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Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

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Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#161

Post by harambae »

vidarh wrote: post #110
brap wrote: post #4

It always comes down to we don’t build houses fast enough. Why?

Near my old house there were large areas of land that have sat empty for 20 years through successive rounds of planning permission. The reason is very simple: You can buy land for X. You can spend Y to construct housing on it, and sell it now for Z, or you can sit on the land, safe in the knowledge that housing policy means prices will keep rising, and then you can spend Y+inflation, and sell it for Z times a factor…

I don’t know your particular area, but I have experience buying and selling raw land and it’s a much more unique and niche area of real estate that fewer people are competing in. Are you sure it’s actually zoned correctly and doesn’t have latent disputes?

I can give you plenty of stories of people who bought an empty chunk of land for $350k and then 20 years later sold it for around $350k. They would’ve done better investing in Pokémon cards (or anything).

Add on the flip side developers usually want to move fast and cash in now, in my experience, not do what you’re describing.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#162

Post by nly »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #112
thrance wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the thing I never see addressed. Wouldn't fixing the housing crisis necessarily involve slashing down property values? Which are for a lot of people their only form of savings? Genuine question by the way, I would like an answer.

> Which are for a lot of people their only form of savings? It's fake savings unless you are speculating on properties. Most people only own the place they actually live in and only resell to buy another place. A general property market crash doesn't affect the value of your house compared to other house so it's mostly neutral in this regard. Of course people who borrowed before the crash will be in debt for longer t…

It's not neutral if you've borrowed to buy the home...

If you're in negative or reduced equity your mortgage costs can increase dramatically when you refinance. This alone can easily cripple a large % of the population and tank the consumer economy

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#163

Post by scoofy »

graemep wrote: post #31
nly wrote: post #6

Over the last 50-70 years the UK made the choice to stop building social housing and to sell off the existing stock with aggressive government subsidies. Complaining now is a bit like complaining there's no milk after you sold the dairy farm to build a casino. I read TFA but I'm not seeing anything but useless outrage that would have been better placed 20-30 years ago I became a first time property owner at 36 and it…

> If houses ever return to good affordability I'm screwed. Which creates a huge pool of people who are opposed to making houses more affordable.

The key here is incremental development.

So, I'm really into municipal finance and fixing the housing crisis, which got me into Strong Towns. There is a solution, but it's not one that is going to make everyone happy (obviously), it is the state facilitating or even gently subsidizing incremental development.

If everyone is, by right, allowed to build the next larger "unit" of housing (for simplicity's sake, suppose 2x sqft[m2], height, and housing units of the median residential building within a half-mile radius), but not allow to massively build piles of housing on one site, then we effectively solve both problems.

Firstly, this allows for a massive amount of housing construction, with market incentives driving it. Out of the gate, you have the potential to easily double the housing supply. Secondly, the profits from the housing must be more-or-less distributed to the existing homeowners, and the potential to lower property values by building non-like for like housing doesn't exist. Neighborhoods slowly evolve, they don't rapidly change. Third, it incentivizes homeowners to build-to-last with the next stage of growth built in, because it's much cheaper in the long run to build a structure with the capacity to stack another unit on top than it is to tear down a building and rebuild the unit at double the capacity. Finally... and this is the thing that most people miss. It's fast. Smaller-scale developments need a much smaller planning phase, and there are many, many more of them to be constructed. This supports economies of scale, instead of the existing system, with all it's red tape that only allows a few actors to wade through the legal system for large developments. This should create a wide construction industry instead of a narrow one.

I really think the housing crisis is solvable with the top level government insisting that incremental development be allow by right, and that larger scale developments be put up for local review. This allows a city to grow organically, instead of all at once, but only at specific sites.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#164

Post by RobinL »

Preface: I'm a yimby who wants to see far more building, especially building upwards in London, but also more general building elsewhere.

That said, a 100 year wait for social housing in Westminster is not surprising, and not as bad as it sounds. A typical professional couple in London could not afford a family home in Westminster, and it's extremely common for people in their 30s to move out of the centre when they have kids. I don't think this should be any different for social tenants: they should certainly not have to wait 100 years, but it seems reasonable for them to be offered housing outside of Westminster. The Guardian article I read about the 100 year wait specifically mentioned 3 and 4 bed family homes, and my immediate reaction was that no one else can get them either!

I think the bigger problem is the lack of affordable housing particularly for young families (social or otherwise) outside of London

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#165

Post by watwut »

jstanley wrote: post #51
serial_dev wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d add fertility rate as another powerful metric: when people feel safe, supported, and optimistic, they have kids. So if housing, income stability, healthcare, and trust in the future are in place, you’ll usually see that reflected in birth rates. All this only makes sense in the context of large groups; at the individual level, many factors determine whether someone has children. What the puppet masters will tell…

> when people feel safe, supported, and optimistic, they have kids. I actually thought that wasn't the case. Across the entire world, people in more precarious circumstances have more kids. I don't know why.

Women who are educated about birth control and able to make those decisions have less kids. That is why - when women specifically have options they choose to have less kids and pursue own happiness.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#167

Post by spwa4 »

graemep wrote: post #113
petesergeant wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%, and it’s not clear there’s any solution to that, because voters will punish anyone who tries to fix it.

The government might also be pushed into actions that reduce house prices for other reasons. The biggest reason for nigh house prices (particularly relative to incomes) is the affordability of mortgage payments as a result of low interest rates. Interest rates may have to be raised to control inflation. It is a mistake to think of supply vs demand as "how many people want a house" vs "how many houses are there". Both…

... and that's exactly what people want to keep (the shortage) because that's their pension. That is why they won't end up on the street in 20 years.

Any attempt to fix the housing situation will need to provide owners, not just with housing, but with a passable income for 40+ years.

So, the actual discussion is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=747X0M7Keyw

And this discussion is hard because to just maintain current pension levels young people will need to be a LOT more productive (ie. work more, and keep less of the fruits of their labour) ... and if we're going to assign blame, the reason is that the pensioners refused to have enough kids. It's not really the kids' fault.

We all know what's going to happen too, in general. Some economic upheaval, some drastic event will create enormous disruption and then, finally, it will be politically acceptable to make the hard choice.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#168

Post by vidarh »

harambae wrote: post #161
vidarh wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Near my old house there were large areas of land that have sat empty for 20 years through successive rounds of planning permission. The reason is very simple: You can buy land for X. You can spend Y to construct housing on it, and sell it now for Z, or you can sit on the land, safe in the knowledge that housing policy means prices will keep rising, and then you can spend Y+inflation, and sell it for Z times a factor…

I don’t know your particular area, but I have experience buying and selling raw land and it’s a much more unique and niche area of real estate that fewer people are competing in. Are you sure it’s actually zoned correctly and doesn’t have latent disputes? I can give you plenty of stories of people who bought an empty chunk of land for $350k and then 20 years later sold it for around $350k. They would’ve done better i…

In this case it's outer London.

And, yes, one of the plots has had planning permission for years, and had the owners re-apply regularly for buildings in the 40-75 floor range, and the council has fallen over itself to approve it each time. The other involved a lengthy planning process with a plan agreed around 20 years ago for developments that are still not complete.

What you're describing makes sense in a market where there's plenty of options. In London land is scarce, and developers hoarding it makes it scarcer, and so both land values and housing prices have skyrocketed.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#169

Post by vidarh »

antisthenes wrote: post #155
vidarh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Par of Khrushchev's legacy was switching away from the earlier focus on higher quality housing that largely favoured the elite in favour of throwing up cheap housing fast to alleviate the severe housing crisis. But as a result, a more enduring part of his legacy became that due to economic stagnation, a large proportion of this really poor quality housing that was indeded as a stopgap to meet desperate short-term hou…

> But as a result, a more enduring part of his legacy became that due to economic stagnation, a large proportion of this really poor quality housing that was indeded as a stopgap to meet desperate short-term housing need, survived not just Khrushchev, but the Soviet Union... The alternative was people living in sheds and 19th-century timber huts that were falling apart. The Khrushchev apartment blocks, despite their…

Sure. I think for all of Khruschev's faults, his housing policy was a significant positive.

It is just also a cautionary tale of how easily a temporary fix becomes semi-permanent, but that was on his successors and the failure of the longer term Soviet economy.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#170

Post by robocat »

spwa4 wrote: post #167
graemep wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government might also be pushed into actions that reduce house prices for other reasons. The biggest reason for nigh house prices (particularly relative to incomes) is the affordability of mortgage payments as a result of low interest rates. Interest rates may have to be raised to control inflation. It is a mistake to think of supply vs demand as "how many people want a house" vs "how many houses are there". Both…

... and that's exactly what people want to keep (the shortage) because that's their pension. That is why they won't end up on the street in 20 years. Any attempt to fix the housing situation will need to provide owners, not just with housing, but with a passable income for 40+ years. So, the actual discussion is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=747X0M7Keyw And this discussion is hard because to just maintain…

> the reason is that the pensioners refused to have enough kids

I thought they did have enough kids but that the next generation(s) need to breed faster.

In New Zealand and Australia ~30% of population were born in another country. I suspect our government will try and fix the working-age population hole by more immigration? New Zealand is building houses (necessary when increasing population by 50% through immigration). You can see both higher density and new suburban growth (replacing farmland) in my city of Christchurch.

It is silly to plan your retirement by looking at the situation right now. The economics of demographics will require grim changes. I'm sceptical of retirement funding, superannuation, and house sales. Even preppers seem like they have some sense. There's little information on potential solutions - everything is based on the presumption that decades away will be just like it is today.

New Zealand property market is weird: https://www.imf.org/external/research/housing/

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