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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

#141

Post by nineplay »

m_fayer wrote: post #137
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…

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.

Asking people to sacrifice for the greater good is generally a non-starter and I'm not just taking about housing. It's certainly not something to consider when planning public policies.

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

#142

Post by mint2 »

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…

None of those are required in cities, and actually suburbs are the main cause of traffic jams.

The main noise in most places is traffic, and traffic is usually caused caused by sprawl, low density and car oriented building.

What you’re objecting to is fixed by more density

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

#143

Post by nineplay »

mint2 wrote: post #142
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…

None of those are required in cities, and actually suburbs are the main cause of traffic jams. The main noise in most places is traffic, and traffic is usually caused caused by sprawl, low density and car oriented building. What you’re objecting to is fixed by more density

So your assertion is that if all the open space near me was mowed down to make room for massive apartment complexes, then I would actually experience less noise and traffic.

It's a bold theory but not one I want to try out in practice.

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

#144

Post by mint2 »

sokoloff wrote: post #113
kaibee wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't think that it's entitled to be insulated from the world changing around it, but I do think that the residents of, say, Palo Alto, should have more say about the planning and permitting in Palo Alto than I do (living 3000 miles away from there), no matter how much "some people outside a community believe they should have a voice on what the actual community wants." I don't live there; I shouldn't have any say…

Why letting each city have the entire say on its planning is very obviously going to end badly for society. it’s not hard to see it’s a prisoners dilemma or tragedy of the commons type fiasco.

I have a hard time believe that people aren’t aware of that. Especially since we tried it for decades and the obvious happened - it has gone horribly.

Of course the average current home owners in Palo Alto doesn’t want it to change. But Palo Alto doesn’t exist on an island or something. Why would the nearby towns have different views? Mountain View doesn’t want to change! San Mateo doesn’t want to change!

Wowza! How about that, now the entire bay won’t change if left to each town.

And you know what, for decades that’s what we did and we can see what happened. All we got for it was a massive housing shortage.

We tried letting towns set their policy. It went horribly, as it obviously would.

It’s like Kant, would the outcome be acceptable if all the similar actors took this action? No? Well why shouldn’t they if this town does it.

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

#145

Post by mint2 »

sokoloff wrote: post #115
aorloff wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone wants to keep the character of their neighborhood . Forget that ! When you go to a dense city like Barcelona where every block is nearly 4 story high rise apartments, its wonderful. Change is beautiful, people enhance neighborhoods

People who think it's wonderful to live in a place where every block is 4-story apartments should feel free to move to such a place.

That place doesn’t practically exist in most of the US.

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

#146

Post by durumu »

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…

> The people who like living in dense cities already live there.

One would then think that dense cities would build more housing, but that doesn’t seem to happen. NYC, SF, and Boston are the densest cities in the country and build barely any housing compared to areas like Houston and Austin.

I also just think it isn’t true that everyone who wants to live in a dense city does. My experience is that a lot of people would absolutely love to live in NYC but can’t afford it, and I think this is primarily because there is not enough housing.

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

#147

Post by fmobus »

nineplay wrote: post #143
mint2 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those are required in cities, and actually suburbs are the main cause of traffic jams. The main noise in most places is traffic, and traffic is usually caused caused by sprawl, low density and car oriented building. What you’re objecting to is fixed by more density

So your assertion is that if all the open space near me was mowed down to make room for massive apartment complexes, then I would actually experience less noise and traffic. It's a bold theory but not one I want to try out in practice.

Cities aren't loud, cars are loud.

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

#148

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

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…

Traffic?

Build rail and deploy bussing like you fucking want it. Make it so good Japanese and European civil engineers ask you for help.

Noise?

That’s an engineering problem.

Teacher ratios?

Your property taxes too low for the services your community needs. Notice how I said need - it’s necessary. 20-1 is high, 30+ plus and your local governance is criminally incompetent.

You’re distracted by change and upset that you need to adapt to a world that’s moved past you. Tale older than the dirt we walk on.

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

#149

Post by ndriscoll »

hackermatic wrote: post #94
dnissley wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I need to make this point again and again: It's not about increasing the value of properties for most (after all, allowing apartments to be built in your neighborhood would increase the value of the remaining SFHs). It's about keeping the character of the neighborhood the same as it is now (SFH vibes), and all that comes with that ("family friendliness", etc).

I think people in the US overestimate how much upzoning "has to" affect most neighborhoods, especially infill development or removing default single-family home zoning. I used to live in Minneapolis, which has lots of century-old duplexes and fourplexes mixed in with single-family homes on similar lot sizes. Traffic, activity/noise, appearance, and overall "niceness" were almost the same as on single-family-only bloc…

Is it not contradictory to say that traffic/activity/noise are almost the same, but it'd support lots of corner stores and restaurants and people would want to visit the neighborhood? The entire point of living in a suburb is that people who don't live here have no reason to be here. I actively do not want a restaurant or a bar or a coffee shop a block away from my home.

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

#150

Post by gymbeaux »

fmobus wrote: post #147
nineplay wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your assertion is that if all the open space near me was mowed down to make room for massive apartment complexes, then I would actually experience less noise and traffic. It's a bold theory but not one I want to try out in practice.

Cities aren't loud, cars are loud.

We really need more public transit, though there also exist pavements that reduce road noise (most of it comes from tires) considerably… it’s just that it’s more expensive (and more effective) than noise walls… but government mandates say noise walls are “adequate”.
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