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It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices

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Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices

#131

Post by sroussey »

woah wrote: post #64
sroussey wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farther up they are talking about taxing based on what it could be worth, not what it is worth.

Land Value Tax (the Georgeism discussed in the article) just taxes the land on what it is worth, not the buildings on it. So holding land vacant costs more because the speculator is not making any money from it, while they could be making money from a building. A side benefit for homeowners is that improvements increase equity and resale value without raising taxes

So SFH should get taxed like a high rise.

In CA there was/is a ban on SFH zoning. So at least in that case every homeowner should get taxed like at least a fourplex. Considering your wage didn’t increase that means less money for mortgage, etc., so buyers have less to spend on a house and your property goes down in value.

Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices

#132

Post by jjav »

chgs wrote: post #86
nineplay wrote: post #82

Earlier 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.

> Presumably double the density you also double the size of the school and double the teachers.

It's not that easy. If you doubled the density, maybe there is nowhere left to go for the school to expand, or the land is now so expensive there is no way for the town to afford expanding the school.

My town is an example. The middle school had two quite large empty lots on two sides.

Those lots have now multi-story apartment buildings in construction. Presumably those apartments will attract younger families who might have kids going to middle school. But if that school ever needs to expand, it is now boxed in by housing on all sides. Time will tell how it goes.

Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices

#133

Post by tourmalinetaco »

camel_Snake wrote: post #100
nemo44x wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm probably one of those people you're referring to, and quite honestly it's not that I don't realize or understand - it's that I don't care. The community you love wasn't always that way - it changed to become what you enjoy, likely to the similar anger/detriment of the previous residents who like the "old" community. I imagine racial segregationists and apartheid advocates used disconcertingly similar arguments.

So, if I convinced a bunch of people in nearby rural areas, none of which live in your city, to demand to your mayor to do things in a way you personally dislike, you would welcome the change with open arms? Or is your belief that all external change is good only extend as long as you personally do not receive repercussions?

This mentality is the same one that’s leading California and New York to ruin, by the way. :D

Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices

#135

Post by secstate »

camel_Snake wrote: post #100
nemo44x wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm probably one of those people you're referring to, and quite honestly it's not that I don't realize or understand - it's that I don't care. The community you love wasn't always that way - it changed to become what you enjoy, likely to the similar anger/detriment of the previous residents who like the "old" community. I imagine racial segregationists and apartheid advocates used disconcertingly similar arguments.

Your last point is very important. Zoning at a federal level would be required to clear some basic anti segregation. Would it be perfect? No. But the zoning in my town is 100% in the same spirit as redlining. No one would describe themselves as racist or classist. Maybe that's just human nature?

Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices

#136

Post by SkyPuncher »

nemo44x wrote: post #91
nineplay wrote: post #82

Earlier 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…

I used to agree with this when I was a kid. Then I realized that it’s literally just a part of live in a modernized country.

Both my wife’s and I home were “out in the country” when we were kids. Now they’re surrounded by houses. The same pattern is basically everywhere. If you want the community of 20 years ago, move to a new one that looks like it.

It’s simply part of the constant change of life. Being bitter over it isn’t helpful or anyone.

Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices

#137

Post by m_fayer »

nineplay wrote: post #82
xnx wrote: post #5

No 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.

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…

Asking people to sacrifice for the greater good requires that they trust their leaders and systems to do everything possible to maximize the benefits and ameliorate the harms. Absent that, it’s every man for themselves.

Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices

#138

Post by nomel »

bluGill wrote: post #105
whartung wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Above ground is ugly, and less reliable, in terms of frequency (about half) and total duration (about 20% more, since underground takes around 1.6x longer per outage) [1]. But, underground is so expensive that they end up being a net social loss, at least in NY [2].

[1] https://pdi2.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/51-EdisonElectIn...

[2] https://dps.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2023/09/final-repo...

Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices

#139

Post by lapcat »

ghaff wrote: post #127
lapcat wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what exactly you think is a straw man? When the OP said "everyone wants to live in the same few places", I didn't interpret that to mean specifically NYC/SF, because that's plainly false. I interpreted it to mean urban vs. rural/undeveloped areas in general. But the problem is that home builder cartels exist all across the country, and they own a lot of the desirable land around the urban areas. For exam…

It was in reference to: The land needs access to water and electricity, not to mention roads, or it's a nonstarter, especially if you want to build a bunch of homes on the land. (The comment may indeed be true--sort of by definition to at least some degree--for new construction, although getting that access can be pretty straightforward, to the degree anything involving construction is straightforward. It's more that…

Fair enough, it would be possible to scale up smaller towns, much smaller than Madison. However, I'm not sure that's practical, at least to the extent required to meet the housing shortage, for several reasons. First, the reason you already mentioned: "They may or may not have good local jobs." Second, there may not be enough home builders available in smaller towns. The builders themselves have to come from somewhere, and they're likely to be somewhat scarce the smaller and more remote the town.

I just don't think the conspiracy that the OP postulated, "We all want our properties to increase in value so we collectively conspire to suppress supply" is a very plausible explanation when applied in general to the entire country. For example, again in the Madison area, most of the home building is occurring not in the city proper but rather out in the suburbs and exurbs, which are independently governed. Indeed, in a fast-growing suburb, the property values can actually increase as homes are built and the town becomes a more desirable place to live.

Re: It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices

#140

Post by mikem170 »

vundercind wrote: post #68
treis wrote: post #20

>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…

The structure of neighborhoods I’ve seen pop up in the last couple decades (maybe also earlier, I dunno) is that of a neighborhood developer who farms out the work of building the houses to (usually) a few select other firms, which do the actual GC work and sell the houses, having bought the lots they’re building on from the owner of the neighborhood. The neighborhood developer is mostly in land speculation, they don…

And they build them for maximum profit, with nothing besides cookie cutter houses, each with a new tree out front, and nothing else unless you get in the car to drive to the nearest gas station or plaza with a chain restaurant or big box store.
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