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Why Britain doesn’t build

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Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#481

Post by majormajor »

Qwertious wrote: post #389
thwarted wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the case in SF. Developers want to build, but entrenched interests fight and delay, often using the rhetoric that doing so only makes developers richer and the only reason developers want to develop is so the developers themselves make money (as if this is some kind of purity test of intent).

As much as I hate giving NIMBYs any credit, it's important to remember that developers don't want to lower the price of housing - they want to make money, but the higher the cost of housing the more profit they make. For instance, suppose they build 100 apartments in the suburb of X. They know that for every $1k the price of housing in X drops, they lose $100k. So weirdly, they tend to leave housing vacant and sell i…

Yeah, developers acting in their own interests isn't going to magically fix everything - there's no shortage of examples of how "chart goes up forever" thinking leads to nasty externalities and tends to run into a brick wall at some point, and how manipulative the big players in the real-estate market can be.

But painting NIMBYism in such reductionist (and long-term economic-investment backward) as "development would make real estate investors and developers lose money" would just result in people fighting entirely the wrong battles with entirely the wrong message to actually have a chance at changing things in a useful way.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#482

Post by lmm »

dahwolf wrote: post #476
lmm wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> private companies build homes, not governments. And if it's not profitable to do so, it will simply stop. > There's an economic downturn and the building of new homes slows down or stops. This happened over here from 2008-2014 creating a massive backlog, in turn leading to a pricing boom in recent years. Ideally, you'd keep building during a downturn but nobody knows how as there's no buyers and it's too big to sub…

The answer is obvious: by investing in supply during a downturn you actively help lower prices, which is the opposite goal of investment.

All trading is like that, that doesn't explain anything. (If that effect was enough to dissuade people from investments, there would be no investments)

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#483

Post by x3874 »

x3874 wrote: post #329

At least in my and other countries, there seems no city with restrictions on moving in. Would solve some issues and stop making public sector, traffic worse for true locals. (HN seems to fancy a ban on Airbnbs, as if your quiet single tourist poses an issue...) As if an ever-expanding human dwelling is desirable. Immigration quotas for countries exist (well, at least for sensible countries), we should apply that on a…

Hey come on 'Progressives', give me some more of your well-earned downvote ability! That's all you got!

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#484

Post by nsteel »

lukas099 wrote: post #136
beisner wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP means something more like "a security which appreciates on average faster than inflation", AKA an asset I can purchase and hold and sell later for more than I paid for it+improvements in real terms.

I think we should shoot for house prices increasing at exactly the inflation level (after a correction for current high prices of course). To me, this would be good enough to be considered a 'good investment', and wouldn't be unfair to future generations.

The BoE desperately needs more knobs to control inflation, diversifying into house building is actually a great idea.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#485

Post by fallingfrog »

chongli wrote: post #421
CaptainMarvel wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She may have earned the house to some degree (the article outlines a number of government subsidies which make this doubtful), but she definitely didn’t earn the land value increase. I’m reminded of this quote: > Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economizing. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and n…

Grandma, living in the same house she’s lived in since 1972, collecting a fixed income pension cheque once a month, is not what I’d describe as a “rich person.” Look instead to the people who own golf courses, sports stadiums, super yachts, private jets and the like.

Yeah I have to agree- all that increase in value doesn’t mean anything unless she sells it, which she won’t do until she dies anyway.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#486

Post by ricardo81 »

roenxi wrote: post #411
ricardo81 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Efficiency gains. Transport, combi boilers, electronic devices (such as TV) are all far more efficient. Also the transition from manufacturing to service sector. Quite likely that the inefficient burning of coal would explain away some of the difference. We barely burn any coal for electricity generation now, and residential coal fires are far less common.

You didn't even guess at orders of magnitude. Probably because if you had you'd be nervous. > Efficiency gains. Transport... Picking on this first one, population in the UK has gone from 50 to ~70 million since the 1950s. Transport energy use has risen from Ironically, thanks to the logic of Jevon's Paradox, transport probably is much more efficient. That is why it is consuming more energy per-capita than it did befo…

Did you factor in that China makes a lot of the products that were once created in the UK for UK use?

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#487

Post by bobthepanda »

majormajor wrote: post #481
Qwertious wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I hate giving NIMBYs any credit, it's important to remember that developers don't want to lower the price of housing - they want to make money, but the higher the cost of housing the more profit they make. For instance, suppose they build 100 apartments in the suburb of X. They know that for every $1k the price of housing in X drops, they lose $100k. So weirdly, they tend to leave housing vacant and sell i…

Yeah, developers acting in their own interests isn't going to magically fix everything - there's no shortage of examples of how "chart goes up forever" thinking leads to nasty externalities and tends to run into a brick wall at some point, and how manipulative the big players in the real-estate market can be. But painting NIMBYism in such reductionist (and long-term economic-investment backward) as "development would…

SF is not the only place with a housing crisis. In fact I would say SF is a pretty extreme case.

Seattle and NYC are both examples of places that funnel all development into a select few areas where the market for land is cornered.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#488

Post by hifromLA »

prottog wrote: post #446
hifromLA wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me offer a counterpoint: I live in LA because it is home to the largest immigrant population in the US from the country where my parents were born. When I go to the grocery store, restaurants, concerts, festivals, etc. I am experiencing that cultural connection. There’s numerous spaces I’ve been in where English is rarely spoken and it gives me the opportunity to maintain my language skills. Do you think I could…

I'm an immigrant myself, having moved around the US quite a bit and currently living in a part where there aren't very many people from my country of origin. I've never once considered proximity to a large community of people sharing my ethnic background as important in choosing where to live, but of course YMMV. It's funny because I've always thought of LA as a conglomeration of suburbia, but perhaps you're referrin…

LA is not Manhattan but it’s not a generic sunbelt city either. It’s comprised of dozens of neighborhoods and cities many of which are dense by any American standard (10000+ people/sq mi). A number of neighborhoods that were previously oriented around the yellow and red cars still have walkable “main streets” (albeit each of these main streets are individually difficult to reach without a car).

But that’s kind of beside the point. What I’m pushing back on is the notion that you can live anywhere in the US and it’s just as good as anywhere else so you might as well live wherever it’s cheapest.

It’s not about suburbs per se since Orange County is as suburban as it gets and also checks some of the boxes I mentioned (although I’d argue not as many as LA). It is also extremely expensive.

I don’t care for the “soul” argument since it’s vague. I just specified something that is personally important to me and justifies living in an very high COL city.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#489

Post by gautamcgoel »

asdff wrote: post #181
throwaway894345 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> less blind forces, more "well, what would you do in their situation": the people who first paid money for a given square of land were also the first to try to convince someone else to pay them more for that same land It seems a bit silly to argue that increasing land prices is principally a result of marketing. The amount of earth on the planet in the last 10k years essentially hasn't changed but the number of huma…

The thing is, we used to respond to such growth easily in a way that prevented land prices from being so out of reach for average workers. Here is the population of Los Angeles over the years: 1850 1,610 — 1860 4,385 172.4% 1870 5,728 30.6% 1880 11,183 95.2% 1890 50,395 350.6% 1900 102,479 103.4% 1910 319,198 211.5% 1920 576,673 80.7% 1930 1,238,048 114.7% 1940 1,504,277 21.5% 1950 1,970,358 31.0% 1960 2,479,015 25.8…

Is it really true that there's no shortage of land? I lived in the LA area and rarely saw empty plots. What is obvious is that we could improve density by encouraging more mid-rises and high-rises.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#490

Post by brailsafe »

khalladay wrote: post #239
asdff wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been saying this for years. Why do Canadian techies stay in canada? Tough immigration to US keeping them trapped? Seems like that's been the drumbeat of the central US tech scene for years and its resulted in all the engineering grads from those schools trying to flock to the coasts, and there basically being not much of a tech industry at all in the wake.

Canadian techie here :) I moved to the US for work super early in my career, and recently moved back to Canada after nearly a decade (mostly just for a change in scenery). I work in games, so I never made the super high FAANG wages I see talked about everywhere on here, but it's true even in games that you'll make significantly more in the US than in Canada. I make more than I need for the lifestyle that makes me hap…

The latter half of your comment is much more important to me personally, even as someone who's usually up for an adventure, but if you don't have a degree my impression is that it's pretty much not feasible to cross the border and get a job, or at least sufficiently annoying that I'd need to want that a whole lot more than I do. Aside from that though, I only tend to like the U.S in small doses; it's an extremely work-obsessed/stuff-obsessed place that feels a little culturally hollow in some way, but that is a cool place in other ways.

I suppose my consideration could be different if I got a job that paid > $150k or something and could actually take it, but the recession is here and the job market is dead, and so far it hasn't crossed my mind to try and make it possible, so I'm going to continue draining my savings while I look for a job here in Vancouver that will probably be below $130k CAD

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