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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

#861

Post by kevstev »

muyuu wrote: post #77
riknos314 wrote: post #4

So glad we don't need to re-write the first chapter of almost every economics 101 textbook!

it's crazy that people nowadays seriously question basic market pressure being a thing

I think the issue is that we have under built so much for so long, that it often feels futile to build more. NYC can feel like this, because due to zoning and general difficulties in building, all that seems to happen is a new building goes up and drives up rents. But if we built 20x more of those and sated demand, we would. On a micro level though, it can appear that "new building makes rents go up."

And this pattern repeats across the US. Add in the fact that people want to freeze the area they moved to in time (like suburbs refusing to increase density, even urban yet car reliant neighborhoods panicking if a single parking space is removed: https://hudsoncountyview.com/outraged-jersey-city-residents-...) and we get constant blockers to housing supply growth we so desparately need.

Its been frustrating watching the half baked measures to make housing "more affordable" by making mortgages cheaper when really they need to stimulate the supply side. It seems like an easy political win IMHO as long as you can sell it up front- stimulate GDP by juicing house building, and everyone gets cheaper housing. Just keep it under control lest you end up in a China type situation.

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

#862

Post by zozbot234 »

shafyy wrote: post #837
zozbot234 wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Luxury housing" is a meaningless qualifier. New housing (market-rate) is always a luxury since, guess what, it's brand new! Older housing is inherently more affordable, so it's not that the new housing sells for less, but that its very availability pushes prices elsewhere down comparatively. That "elsewhere" may even be in a completely different neighborhood if the new market-rate housing acts as an amenity that soa…

No that's not true at all. You can absolutely build new housing that's luxury and ask for more than the average market rate. And also in Austin, by "affordable" they mean "income-restricted" units. The quote I copy and passted above continues like this: > A key piece of Austin’s strategy has been to encourage the construction of affordable housing. The city pursued this goal through density bonuses—allowing taller bu…

You don't need to point out that "affordable" is commonly used as a misnomer for income-restricted units, that's common knowledge. But what people care about is actual affordability, which is driven by overall market dynamics. That's what's "meant in this context" if you care about the real issues.

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

#863

Post by mountainriver »

orangecat wrote: post #111
mountainriver wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could but it’s not always just “good” to make things dense. My hometown has had a huge push to add more housing to make things more affordable. What happened? Rents went down for a couple years then right back up. Except now the city has a bunch of more soulless condos and is horribly congested. Sometimes preserving things and keeping them nice and simple even if it’s costs a bit of a premium is better.

Rents went down for a couple years then right back up. Except now the city has a bunch of more soulless condos and is horribly congested. So there were a bunch of people who wanted to live there and now can.

Yes there is a cost to things like a bunch of congestion, decrease of natural spaces and generally soulessness. To paint this as only good is an insane position

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

#864

Post by socalgal2 »

left-struck wrote: post #669
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.

It’s a difficult problem not because we don’t know the simple solutions (supply and demand). It’s difficult because the people who have the majority vote also typically own the houses and they obviously don’t want the prices to go down. This is not just speaking about the US, many countries are facing this issue

that's true, but plenty if people oppose building new apartments because, in general, the price will be high and they see this high prices and incorrectly conclude rents are rising when in reality, people move in, freeing up the less expensive places they were in before.

similarly they oppose because "gentrification" even though the evidence is that gentrification is net positive, even for those already living in the area. gentrification or not, people leave at the same rate. Those who stay see their income/wealth rise compared to the case of no-gentrification.

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

#865

Post by mountainriver »

ajross wrote: post #112
mountainriver wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could but it’s not always just “good” to make things dense. My hometown has had a huge push to add more housing to make things more affordable. What happened? Rents went down for a couple years then right back up. Except now the city has a bunch of more soulless condos and is horribly congested. Sometimes preserving things and keeping them nice and simple even if it’s costs a bit of a premium is better.

> now the city has a bunch of more soulless condos and is horribly congested The first bit is a taste thing; obviously lots of people view modern sprawl as "soulless" too. But the latter point is just plain wrong. Dense housing IMPROVES traffic congestion and shortens commutes, always, everywhere, markedly. And it's for a bleedingly obvious reason: pack people in closer together and they don't have to travel as far t…

>But the latter point is just plain wrong. Dense housing IMPROVES traffic congestion and shortens commutes, always, everywhere, markedly. And it's for a bleedingly obvious reason: pack people in closer together and they don't have to travel as far to get where they're going. QED.

You are conflating things, adding more people to an area increases congestion, period. Having dense housing vs not dense housing is better for congestion IF the people are already there.

>What you're imagining is some kind of fantasy hometown, which never increased in population and whose economy never developed. I mean, it's true. Forgotten ghost towns have very little traffic and quirky soulful architecture,

It is a highly desirable area, there is no issue with the economy, it will continue to be desirable if we don't destroy it. The "growth always good" crowd is pretty nuts in their views

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

#866

Post by malshe »

kleiba wrote: post #527

Before moving to Europe, I always had this conception of Germany as being very good at organizing things, especially anything involving engineering. It doesn't take long to set this picture straight. > From 2015 to 2024, Austin added 120,000 units to its housing stock—an increase of 30% Compare that to the following [1]: > The [...] government [...] intended to build 400,000 new homes annually, including at least 100…

> (a) shortage of skilled laborers; (b) high cost of labor; and (c) exorbitantly much red tape

Does the red tape also stop the Syrian refugees from working in construction? It's a genuine question and I am not trying to be disingenuous.

The last time I was in Germany, I aw several constructions projects in Cologne and Frankfurt. However, I rarely noticed any non-white construction workers. This was quite unusual for a Texan like me because Mexican laborers drive all the construction in Texas if not most of the US.

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

#867

Post by mountainriver »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #216
mountainriver wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could but it’s not always just “good” to make things dense. My hometown has had a huge push to add more housing to make things more affordable. What happened? Rents went down for a couple years then right back up. Except now the city has a bunch of more soulless condos and is horribly congested. Sometimes preserving things and keeping them nice and simple even if it’s costs a bit of a premium is better.

more soulless condos If you want soul move to New Orleans. Meanwhile people need comfortable places to live that don't make them indentured servants for the rest of their lives. I'll take a neighborhood with walkability and density over an old drafty brick building with no grocery stores any day.

"There is no downside to endless growth" ... lol

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

#868

Post by loudmax »

bombcar wrote: post #791
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…

In an area entirely filled to the brim with the "evil" Trump supporters ... new housing is going up, apartments, row homes, single family homes, it's all there. Nobody really seems to care ... yet. It's often very instructive to find out who is "behind" both promotion and resistance; because both groups will attempt to find ways to "play both sides" and get opposition moving.

> In an area entirely filled to the brim with the "evil" Trump supporters

Hanlon's Razor applies: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".

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

#869

Post by miyoji »

scoofy wrote: post #623
watwut wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's plenty of places to live in Texas for basically nothing. What are the employment options there? If I move to a cheap house somewhere where there are no jobs for me, I just moved somewhere where I cant afford.

>If I move to a cheap house somewhere Again, I'm not trying to be difficult here, but "where" is "somewhere." There are jobs in Austin, San Antonio, Kerrville, Marfa, and El Paso. They might not all be for me, but they exist in all these places. Where you live and what your commute is, again, is not exactly something that's particularly trivial to define. At what point should I start looking in San Antonio rather tha…

> At the end of the day, housing in Austin is relatively inexpensive. There are real options below $300K.

This is so insanely out of touch. Most people will never be able to afford a house over $200k, even in Austin. I live here, you apparently live in California. As a resident, let me tell you that Austin is not affordable, and definitely not "inexpensive". Housing here is relatively inexpensive compared to the most expensive metros in the world, it's not relatively inexpensive compared to the US housing market, or more relevantly, the Texas housing market. This isn't the Bay Area, it's the middle of Texas.

> A lot of "ugly" 5-over-1's have been built in Austin, and it's working to keep the place affordable for working class people.

Austin isn't affordable for working class people and it hasn't been for a long time, so no, those new constructions aren't keeping it affordable, they've just stopped the insane rent increases that were coming every year for more than a decade. A living wage in Austin for a single person is $100,000, for a family it's $200,000, and that is well above the median household income of ~$90,000. Working class people are well below the median and aren't making $90,000 per year. These numbers are from an article in our local newspaper from this week. [0]

[0] https://www.statesman.com/news/local/article/austin-cost-of-...

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

#870

Post by orangecat »

autoexec wrote: post #380
sgc wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure if that's all you care about, it will do that. At the price of making people's lives miserable due to substandard housing if it's done wrong. I said it's a good idea, let's just make sure we do it right.

> At the price of making people's lives miserable due to substandard housing if it's done wrong. I'm curious to see how Austin will do in the near future by that same metric. More people can afford a place that will let them pay rent, although now at least some of those people will be living in someone else's basement or garage. These may not be very nice places to live, but they may be all some people can afford. Th…

They've also removed the regulation requiring a second way out of a burning 5 story building.

This has been well studied. Requiring two stairways significantly increases costs, constrains layouts, and is not actually safer: https://www.pew.org/-/media/assets/2025/05/single-stair_repo...

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