Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents • Hacker News Board

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#781

Post by alistairSH » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 2:21 PM UTC

giaour wrote: post #744

pj_mukh wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"typically own the houses and they obviously don’t want the prices to go down." I've never understood this: If I replace a single home with 20 apartment homes, I've raised the value of the whole property at purchase time no? You're already dealing with home valuations that have faaar outstripped wages, the only way you go any higher is to build more homes on the same property. Counterintuitively, the "I don't want to…

> I've never understood this: If I replace a single home with 20 apartment homes, I've raised the value of the whole property at purchase time no? It's a commons problem. In your scenario, you have absolutely increased the value of your property. 20 apartments is more valuable than a single family home. However, you have also reduced aggregate demand by housing 20 people. That reduced the value of your neighbors' pro…

Are there any real examples of this actually happening?

Local to me, Arlington and Reston VA have both seen massive building sprees over the past 20ish years (mostly adjacent to the Metro). Home values have never been higher in either location.

My own personal example... I live ~1 mile from the Metro, so just outside the building boom zone. There was next to zero housing in that zone - it was all office parks - and now it's a mix of $1+ million townhomes, $1+ million luxury high-rise condos, and dining/retail. My own home value is up 50% since COVID and that's true for just about any house in my zip code.

And without the redevelopment/infill, I posit the whole area would be less desirable. NIMBYism feels more about "change is bad" than property values.

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#782

Post by KolibriFly » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 2:21 PM UTC

pclowes wrote: post #176

Its wild how the solution to housing costs is really just: Build more housing. Keep law and order. No it doesn’t need to be “affordable”. Yes rent control is a terrible idea. Just build more housing. Note: that the US already has plenty of housing and housing costs basically go up in areas of low crime relative to economic opportunity. If you build housing, but allow crime to rise, you have wasted everybody’s time.

Yet Austin didn't just "build more housing" in a vacuum, they also changed how and where you can build

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#783

Post by KolibriFly » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

rconti wrote: post #11

Meanwhile, California is also trying to build housing near transit, but Menlo Park wants to preserve the character of downtown by preserving dirty, cracked, flat, surface-level parking lots like it's 1950.

Austin's example shows what happens when a city actually follows through and allows density where it makes sense

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

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Post by myrmidon » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

dan-robertson wrote: post #716

21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you produce more bread, milk, eggs as prices fall? You would of course wait for the next-pig cycle - when the starving masses pay any price to you. The answer- essentials can never be a non-government interferring market. This can be by creating artifical oversupply by buying up oversupply for foreign aid or bio fuels(food production). In the case of housing, this is by having the goverment continually cons…

The government intervention in the markets for agricultural products is because farmers are often an important political base, not to keep prices low for consumers. Without the intervention, prices would fall and supply would have to fall too, which would be good for consumers and bad for producers.

I'd argue that government intervenes in agriculture for supply-chain safety first and foremost.

Governments are concerned with this because no meat (or rice) on supermarket shelves during a supply-shock of any kind leads to rapid unplanned regimechange very consistently.

So basically every western government throws a few billions a year at local farmers so they stay (and this is not a US phenomenon, EU does the exact same thing). This is also less necessary for countries where labor is cheap.

This is arguably good for most consumers because essential calories being more affordable "on average" is not good enough, you'd typically rather pay (partially indirectly) a higher average to guarantee availability and avoid starving.

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#785

Post by davidw » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #590

davidw wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you want to build more sprawl-oriented social housing, you'd still need, in most American cities, to reform zoning codes and building codes (single stair and elevator reform) to get Vienna style social housing. It's a "yes, and" problem though, mostly. Let the market build what it can, and if you want to pursue social housing, do that too - just don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good and delay the refo…

No, you need a government agency which will build social housing. Not once has the private sector ever been "encouraged" to build social housing with deregulation. The only reason it keeps getting touted as The Solution in the media is because deregulation would boost their profits. The bottleneck is land, anyway. If you dont tax that enough or take it with eminent domain then you'll end up like San Francisco with ab…

The problem in San Francisco is NIMBYism, where supposed 'socialists' try and stop purely below market rate housing because it's the wrong shape or size or something.

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#786

Post by KolibriFly » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 2:26 PM UTC

dan-robertson wrote: post #724

wcfrobert wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NIMBYism has never been about preserving neighborhood characteristic, or noise and traffic concerns. Menlo Park is not Big Sur. Sure, some concerns are reasonable and should be investigated, but most of the time they're bureaucratic distractions that's been weaponized by people who want to delay progress and protect their investment. For most Americans, A house is their primary savings account, retirement plan, and p…

I think there are a big range of opinions people have. There are some hardcore housing resisters whose opinions get a lot of sway because of the way processes work (public consultations, activism, etc). Lots of people are a bit sceptical because of pretty legitimate reasons – noise, traffic, disruption, aesthetics. I think there probably are balances where people could generally be happier with new construction and t…

Yet I'm not sure it comes from more localized decision-making. It might actually come from making the rules clearer and less discretionary

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

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Post by brazzy » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC

testing22321 wrote: post #773

lenwood wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So allowing housing prices to surge is literally taxing the poor for the benefit of the rich. How do we limit home prices increasing? I see your point but solving this isn't trivial.

Housing can not be both affordable and a good investment. If we want housing to be affordable ie “limit them increasing” we have to stop people using them as investments. There are many ways. My favourites are: - one human can own one residential property. No companies or businesses can. -or, property tax doubles (or 10x) with every residential property owned. - no foreign ownership (Canada does this now) - governmen…

> one human can own one residential property. No companies or businesses can.

So, in other words, you want everyone who cannot afford to outright buy a house to be homeless?

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#788

Post by KolibriFly » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 2:28 PM UTC

subtextminer wrote: post #762

I live in Austin. In the 1980s, there was a building boom that collapsed. Austin had 23%(!) apartment vacancy in 1990 after a collapse that started in 1985. It wasn't until about 1993 that prices returned to 1985 nominal values. At the time it wasn't code changes that caused this but excessive lending by Savings and Loan banks. You can research the S&L crisis that required a federal bail out. This cause massive bankr…

That's a really useful historical reminder

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

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Post by brazzy » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

testing22321 wrote: post #774

exabrial wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Build more housing

If investment companies that already own tens of thousands of homes buy them and keep increasing the rent, the problem has not been solved.

Except they cannot increase rents when there is enough supply for a market to actually work.

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#790

Post by salawat » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 2:30 PM UTC

loudmax wrote: post #728

philipallstar wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people have kids and want them to be able to a) not be a victim of crime, and b) be able to afford a house. Anyone who has loads of money to afford high house prices and private security can afford luxury beliefs, as espoused in Oscar acceptance speeches, but everyone else with housing and kids is either voting for less crime and better affordability, or is not yet voting for those things.

Plenty of people with kids are voting to block new housing. It's not that they don't want their kids to be able to afford to pay rent. They're just not making the basic connection between supply and demand. This just happened in my neighborhood. There was a proposal to build low rise apartment buildings about a mile from the detached single home neighborhood where I live, and people had lawn signs opposing the constr…

>They're just not making the basic connection between supply and demand.

They don't like my beds. There's something wrong with them! I can't be the problem! -Procrustes

Yes. It's the people's fault for not understanding markets. Couldn't be that markets are fundamentally structurally fucked by an inversion of the demo pyramid. Couldn't be that market participants are just delusional about how much other actors should have extracted from them.