I think there is another element, private equity (PE) has got involved in the housing market, and like anything that PE gets involved with it burns it to the ground and then exits with it's profit leaving behind a wasteland. PE equity will do anything to get their profit no matter who it hurts
This would not matter if housing could be built.
Yeah I tend to agree with this point. PE is a boggie man for not building enough housing where it matters. In fact if we could build more houses PE could buy it at above market prices all day and builders could boom and eventually rents would drop because PE aren't going to hold empty units because its investiments.
i would love to hear a YIMBY consider the market forces/how capitalism works and not just reduce it to regulation. aka when it costs over $500k to build a single apartment unit and most of those costs are construction with very little of the regulation burden driving up that cost.
Sorry, you think that YIMBYs don't consider this? Perhaps you should follow some YIMBYs! What does it take to get a more efficient building market? Lots of building, lots of competition in building. Low barriers to new contractors becoming builders, etc. It's truly only the YIMBYs who ever talk about any of this stuff in my experience.
Sorry, you think that YIMBYs don't consider this? Perhaps you should follow some YIMBYs! What does it take to get a more efficient building market? Lots of building, lots of competition in building. Low barriers to new contractors becoming builders, etc. It's truly only the YIMBYs who ever talk about any of this stuff in my experience.
i never hear YIMBYs talk about this: https://yonahfreemark.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Freemar...
Again, talk to YIMBYs, and you'll get an earful about that paper, about a low-demand market with already affordable housing, that has been generalized to apply to situations that are quite different.
Yonah Freemark has some OK work, and that's a fine piece in isolation, but it's an outlier in the literature but gets trotted out because NIMBYs want to use it to block housing, not because it's a significant piece that applies across the nation.
Also if you have children - I am not sure how it is for you in Germany, but in Poland landlords will not rent to anyone with children. Or ask twice as much because the assumption is if you don't have home already, you are suspicious...
in germany that's illegal. you are not allowed to deny families with children, and even small pets (small dogs, cats, hamsters, etc) can not be denied.
They just ghost you if you aren't chosen, good luck proving anything.
The underlying issue is that converting single-family suburbia to medium-density multifamily ‘ruins the neighborhood’, and cities don’t have the courage to eminent domain homes and replace them with apartment buildings themselves, so they outsource the housing function to the Free* Market, which is most definitely not interested in terminating the SFH market. Between the profitless-ness of apartments for the real est…
I asked why "build more" isn't a valid answer and your response is that we need to dethrone capitalism and Reddit-tier nonsense about HOAs? Why is your solution "put 3 families in this single-family home" and not "build more single-family homes?" If the market isn't "interested" in "terminating" single-family homes what makes you think it would be a good thing to do so, other than the fact that it would hurt a cohort…
Most U.S. cities cannot sustain purely-capitalist upzoning from low to medium; the profits for developers simply aren’t there, and the elected officials aren’t willing to upset homeowners. Three of the five cities I’ve lived in over the past fifteen years made the changes you describe to single-family zones. Developers largely did not, as you suggest, jump at the chance to build higher density housing. In one case where they did, their bank demanded they as part of the loan terms to set a minimum rent per apartment that was higher than neighboring single family homes, leading to persistently high vacancy rates, nonstop turnover, and a profitless development with 0% ground-level retail rented in the middle of a business-tourism district. So, for most U.S. cities, either they need to step in and commission redevelopment of the single-family homes of their voters, and take the profits or losses themselves on both their accounting books and their election outcomes, or upzoning simply won’t happen at all.
Even though it was those same governments who set the EU up in the first place because it was mutually beneficial.
But it's not beneficial to the handful of dudes programming our SM news feeds, so the EU needs to be destroyed... and we will apparently do nothing to prevent this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance See the projections for many major countries in the EU for the next election cycle. Not looking great.
I don't really buy that there's a strong anti EU sentiment in Europe. I don't think its supported by facts. The UK was always an outlier in Europe and only joined when forced by Economic reality, which they will be again in 20 years.
Housing in SF and NYC are on some level substitute goods. Many of the people living there are mobile and the ones deciding prices on the margin. If SF rent was $10k and NYC was $3k, many are going to leave SF to get a similar type of lifestyle in NYC for cheaper, raising demand for NYC housing. If SF zoning laws allowed building an incredible amount of housing, lowering rents to $2k, while NYC is at $4k, many people…
yeah i don't think NYC people are gonna leave SF for NYC. those are two totally different cities with different experiences and different culture. you can live an urban lifestyle in all 50 states btw
Not everyone, not even a majority, but many people would trade their ideal urban lifestyle for a different urban lifestyle if it came at a significant housing price discount. We already see this across the country, even in non-urban preferences, where cheap housing in Arizona, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida are attracting the most significant portions of migrations, not due to their superior lifestyle, but because housing, and consequently other things, are much more affordable
Of all the jobs to get replaced by AI, I would be happy to see realtors to be first in line (but I also think this is wishful thinking). I feel like I get very little value out of what seems to be a mostly fixed/required price. I know flat fee realtors exist, and if/when we sell our home, I’ll be looking into this heavily. But I feel like they rank up there with car salespeople/dealers.
I used a discount buyer's agent and it worked great! We viewed houses on the internet ourselves, went to open houses ourselves, and arranged showings with seller's agents ourselves. Once we had it narrowed down to two houses, we brought our buyer's agent to look at both houses, offer suggestions, and do all the bidding and purchase paperwork. The realtor cartel still enforced a 6% commission, with half to the seller'…
Post-NAR settlement you would have to sign a separate agreement with your buyer's agent specifying their compensation before making an offer.
Don't live in the US, but we're facing similar problems here in Norway. One main driver is that there's not being built enough new housing. It's a combination of building being too expensive, higher interest rates, etc. So the second-hand/used market is red hot. Renting has become so expensive, that many landlords have exited - so we're likely heading into a really bad crunch in the near future for the renters. I've…
Similar problems here in Croatia, few reasons for it: - Boom of AirBNB's and apartment rentals with tourism, with real low tax rates - Limited liability abuse - company opens up, sells 30 apartments in a new building, build out the building, don't get any permits, just close the company down and open a new one. Legally, they are untouchable, and getting the permits is now on the apartment owners. Multiple friends liv…
Property taxes are already in place, but they are rather small, and don't apply to primary residences or long term rentals