341–350 of 391 posts
Is it wrong of me to be sad that it's rent and not home prices?
Yes, it is in fact quite wrong and one of the biggest obstacles in American society is fetishization of homeownership.
Yes and: As you know, encouraging home ownership is policy. Meant to reduce elderly poverty. It worked, plus all sorts of adverse effects that now hitting hard.
I'd rather we had pensions, universal healthcare, and maybe ponies.
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> because this doesn’t magically solve the housing crisis It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) [1] http://censusreporter.org/pr…
> You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater If you buy a house for $400k, and suddenly it is worth $300k, you don't need to be "bailed out" for your purchase decision. You should have been certain that the house was worth $400k to you at the time of purchase. Otherwise you're a speculator, and we shouldn't be bailing out speculators. It's called buyer's remorse. We accept…
Denver is a boom and bust town. Every once in a while, it thrives for a decade, then busts with an exodus of people (myself included). It will rebalance and boom again.
Why do you say this and why did you leave? I'm curious.
I left because I was sick of having to weather the storm of boom and busts, saw $250,000 homes become $950,000 homes (no change to the home itself) and prey upon the young people moving there to ensure they are financially burdened with Boulder Boomer retirement plans.
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> I think of Denver as somewhere you go if you're sick of the cost of living on the coast. Denver hasn't been that place for more than a few decades. Heck, the whole rocky mountain region has never ever been a place for cheap housing. Western housing prices are high historically for reasons related to desirability. They never were as cheap as the midwest or deep south.
Median price per sq ft in Denver is $377 according to Google. That's still on the order of half the cost in Seattle of SF.
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How is it fair to compare buying a house to buying a TV? One costs 500$ and the other costs 500k plus ongoing costs like repairs and taxes. Not saying you’re wrong, just that the comparison isn’t apt
Because if you're buying a house for a house , then it (mostly, generally¹) doesn't matter that the housing market has moved downwards and you'll be underwater until you pay down a bit on the house. You still have a house! So long as you can afford the mortgage — something you should have already planned for given you bought the house — you can still afford it. You might have remorse at having paid +$100k right befor…
The median isn't even 20%, it is a bit less than that. Median first-time home buyers put only 9% down. Even the median repeat buyer, who just sold a house and had probably been paying mortgage payments for a while, only put 23% down.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/mortgages/average-down-pa...
But you are right though, a 3.7% drop probably wouldn't put even most first-time home buyers underwater.
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Because policies they cause huge financial harm to normal people become unpopular, and don’t spread as a result. And also because it is bad for society if we modify the rules in ways that makes it harder to plan ahead.
Realistically basically no one is aware of the details of zoning policy or the mechanics. Are there pitchforks in Denver or Austin? Are angry homeowners overthrowing governments and blocking homebuilding? People seem to complain that housing costs too much. The straightforward bet is that lower prices would be popular. For example, re Texas, 9 out of 10 say housing prices are too high: https://www.texastribune.org/20…
Yes. Go to city council meetings when new housing developments are being proposed. See the throngs of people that'll show up demanding that new development doesn't get built. See the angry people shouting about how allowing ADUs will just destroy their way of life.
The amount of vitrol I saw about the Plano Tomorrow plan against past mayor LaRosiliere was astounding, people fighting tooth and nail to prevent denser housing from being approved. So many people saying things like the "wrong kind of people" would be moving in and allowing more density would make the city unsafe.
https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/plano-repeals-compre...
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Cheaper sure, but a large fraction of the difference is that extra 1.5 bathroom and fancy kitchen. Plus all the other little difference like more larger and nicer windows.
Exactly; those are the things that are needed to turn "smaller more affordable homes would be a better solution" into reality.
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Why is it wrong to want to have equity in the place you live? "Ownership" could be a house, it could be a townhome, it could be flat. But in the US, "owning" an apartment is very rare, while real estate investors buy up all the valuable land in the urban cores of cities and rent it.
If you want equity in real estate nobody is stopping you. The problem is when people get this idea that we need to discourage investors from building very greatly desired rental housing.
Go ahead, develop! And sell equity in the property. I've wondered if I would support my city requiring a certain percentage of dense urban lots be flats for sale vs. rental.
In other news, San Francisco rents are up $223 from a year ago, with median rent rising 11% year-over-year [1]. But hey, at least we’re safe from the dangers of gas stoves. /s [1] https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/san-fran...
Inhaling combustion products isn't great... not sure why you'd link those things? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9819315/ "We found that 12.7% (95% CI = 6.3–19.3%) of current childhood asthma in the US is attributable to gas stove use. The proportion of childhood asthma that could be theoretically prevented if gas stove use was not present (e.g., state-specific PAFs) varied by state (Illinois = 21.1%; Calif…
We can debate other problems, but unless we address the fundamental need for proper housing, everything else should be secondary.
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Exactly; those are the things that are needed to turn "smaller more affordable homes would be a better solution" into reality.
I’m not sure I get your point. If the utility of a home is largely a function of size, but the cost is largely a function of location and amenities then there’s little benefit to specifically building smaller homes rather than less expensive homes.
Building smaller (specifically reducing square footage, baths, and kitchen amenities [which are a mix of size and non-size elements], and using less land [going up, sharing walls/roofs, eliminating private outdoor space, etc.]) is the mechanism by which the goal of less expensive can be met.