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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

#211

Post by mike50 »

medvezhenok wrote: post #128
sokoloff wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They should have some say, but they should not be able to act as a cartel and prevent permitting altogether. And I say that as a new homeowner. General zoning policy should be decided at a state level (or federal) - like in Japan. Otherwise, no individual community wants more development (of course), but it's a bitter pill that they have to swallow together if we want to solve the housing problem.

Anyone who lives in a area with hundreds of competing jurisdictions sees this problem everyday. One tiny village says yes the neighboring tiny village files a lawsuit. The smaller the jurisdiction the more desperate the government is for funding and tuft.

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

#212

Post by [deleted] »

ndriscoll wrote: post #74
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

Lots of people who want to live in suburbs have in fact visited or even lived in large, dense cities. They're well aware of the tradeoffs.

[deleted]

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

#213

Post by jjav »

Jensson wrote: post #187
oerdier wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Only in medium density cities. Once you get to very high cost of living areas, finding and keeping teachers becomes extremely difficult because there's just not enough money to pay them enough for the cost of living. Many teachers either move to cheaper areas or change careers to high paying jobs.

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

#214

Post by TulliusCicero »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #102
TulliusCicero wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's a good thing, because unlike other valuables, you can't just create or mine more land. Land is inherently valuable based on its location, you can't just get more of it somewhere and import it in. There needs to be pressure to actually make productive use of land so that people don't just uselessly sit on it.

> you can't just create or mine more land Sure you can [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reclamation_in_the_Neth...

Ha, fair point. Though even in that case, you can only create more land at a specific point, you can't move it around like a commodity.

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

#215

Post by hyperman1 »

Jensson wrote: post #187
oerdier wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Around here, a lot of new teachers give up after 1 year. After a draining day in the class, checking their homework, prepping the next day, the governement gives teachers an additional mountain of paperwork to fill in, and parents want to discuss everything.

A second problem is kids found out they can get everyone fired for claiming sexual harassment. Especially male teachers are scared. A brat utters a single sentence and you'll never work again as a teacher, and all your neighbours hate you.

Teaching today is a bad job.

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

#216

Post by com »

sokoloff wrote: post #185
com wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They’re multi family apartment buildings. Rather like those in the Eichample, but with a different exterior style, and of course without the famous block chamfer.

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

#217

Post by kjkjadksj »

xnx wrote: post #201
kjkjadksj wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The homes from detroits population high did not sit vacant and maintained over the decades. They rotted apart and many were razed. Much of inner city detroit really would be like starting from scratch considering the amount of vacant greenfield land available.

The neighborhoods definitely aren't turnkey, but roads, pipes, and power lines give you a good head start.

Assuming infrastructure serving vacant lots were maintained by a famously insolvent city budget is a big one to make. Sometimes replacement or retrofit are vastly more expensive than greenfield development.

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

#218

Post by shiroiushi »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #191
shiroiushi wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transit isn't economically viable when you refuse to build densely.

Its not designed to be economically viable. Its not a private business. It can be subsidized.

It's economically viable here in Japan, and most public transit here is run by private businesses.

There's no way you're going to make public transit work in the American suburbs: you're better off hiring taxis and letting people use those for free, because at least the taxis won't create so much pollution and use so much fuel. Running buses every 10 minutes in the subways with 0-2 riders will never be practical.

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

#219

Post by shiroiushi »

spwa4 wrote: post #208
fmobus wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

I live in Europe, Belgium to be precise. There's a total overload of cars here. Could you elaborate which this city is that has less cars?

Tokyo. There's 38M people in the metro area, and the amount of cars is nothing even remotely like what you see in an American city like Houston.

When you build the city densely and don't give away free parking anywhere, it makes people not bother with driving very much. There's no place to park here, except for a few very expensive private lots that probably aren't close to where you want to go. There's no street parking. Renting a parking space at your apartment is very, very expensive (because they could be using that for something else that makes more profit instead, like more apartments or a convenience or grocery store). And you're not even allowed to own a car here unless you can prove to the police that you have a place to park it: they'll even come with a measuring tape to be sure that particular model of car will fit.

Closer to your home, maybe you should visit Amsterdam, because you've obviously never been there. There's lots of people living there without a car, and the amount of car traffic in the city center is quite low.

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

#220

Post by spwa4 »

shiroiushi wrote: post #219
spwa4 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Europe, Belgium to be precise. There's a total overload of cars here. Could you elaborate which this city is that has less cars?

Tokyo. There's 38M people in the metro area, and the amount of cars is nothing even remotely like what you see in an American city like Houston. When you build the city densely and don't give away free parking anywhere, it makes people not bother with driving very much. There's no place to park here, except for a few very expensive private lots that probably aren't close to where you want to go. There's no street par…

This is true for Belgium as well, that traffic in the city center is essentially nonexistent (after 12h and the trucks delivering goods leave) in the major cities.

But living in these car-free zones is at least double as expensive as outside (and the more central, the easier it is to live car-free, the more expensive it is). It is also totally unrealistic to live there with a family, and if you want a job in center of Brussels and live in Mechelen (for example), you need a car. Train is barely doable and only if your employer is dead center brussels (e.g. Diegem, where "the internet lives", is not realistically reachable)

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