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

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

#841

Post by torginus » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:20 PM UTC

lenwood wrote: post #736

torginus wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people who only own 1 house at most are still disadvantaged by this - sure, the value of their apt goes up, but if they want to switch to a larger house, the difference they're paying also increases, so do the property and wealth taxes, if applicable. There are many stories of solidly low-to-middle class families who lived in an area where property prices soared, and had to choose between bankruptcy or moving out…

> 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.

There are a bunch of successful models, people usually mention Vienna as having a particularly effective housing policy - what they did is the city bought up a bunch of land, and built housing on top of it in various government subsidy programs, from non-profit public benefit corporations, to social housing for the poor.

They have strong renters rights, protections against rent increases, and high standards to which dwellings must conform to.

So while you can be a landlord in Vienna, you have to compete with affordable housing options, and you're forced to maintain a high quality yourself.

So that means that unless you can offer something the market's willing to pay extra for, being a landlord is not particularly lucrative thing.

Notice nowhere in my post did I mention the typical 'landlords are evil and must be taxed to death' approach.

Which is in stark contrast to most places where you're paying through the nose, the standard of rented dwellings is low and your rent can be increased or you can be kicked out on moments notice.

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

#842

Post by kyralis » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:21 PM UTC

salawat wrote: post #790

loudmax wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The tragedy of the commons is a real thing. People focus on their own personal short term economic gain at the expense of long term sustainability and gain - even for themselves - because people in general find that longer term outlook difficult to reason about.

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others we've tried. This short term thinking is one of its classic failures, because in many ways you're codifying the tragedy of the commons.

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

#843

Post by torginus » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:23 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…

Why should housing be an investment?

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

#844

Post by alistairSH » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:25 PM UTC

BobbyJo wrote: post #813

alistairSH wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

Literally the entire peninsula of the bay area is an example of this happening. You have people voting to "keep their small town feel" sandwiched between San Francisco and San Jose.

I meant examples of increased density reducing values, not NIMBYs stopping development.

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

#845

Post by cuuupid » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:27 PM UTC

hunterpayne wrote: post #491

barry-cotter wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is productive to decline to use propaganda terms. If, every time someone says they support affirmative action they are asked if they support having higher standards for Asian applicants to medical school than for white applicants that’s good because forcing people to defend their support of racist policies reduces support for them. By the same token pointing out that affordable housing doesn’t mean housing people…

Its also helpful to know that there is a specific (US) program called "affordable housing" that subsidizes rents for low income people. The economic effect of that program is to increase rents (but not home prices). This especially hits the working poor who make just a bit too much to have subsidized rents.

This is not a program, it is a term used by the HUD and very explicitly does not relate to income levels. That is the point I keep making, when the modern (It is very important to distinguish the two because “affordable housing” is a marketing term that could reasonably convince someone that the policy is meant to help 80% of people including themselves, when in actuality it is low income housing which is restricted to <20% of the area population and even fewer voters.

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

#846

Post by alistairSH » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:27 PM UTC

giaour wrote: post #823

alistairSH wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

Yeah, I live in Falls Church, which has seen more build-up than other areas in Northern Virginia because the city has never had the kind of restrictive zoning that the anti-"Missing Middle" campaign is still fighting in Arlington. The value of my single-family home peaked in 2024 and has dropped slightly since. To my understanding, this is generally true of my zip code and not true of comparable zip codes in the area…

Do you believe that small drop is a result of new development or just a blip in the market? Price increases near me definitely slowed as interest rates increased, but we haven't yet seen a drop. But, as far as I know, this is one of the only walkable areas outside the Beltway, so there's a lot to like if you want to be untethered from a car for much of the week. It's also a relatively affordable area (vs inside the Beltway and some SFH neighborhoods) - my TH 1500sqft (1800 if you include finished basement space) would currently sell for ~$700k. The new-build THs are 2500sqft, with a garage or two, and sell for just over $1 million.

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

#847

Post by cuuupid » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:30 PM UTC

marcuskane2 wrote: post #429

cuuupid wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For nearly every homebuyer, a home is the largest purchase they will ever make and the bulk of their net worth. It needs to be a good long term investment that at least reasonably paces with inflation, otherwise you are losing money by buying a home and everyone has to rent and then you have feudalism with extra steps. The good news is this is totally fine with keeping cost of living under control and overbuilding, b…

> a home is the largest purchase they will ever make and the bulk of their net worth That's bad and a central part of the problem. I accept that my car is depreciating in value every year I own it, and but I need a car so I buy one. I don't need it to be a good long term investment, despite it being a major purchase. The entire mindset of treating a family's home as being an investment class rival to bonds and equiti…

A home costs 10-20x more than a car, you are being incredibly disingenuous by boiling them both down to “major purchase.”

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

#848

Post by sudo_gopnik » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:31 PM UTC

wr639 wrote: post #833

Up here in Denver I see all kinds of new apartments complexes going up all over. I have not seen the rents coming done because of that yet.

I think Denver has a few other things going for it that simply make it a higher value housing market, namely: 1. Mild weather - dry weather with well defined seasons without 2. Natural recreation - some of the best year-around outdoor recreation in the country 3. More diverse economy - Austin is extremely tech heavy. Anecdotally most people saw dot-com boom hit Austin much harder than 08 crisis. Tech is bleeding right now. 4. Geography - building in Denver is constrained by Rocky mountains. The plains offer endless building but in Texas you can build any direction and topology is very flat.

I think the other thing not mentioned here is that Austin saw a huge influx of home buyers in 2020-2024 - most everyone I met during that time that moved from West Coast bought at the high and left within 2-3 years after realizing they couldn't handle the crumbling infrastructure and hot summers. Many of them have been holding onto these properties and trying to rent. This only put more pressure on another group - those who bought properties specifically for short-term rentals (e.g. Airbnb). Those who did stay are see massive headcount reductions in tech industry. Meanwhile there are many natives who would love to live closer but are stuck with properties purchased in '21-'24 in Round Rock, Georgetown, San Marcos, Taylor, etc.

So IMO this a perfect storm of not just building housing supply (which is great - the best thing the city has managed to do in the past 15 years), but also significant demand correction.

As someone born and raised in Austin and a homeowner within the city - I am ecstatic about decline in rents and home values. Austin became what it is in part because it was affordable.

We have no nearby mountains, hot summers, poor infrastructure, poor politics, a heavily polluted coastline --> there was no reason for it's prices to be as high as they were.

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

#849

Post by quacker » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:33 PM UTC

jeffbrines wrote: post #364

Has anyone also considered the possibility that Austin is just not that great? Like...those comparing it to the Bay area or a light weight NYC need their heads checked. Maybe people (like me) just realized it wasn't great and...left?

If you’re asking about a population decrease then, no, Austin has not had a declining population count for decades, and not recently either, although growth has slowed. So it’s not a case of decreased demand.

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

#850

Post by TulliusCicero » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:33 PM UTC

hnthrow0287345 wrote: post #97

TulliusCicero wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of people -- especially further left -- who fight this kind of reasoning. They insist that the housing market is different , and that just building more private housing won't help. No amount of evidence will convince these people, because they already made up their mind ahead of time: their ideology says the market can't help, so the market can't help, period. Any evidence to the contrary…

Their core argument is that we could increase supply but choose not to, and that we should be maximizing supply (as an ethical and moral mandate, but that is not a tenant of capitalism really) because housing is an essential thing like food and water. FWIW we don't maximize food/water production either for various reasons, which would also drive food/water prices down. Maximizing supply can mean other things than bui…

Some of what you're saying does happen, but what I said also happens: many leftists genuinely believe that increasing production via private companies is impossible or entirely unhelpful.

It's not just that they're focused on other things -- some of which I agree with, to be clear, as I'm a social Democrat -- they really believe that supply and demand won't work.