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San Diego rents declined following surge in supply

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Re: San Diego rents declined following surge in supply

#211

Post by pixl97 »

jhbadger wrote: post #160
nostrebored wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is empirically not supported. Relaxing zoning rules works extremely well. Look at Japan, look at any metropolitan U.S. city that has actually leaned into it. Europe has had mixed use zones for effectively centuries and is not the dystopia that NIMBYs proclaim will appear in the absence of zoning. It is unpopular because we subsidize the lives and assets of people who “have things” through zoning policy that they…

Up to a point. Yes, it is nice to mix housing and retail and the like, and some zoning laws prevent this. But you have to look back into the 19th century before zoning laws existed and you had things like slaughterhouses opening in residential neighborhoods. Zoning has good reasons to exist.

Residential and commercial can work pretty well together, up to the point of noise and chemical risks. Industrial will pretty much always need to be zoned because of different hazards it presents.

Re: San Diego rents declined following surge in supply

#212

Post by ckemere »

darksaints wrote: post #90
noosphr wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do. It's called zoning.

I'd be willing to bet you every last dollar on the planet that if you read your deed, you will find zero claims to any particular zoning. Zoning is not a transferable property right. It can be changed for any reason at any time.

I’d love to take that bet. My deed (in Texas) states that my lot is subject to the rules of the subdivision which include a number of zoning style restrictions. (They’re called “deed restrictions” and are very common AFAIK.)

The subdivision rules are changeable only with a supermajority vote. I believe the city (Houston in my case) is prohibited by the state from unilaterally changing them.

(I wouldn’t mind more free property rights!!! I find TX “liberty” is often biased towards $$$)

Re: San Diego rents declined following surge in supply

#213

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #152
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twist do you think happens to every city that has reached 16 million people? Did they become more popular or less? Given that I’ve lived in a city of that size, my answer will differ from yours (they become more expensive, not less). I’m confused on why you think paris is affordable and San Diego metro could somehow have enough water to grow to 220 million. The nearest comparison I can think of is south China Bay Are…

> Twist do you think happens to every city that has reached 16 million people? It's not about the exact number, it's that one city is not going to 10x in population from getting the price of housing down to "still a city but not skyrocketing". > I’m confused on why you think paris is affordable Compared to San Diego, it does seem to be significantly more affordable, and mainly because of rent. > and San Diego metro c…

There is no way for San Diego to grow that fast overnight anyways. If it grows gradually, and it’s still desirable, that will attract more jobs and more people eventually, the city won’t become more affordable (long term) until it stops attracting new residents. Otherwise, new housing simply provides temporary relief while the city grows.

Paris is a good example, I think, of a city expensive by French standards. My point was that if your theory is you can build to affordable, there should be at least one example on the planet where that actually worked (even Tokyo is considered expensive by Japanese standards).

Re: San Diego rents declined following surge in supply

#214

Post by [deleted] »

anal_reactor wrote: post #200
mothballed wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 'easy' if you have inside connections with the planning and zoning committees and utility companies. I recently developed a property worth about $250k for about $100k. The building process itself is relatively cheap (land + cost construction way cheaper than value of a finished property) and straightforward, everything else is not. The only reason why I was able to get it done as a random person was because I us…

Okay so basically the problem is a system of overly complex rules that don't serve any purpose besides cementing the current influence zones. Creating a state-owned company to navigate these rules won't make the whole process cheaper, only changing the rules themselves will.

[deleted]

Re: San Diego rents declined following surge in supply

#216

Post by vkou »

noosphr wrote: post #154
vkou wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, nobody bats an eye when housing prices inflate $300,000 because existing homeowners are doing their fucking hardest to make sure that no new homes get built.

Yes, home owners: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/12/canada-migrati... Funny how when you hit the breaks on pupulation growth house prices also freeze.

And then a decade of that later, all the people bitching about immigration will be wondering why the country's demographics resemble that of a nursing home, and why the tax base and the social safety net has collapsed.

Re: San Diego rents declined following surge in supply

#218

Post by throwaway27448 »

tptacek wrote: post #80
throwaway27448 wrote: post #17

What is this country's allergy with public housing? Not pursuing that feels like jumping in water with our hands tied behind our backs

The obvious reason is that to a first approximation nobody is building public housing, and so appeals to public housing, especially from owner-residents, read to housing activists as a dodge, a way to perform advocacy for housing without actually providing housing. A subtler reason is that public housing is drastically more expensive to build than private housing. There's multifarious reasons for this, and the underl…

Is this actually true? Singapore seems to have built, well, their entire country around public housing. I can understand this being more expensive, but drastically so seems hard to believe.

Bringing more units online won't matter much if people can't afford them. Zoning (which is what I take abundance to refer to) can only do so much—we will need to attack housing as a commodity (or an asset, depending on who you listen to) in order to make a dent on the housing issues outside the upper middle class.

Re: San Diego rents declined following surge in supply

#219

Post by tptacek »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #218
tptacek wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious reason is that to a first approximation nobody is building public housing, and so appeals to public housing, especially from owner-residents, read to housing activists as a dodge, a way to perform advocacy for housing without actually providing housing. A subtler reason is that public housing is drastically more expensive to build than private housing. There's multifarious reasons for this, and the underl…

Is this actually true? Singapore seems to have built, well, their entire country around public housing. I can understand this being more expensive, but drastically so seems hard to believe. Bringing more units online won't matter much if people can't afford them. Zoning (which is what I take abundance to refer to) can only do so much—we will need to attack housing as a commodity (or an asset, depending on who you lis…

It's a US-specific observation.

Re: San Diego rents declined following surge in supply

#220

Post by [deleted] »

afpx wrote: post #167
vkou wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easily. Many of those people have a correct observation in that new construction is just luxury housing, which is obviously unaffordable for people struggling with rent. What they fail to miss is that for every luxury unit that's built and is occupied, some well-off person moved into it... And out of a shitty, cheap unit that's now on the market.

luxury housing? I see miles and miles of $650k townhouses that look like government housing. It would be much easier to cut demand.

[deleted]
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