's known that land tax together with similar antimonopoly taxes can't be shifted. What's nice is that not only this type of tax doesn't slow down the market, but on the contrary makes it more effective. Essentially without ren…

Thank you for the explanation! I am still not sure I believe that what you predict would happen to a large degree in the Bay Area. I agree a land tax would push the owners of vacant lots to develop them. But, the NIBMY owners of single family homes will still fight against the building of new apartment complexes and try to constrain housing supply (to prop up their property values). I certainly would hope that more a…

And those owners will be paying more in taxes. And every time property values go up (or rather land values), they have to pay even more.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#136

Post by beefman »

Max_aaa wrote: post #90
nwah1 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because the supply of land is perfectly inelastic, and it already commands the highest price that can be obtained. "A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rents of houses. It would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts always as a monopolist, and exacts the greatest rent which can be got for the use of his ground." - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations "It is in vain in a Country whose great…

Actually they will be able to ask for higher rents, as with lower sales and income taxes, the renters suddenly have extra cash that will eventually trickle towards rent.

This is subtly wrong. Taxing rents instead of labor and consumer goods makes leasing less profitable (assuming government expenditures don't favor landlords) and creates opportunities in labor and consumer goods, in which erstwhile landlords can engage.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#137

Post by boreas »

rubicon33 wrote: post #130
m0llusk wrote: post #79

What is often missing from this discussion is financialization of housing markets. As long as housing units are chips for a game among banks and wealthy patrons it is not clear we will be able to build enough homes to satiate artificially inflated demand.

This. This. This. This. This. Absent from the vast majority of these threads is the critical component in this "crisis": Property can be purchased and held onto for purely speculative purposes, thereby draining the inventory pool, and raising the cost of housing for residents of the city. This has been happening in the bay area for a very long time. Wealthy Chinese investors who do not LIVE in the bay area, have purc…

You need to provide statistics for extraordinary claims about housing being purchased by foreign investors and not used. Common sense says it should be a very marginal phenomenon. After all, renting out property should almost always be worth it with the high housing prices in the area.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#138

Post by pound »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #110
briandear wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A total repeal of Prop 13.

This will never happen. If you want to see a single issue unite hard right wing conservatives and far left wing liberals or single handedly bring down a political party, try taking on Prop 13. Just about every homeowner in the state views this as an existential threat and will bring hellfire and damnation down on any politician that so much as mentions repealing Prop 13. Plus, there are so many other options that hav…

That's correct, so I think the only chance we have is phased approach. Not repealing prop 13 as of now but start with excluding new homeowners from it (or at least increase limits on annual reassessments for them (from current no more than 2% a year)).

There is an idea of excluding commercial properties from Prop 13 too (I think they shouldn't have to be covered to begin with, the whole idea of prop 13 was to "keep that old lady in her house when she has retired and cannot keep up with raising expenses").

Also props 58 and 193 allow to inherit Prop 13 tax assessment by children and grandchildren (again against original idea of prop 13 to just help elderly with living in their places when retired) so Prop 13 expanded that way to became multi-generational.

We can consider excluding non-primary residences from it too.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#139

Post by Reedx »

redthrowaway wrote: post #65

What is far more likely is that people will simply leave the Bay Area, and demand will fall. It's far easier to create tech clusters in other cities than it is to convince a bunch of NIMBY boomers that other people need places to live, too.

People are leaving actually, to the point that U-Haul is having a hard time keeping up with demand. The trucks aren't coming back here.

"Rent a moving truck from Las Vegas to San Jose and you'll pay about $100. In the opposite direction, the same truck will cost you 16 times that, or nearly $2,000."

https://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/U-Hau...

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