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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

#181

Post by coev »

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 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 the guy who bought 10 years before you hates you, the newcomer, changing their neighborhood and ruining its character.

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

#182

Post by yimmothathird »

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 could never understand why people expect everything to be static and never change.

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

#183

Post by nemo44x »

coev wrote: post #181
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 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 the guy who bought 10 years before you hates you, the newcomer, changing their neighborhood and ruining its character.

Probably not since I haven’t tried to force dramatic changes to the character of the town. And I’ve poured quite a bit of money into renovating my home making the neighborhood even more desirable.

In essence I found a neighborhood I liked and I’ve made sure I fit in rather than an interloper that is trying to make a quick buck at the towns long term expense.

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

#184

Post by axpy »

nineplay wrote: post #162
wpm wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ll see that it’s true once you decouple the idea that one person == one more car on the road. Aside from lawn equipment, the noise pollution I suffer from in my streetcar suburb in a major metro is almost completely from cars and other fossil fuel motorized vehicles. I was out in a fairly high earning suburb recently and the backyard was constantly inundated by the roar of a not so nearby highway. Like, what exac…

Cars make noise. More people == more cars. This will happen whatever ideas I personally may or may not have.

And this is wrong. If you build proper mixed housing/commercial with local markets, bakery, park, coffee, restaurants, etc. You will end up reducing car use to what they are best for. But for this paradigm to exist, you need density. I lived in NA almost all my life (California, Pennsylvania, Montreal and Vancouver) and I am currently in Spain and let me tell you, density != cars.

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

#185

Post by sokoloff »

com wrote: post #179
sokoloff wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't exist in most of Spain/Catalonia either; it's in a few of the largest cities.

Even in small cities in Spain, central areas are high density with three or four storey mix residential buildings. I chose a random small city in northern Catalonia called Vielha and viewed it on Goggle Maps, there they are. They look different to Eixanple apartment buildings, but they are there in the centre. Population less than 6k. Chose another, Gironella, a bit further south; population around 4k. One less floor…

If the yardstick moves to "three or four story residential buildings are present" from "every block is 4-story apartments", three story apartments/multi-families can be found in many cities around the US as well.

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

#186

Post by red-iron-pine »

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.

that's a false dichotomy -- everyone goes full-on communist, or else anything goes. real world governments and leadership is far more complicated.

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

#187

Post by Jensson »

oerdier wrote: post #176
mjmahone17 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn’t the school just build taller too?

Won't solve the worse than 35/1 student/reacher ratio problem of ancestor post if those extra classrooms won't have teachers in them. Seems like increasing teacher shortage is a problem in the US as well as here in the EU.

Teacher shortage mostly happens in sparse communities not dense ones since it is easy to find teachers where lots of people live.

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

#188

Post by Qworg »

jbellis wrote: post #116
Qworg wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Food deserts" are a demand problem, not a supply problem. https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2019/decemb...

Not in the traditional sense - they simply demand the same things they normally eat, sans the hour+ of commuting to get it.

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

#189

Post by nojvek »

Spartan-S63 wrote: post #57
theoreticalmal wrote: post #33

Earlier 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.

That's the idea, though. If you're sitting on an undeveloped or underdeveloped parcel of land, you should bear the cost of the value of the land. If it's in a rural area, you can probably weather the tax burden because it's worth a lot less than a surface parking lot in an urban area. The idea behind such taxation is to destroy the deadweight losses created by land speculators. You either buy the land, develop it, an…

One could say Property taxes are like wealth taxes. You are taxing unrealized gains. But IMO it's once of the best ways cities meet their expenses and everyone pays their fair share. It keeps property prices somewhat in check because it costs money speculate.

Land that can be developed into residential lots should be appraised at a higher value. There should be a 2-4 year period where a land owner has their opportunity to develop land, but then it should be taxed at rate of nearby developed lots.

Land ownership is almost a zero-sum game and should be well regulated for efficient demand and supply. Rent-seekers don't add any value, just suck it up into their fat pockets.

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

#190

Post by [deleted] »

fmobus wrote: post #178
nineplay wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars make noise. More people == more cars. This will happen whatever ideas I personally may or may not have.

> More people == more cars Counter example: Europe, Japan. It's perfectly possible for a city to grow denser of people without growing denser of cars. My inner city neighborhood is quite calm and quiet, because the city has decent public transit with three different modes within 3 minutes walk (besides decent biking infra).

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