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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

#31

Post by mulmen »

onemoresoop wrote: post #27
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.

Why does everyone want to live in the same few places? Because all ways to make money and a living are there! Give people the option to work remotely and they can live wherever they want, and that is not in crowded expensive cities most of the time.

There’s a lot more to life than a job. Most jobs can’t be done remotely. How do you convince a barista to move to New Billings? Is there anything to do there after work?

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

#32

Post by gist »

Can't afford 'high' prices? Work harder spend less time on play or leisure pursuits. Realize maybe you should have studied harder in high school or picked a career based on earnings rather than 'what you enjoyed'. While this doesn't cover all situations for sure it does cover many 'whiners' who wish things were just easier for them 'because they should be and that's why'.

Not everyone can 'win' and the people who try harder often win more. And of course don't forget 'luck'. It plays a large part as well.

And guess what? Many of those people who win actually worked harder and weren't born or inherited and are from disadvantaged groups. Nobody wants to think that. Everyone thinks the other person has an edge 'and if I just had that edge things would be fine for me'.

(My father came to this country with nothing. My mother grew up and her father died back when there was no social safety net. All the children went to work. And yes because of that and in addition to my personal hard work and attention to school things are better for me for sure.)

We have a DR Horton home. It's really nice and well built. They deserve to make money.

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

#33

Post by theoreticalmal »

nnf wrote: post #12

> tax the land of lot developers so they don’t hold land off the market. This is something I dealt with a few years ago. There were a few acreage lots (5-15 acres) my partner and I were considering buying and building a house on, and all of them had been in the $200k range a year or two before but had been bought by land speculators (in some cases by the same person). Prices went from ~$200k to ~$750k, which we weren…

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.

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

#34

Post by bratwurst3000 »

onemoresoop wrote: post #27
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.

Why does everyone want to live in the same few places? Because all ways to make money and a living are there! Give people the option to work remotely and they can live wherever they want, and that is not in crowded expensive cities most of the time.

i work remote and i live in an expensive city. why? because I was raised here and have many friends and there is much cultural events going on. work aint everything

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

#35

Post by ekez »

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.

If "we" all got together and reduced permitting costs, "our" homes would be much more valuable because a developer can build a highrise where the house is.

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

#36

Post by xt00 »

If the companies that are holding land are able to maintain steady profits with minimal competition, then the logical approach is to say we should incentivize them to build on the land, make improvements etc now to ideally decrease the value of the existing land to make it more affordable to people. So could you essentially say "if you own more than 20 properties that are not owner occupied, you have to pay a tax.. but if you sell the house, you get some large chunk of the tax money back".. something that should encourage the big builders to build something and to sell it -- not to build and potentially rent it out -- which is in many cases the most expensive type of house to rent.

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

#37

Post by Aurornis »

onemoresoop wrote: post #27
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.

Why does everyone want to live in the same few places? Because all ways to make money and a living are there! Give people the option to work remotely and they can live wherever they want, and that is not in crowded expensive cities most of the time.

> Give people the option to work remotely and they can live wherever they want, and that is not in crowded expensive cities most of the time.

COVID dramatically increased the opportunities for remote work. Yet housing prices in major cities went up, not down.

Anecdotally, my friends who moved during COVID remote work all moved to cities they wanted to live in. I knew more people leaving mid-sized towns to move to Seattle, NYC, and the Bay Area than the opposite.

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

#38

Post by lotsofpulp »

theoreticalmal wrote: post #33
nnf wrote: post #12

> tax the land of lot developers so they don’t hold land off the market. This is something I dealt with a few years ago. There were a few acreage lots (5-15 acres) my partner and I were considering buying and building a house on, and all of them had been in the $200k range a year or two before but had been bought by land speculators (in some cases by the same person). Prices went from ~$200k to ~$750k, which we weren…

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.

Yes, it’s called property tax, calculated by multiplying a property tax rate times assessed value of the property. Does anywhere not already have that?

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

#39

Post by toomuchtodo »

kaibee wrote: post #25
lapcat wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No shortage of land in the US, but everyone wants to live in the same few places It's not enough to have land, though. The land needs access to water and electricity, not to mention roads, or it's a nonstarter, especially if you want to build a bunch of homes on the land. And the new homeowners will need access to food and supplies, i.e., stores. You need an entire community.

The neat thing about capitalism is that stores will be built to serve the community if there's a market for it. We don't need to centrally plan the whole community up front. We do need zoning laws that ALLOW those stores to be built though.

This is not borne out by the evidence.

https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/topics/food-and-hunger

https://www.propublica.org/article/food-desert-grocery-store...

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

#40

Post by schlauerfox »

treis wrote: post #20

>And I realized that to call these businesses “homebuilders” is misleading. It’s striking how little of their business has to do with, well, building. For instance, here’s D.R. Horton in 2023: “Substantially all of our land development and home construction work is performed by subcontractors.” Here’s Lennar in 2023: “We use independent subcontractors for most aspects of land development and home construction.” I sus…

Don't forget the Lennar tax they impose permanently on the land deed (runs with the land) they sell you you pay each transfer. https://labusinessjournal.com/news/lennar-forces-donation-on...
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