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Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

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

#801

Post by renewiltord »

nomilk wrote: post #118

Dumb question, many cities suffer from extremely high property (i.e. land) prices. I understand the NIMBY barrier. But I don't understand why it isn't more common to simply.. start a new city. Especially in countries like Australia where property prices are sky high and alternative places for setting up a new city are abundant. Maybe internet connectivity was previously a barrier, but now.. starlink. I put this quest…

Subject to the same constraints. They tried to make one in California and it was blocked by others in the same county. It’s fine to be honest. Over time California will become less relevant to the US and Texas more so.

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

#802

Post by rootusrootus »

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…

> Economic illiteracy used to be the domain of the political Left

IMO the right is not really the right that most of us remember, so it's not worth trying to reconcile their current ideology with the fiscal conservatives of decades past. The current GOP is unserious, their base consumed by conspiracy theories and driven by grievance.

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

#803

Post by commiepatrol »

amelius wrote: post #663
pibaker wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over 60% of Americans are homeowners. In any functioning democracy, they ought to be the people in power.

That's the tyranny of the majority. This is not how a functioning democracy should behave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

Isn't democracy "for the people by the people". Majority = more people. I guess "bad" majority shouldn't get a say?

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

#804

Post by rootusrootus »

terminalshort wrote: post #227
slg wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is phrased as if the article is confirming these points when it either doesn't mention them or even directly refutes them. First there is no mention of either crime or rent control in the article. But more importantly, it states that "A key piece of Austin’s strategy has been to encourage the construction of affordable housing." So why are you concluding that affordable housing isn't needed?

Affordable housing is the only type of housing that will ever be built. Builders aren't so stupid as to build products that their customers can't buy. Government intervention is not needed.

Just up the street from me, a local builder is trying a tactic I have not seen before (in our area, at least). They are building out a new neighborhood, but it is quite diverse -- one end is dominated by duplexes in the 500K range and some smaller single family homes. The other end has larger, nicer homes priced at 2M or a little over. All in the span of a quarter mile or so.

They think it will work. I will be interested to see how it plays out.

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

#805

Post by rootusrootus »

commiepatrol wrote: post #803
amelius wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the tyranny of the majority. This is not how a functioning democracy should behave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

Isn't democracy "for the people by the people". Majority = more people. I guess "bad" majority shouldn't get a say?

How do you address the comment you replied to, though? Are you suggesting that in a population with, say, 300,000,000 people, it is okay for 150,000,001 to vote to oppress the remaining 149,999,999?

In any case, in America we often treat democracy as rule by the plurality anyway, it is often not a majority.

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

#806

Post by chmod775 »

polothesecond wrote: post #760
dan-robertson wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the initial response to a lack of housing that people consume less housing than they would like, rather than homelessness, eg families with children sharing rooms more than they might like, adults living with roommates, or just people having to live further away from where they would like to be (or moving out of a city altogether)? I don’t dispute that there are levels of affordability that are bad enough that…

It’s all fun and games games until you’re municipality starts banning adult co-living situations. You underestimate how intrusive these people will be to protect the value of the single largest asset most of them will ever own

Individual landlords also dislike those and may not allow it, because the ability of the household to make rent now depends on all adults in that household. 3-4 broke adults who may only loosely know each other and with their own individual plans are a lot less stable than, for example, married couples. It's basically 3x the risk and hassle. Chances are you'd have to evict them after just a couple months.

They'd rather just leave the apartment empty and hope to find a better tenant.

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

#807

Post by vonneumannstan »

darth_avocado wrote: post #49
scarmig wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In December 2021, Austin’s median rent was $1,546, near its highest level ever and 15% higher than the U.S. median ($1,346). By January 2026, Austin’s median rent had fallen to $1,296, 4% lower than that of the U.S. overall ($1,353). For comparison, in San Francisco December 2021, the median one bedroom was $2810. In San Francisco March 2026, it was $3597, an increase of 28%.

It is well known that there was a brief moment in time when people were abandoning San Francisco and “moving to Texas” (mostly Austin) that coincides when the rents peaked in Austin. I’d be not surprised if that was also the time when San Francisco rents were down. We’re seeing a reversal in trend when SF is hot again and Austin is not. So not exactly a straightforward comparison. It could explain the SF-> Austin and…

The number of Tech people moving from SF to Austin and back is going to have negligible influence on the average rent in the entire city.

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

#808

Post by myrmidon »

pfdietz wrote: post #766
estearum wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the problem is that the free market in advanced economies appears to dictate a price point for housing that is unattainable for broad swaths of society. Classic case of Baumol's disease, which is not solved by "well duh we just gotta build more." People will not "just build" enough to solve the problem because they won't "just build" beyond equilibrium (for long).

No, the problem is the government has artificially restricted housing supply and this has driven up prices. It's not a market failure, it's a government failure.

I think it's not helpful to talk of "government failure" as long as democratic principles are upheld.

You could call it "voter failure" instead. But I'd argue that many of those voters are just acting in their own best interest, because they already own a home and more construction/housing supply does not help them at all.

Some part you might be able to blame on the system, because I'm pretty confident that owners of at least one home are politically overrepresented literally everywhere (just look at home ownership percentages of politicians compared to citizens).

I personally think a lot of this is just the natural consequence of an aging population, where young-people-concerns are basically "underrepresented" by design.

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

#809

Post by juleiie »

bpt3 wrote: post #770
juleiie wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guys you have no idea about these things and what you are talking about. source: I am a city plot owner. No land owner will suddenly become a developer to build an apartment block. A plot owner can sell land to a developer or form a joint venture with developer putting in their land as starting capital (much more risky) most people either keep land as gold or sell it when they need money. I hope it is clearer now. Th…

> No land owner will suddenly become a developer to build an apartment block. No one is suggesting this. > A plot owner can sell land to a developer or form a joint venture with developer putting in their land as starting capital (much more risky) most people either keep land as gold or sell it when they need money. Most people don't own vacant lots, but some who do hold onto it as an investment. It's a pretty poor o…

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

#810

Post by testing22321 »

brazzy wrote: post #789
testing22321 wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The market will remain irrational longer than…

Of course they can when they own them all. See De Beers diamonds. Buy them all, keep the price artificially high.

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