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Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

darrellowens.substack.com

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Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#821

Post by seanmcdirmid »

cal5k wrote: post #433
LynxInLA wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert, but I lean towards relaxing zoning laws but not getting rid of them completely. Look to Houston to see what happens when there are no zoning laws at all.

Median sale price in Houston is currently $310,500, vs $441,250 in Sacramento, $917,500 in LA and $1.3MM in SF. Aesthetic judgments aside, seems like a winning strategy for housing affordability?

Wow, Sacramento looks like a really good deal. Almost as cheap as Houston, it probably has better weather as well?

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#822

Post by fosk »

TedShiller wrote: post #317
HDThoreaun wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that California is short around a million housing units. Truly a staggering number that will take very long to catch up on. Not sure how many units are being allowed by builder's remedy but it surely isn't the full million.

It’s not short anything. Other states have housing.

Somehow we have grown a whole generation of people that thinks they are entitled to live wherever they want, when that has never been the case in world’s history.

I too want a penthouse in Manhattan, who do I need to mail to demand I am given a penthouse in Manhattan?

California clearly doesn’t have the capacity to serve the current population, let alone an increased population. All services are 3rd world quality, besides a few rich enclaves.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#823

Post by xyzelement »

kevinburke wrote: post #401
xyzelement wrote: post #361

I am not an expert in California but I don't love this concept in general. Here in New York, the Governor is attempting to drive higher housing density in certain places regardless of what the local people think and want. I think this is a sort of obvious effort at a form of gerrymandering - if the assumption is that the residents of higher-density dwellings are more likely to vote Democrat on average vs the current…

If the Governor is wildly successful your town's housing supply will grow by about 2% per year. That is not enough to do a gerrymander and it's not going to change your "suburban lifestyle." It will let more people afford to live close to one of the world's great cities though, instead of moving to a lower opportunity area like Jacksonville.

// our town's housing supply will grow by about 2% per year. That is not enough to do a gerrymander and it's not going to change your "suburban lifestyle."

I don't get your math. If the town is very closely split as many of NY suburbs are, they may go 49/51 red or blue depending on the year.

2% a year is 8% growth (ignoring compounding..) between two presidential elections. That's enough to lock in the outcome if you can predict that incoming residents are bluer or redder (in this case, bluer) than the existing given how close it is.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#825

Post by mypalmike »

zzzeek wrote: post #693
jackson1442 wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have all this (and more!) in cities as well. Lived in Seattle for a bit and my apartment had several neighborhoods of single-family homes within a couple blocks: each with mature trees, yards, and low traffic streets. Sure, the yard maybe isn't as massive as you can get in a suburb, but there's still plenty of space (and far more public parks). Because they were so close to dense housing, they also had the ad…

I dont like noise, light pollution, or crowds. I'd like nighttime to be silent and pitch dark, and the daytime to be mostly silent as well. I go on trips and need to be able to load lots of stuff in and out of "my" or "a" car without living in terror of all of my stuff getting stolen while I'm inside. Where should I live? Note: I lived in three different boroughs of NYC for 25 years

Most single family homes in neighborhoods of major cities are like this, provided your home is one of the 90+% that is not on a major road.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#826

Post by nemo44x »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #795
nemo44x wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're not factoring in is the cost of labor and materials. They are both already quite expensive and when you have a building boom the costs of both will skyrocket. What will happen is you'll end up with cheaply constructed housing made from the worst materials. And that's the good outcome. The bad outcome is the rich who are looking for alternate investments will buy up all the labor and materials and build co…

The cost of the house itself is nothing compared to the cost of the land. Houses don't appreciate in value because of the houses (which deteriorate over time) - they appreciate because of the scarcity of land.

Sure, but houses don't depreciate as quickly as you might think. There's a few reasons for this:

- Constructing a new building isn't as cheap as when the existing structure was built. For instance, my home cost about $15,000 to build 100 years ago. Today the structure itself is worth more than that. Inflation matters here.

- People maintain and improve their homes. New kitchens, roofs, flooring, furnaces, siding, etc. In essence you are rebuilding a home 1 piece at a time from the day it is made. If you don't then the house gets to a point it can't be lived in.

People who haven't looked at new build prices for 10 years are shocked at what it costs today.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#827

Post by lumb63 »

Retric wrote: post #745
spockz wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why is that? Maybe because children don’t play on the street at all in the city. So what does the fraction look when we take children playing outside and be healthy instead of just children? The chance remains the same but for the ones that survive there is a better quality of life.

Children do play on city streets, however one of the big differences is sight lines. Suburban streets tend to be dangerous due to visibility issues and often lack well connected sidewalks etc. A core reason for this is developers want to maximize the number of houses they can fit on a given plot of land which will often have odd shapes etc. So kids simply walking to a friends house are often in real danger.

Some anecdata here having moved from a suburb to Boston metro:

I regularly have to slow down for children riding bikes, playing basketball or hockey in the street, etc. to this day when I visit my mom in the suburbs. I have never seen a single child playing in the streets in nearly five years living near Boston.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#828

Post by michael1999 »

kqr2 wrote: post #157
michael1999 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can try. It only takes one defector to cash a cheque. Or bankruptcy, divorce, general orneriness ...

Putting on the red team NIMBY hat, could they try and use private deed restrictions ( https://www.carealtytraining.com/blogs/deed-restrictions-wha... ) ? E.g. reuse the same mechanism that the city plans to use: "proposed building are deed-restricted to low income residents who make at or less than 80% the area median income." This "hack" is apparently used in famous "no zoning" Houston to keep exclusive neighborhood…

Those deed covenants go back to the KKK and whites-only policies imposed by the builder during lot subdivision. The game-theory doesn't work for retroactively imposing them on your neighbours. Why would someone selling promise to give up upside when they are moving away anyway? Like, are Anderson and Curry gonna show up on your lawn at midnight in hoods?

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#829

Post by jayd16 »

jackson1442 wrote: post #540
nlavezzo wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The answers are very uncomfortable. Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? Of course their desires alone shouldn't be the final word on proposed changes to codes, but implying that all of these homeowners are primarily driven b…

You can have all this (and more!) in cities as well. Lived in Seattle for a bit and my apartment had several neighborhoods of single-family homes within a couple blocks: each with mature trees, yards, and low traffic streets. Sure, the yard maybe isn't as massive as you can get in a suburb, but there's still plenty of space (and far more public parks). Because they were so close to dense housing, they also had the ad…

Those single family homes are the exact plots that people look to as examples of NIMBY homeowners standing in the way of affordable housing.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#830

Post by ryukafalz »

dahfizz wrote: post #716
nlavezzo wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The answers are very uncomfortable. Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? Of course their desires alone shouldn't be the final word on proposed changes to codes, but implying that all of these homeowners are primarily driven b…

The pro-density crowd cannot comprehend wanting to live in a quiet, safe, uncrowded town. They say the only possible motivations are money and racism.

Sure we can. We just think that can also look like this: https://youtu.be/5APjiZz_XCY

Uncrowded is subjective I suppose but it's certainly no Manhattan.

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