Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

pew.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

871–880 of 1001 posts

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

#871

Post by michaelmrose »

zozbot234 wrote: post #586
roenxi wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a couple of "ifs" there and the scenario seems implausible. If I look at the prime real estate in a city it tends to be a lot of skyscrapers rather than very large homes (with occasional exceptions like say a Buckingham Palace). But it looks like the economic equilibrium is lots of cheaper apartments rather than large homes for rich people. > ... and even investment properties occupied by nobody ... Not much…

People don't want to rent those homes out because once you're doing so it's difficult to evict a long-term tenant. You just lose out a lot on flexibility - even if you try and manage that risk by leasing out housing e.g. on a yearly basis, landlord-tenant law often overrides that since there are strong ethical reasons for not evicting someone who has since come to treat that rental space as their home. Short term ren…

The purpose of housing is not to provide an investment vehicle nor should we optimize for this. Airbnb should just regulated out of existence in most urban markets because we are chronically low on housing and the city doesn't need short term rentals at all.

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

#873

Post by michaelmrose »

zozbot234 wrote: post #699
graemep wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some places in the UK (mostly new developments in London) that have a significant number of deliberately empty investment properties despite the law here making it easy to evict tenants. They are not being used for short term rentals either. Although the easiest route (no-fault eviction) is being abolished soon, wanting to sell a property remains a valid reason to evict. Some people just buy property as a s…

> despite the law here making it easy to evict tenants "Easy" is relative. "Evicting" an airbnb'er once the term is up will always be orders of magnitude easier than kicking out a long-term tenant who regards that as their actual home. There's not even anything necessarily wrong with this! The easiest way to address the issue is literally to slash any remaining red-tape that's making things difficult for those who wo…

If we don't have an excess of housing why should we allow ANYONE even one single property to serve as an unlicensed hotel. If we tax un-lived in property extremely punitively nobody will hold them at all and it should soon be sold or rented out.

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

#874

Post by Forgeties79 »

4fterd4rk wrote: post #858
Forgeties79 wrote: post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you recall exactly what kind of housing they were opposing? Because that is a major piece of context we are missing here. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who simply said “no more housing.” It’s usually much more specific than that, such as opposition to house flipping and STR’s, or wasteful planned communities of McMansions and concrete.

Generally these people oppose the building of "luxury housing" because they don't get how ALL housing increases supply/reduces market price. Also the idea of a developer building a kind of... predistressed property has never made any sense to me.

> ALL housing increases supply/reduces market price.

I can tell you firsthand that that is absolutely not true. The massive rush to renovate or build new short-term rentals in the 2010s had a disastrous impact on rental prices around my city, especially coupled with historically low interest rates that made these enterprises far less risky. It’s also incredibly disruptive to neighborhoods/communities, not just because of bad guests but because it can rapidly drive up value, leading landlords to sell and/or rapidly drive up rent which means kick out lower income tenants whether it’s intentional or not. Most of the STR’s in particular were also not being done by locals. 70%+ were out of town developers. Currently almost 90% of STR’s here are whole home which means not local owner/operators living there. It’s just hotels by a different name taking up housing in residential neighborhoods.

When interest rates and home insurance went up a few years ago, coupled with stricter rules for getting an STR license, a lot of people sold their properties (usually rentals/STR’s), and the price to buy as well as rent noticeably came down pretty rapidly. It’s still too high, but the drop was noticeable and quick. The purpose for construction absolutely factors in to these discussions.

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

#875

Post by zozbot234 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #871
zozbot234 wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't want to rent those homes out because once you're doing so it's difficult to evict a long-term tenant. You just lose out a lot on flexibility - even if you try and manage that risk by leasing out housing e.g. on a yearly basis, landlord-tenant law often overrides that since there are strong ethical reasons for not evicting someone who has since come to treat that rental space as their home. Short term ren…

The purpose of housing is not to provide an investment vehicle nor should we optimize for this. Airbnb should just regulated out of existence in most urban markets because we are chronically low on housing and the city doesn't need short term rentals at all.

The purpose of most real estate is to provide shelter for people, not to sit empty and unused. That's exactly what AirBnb allows to those who are only willing to rent short term (because it's their vacation home and they want to be able to use it).

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

#876

Post by keyboard_slap »

dkarl wrote: post #800
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…

Anecdotally, what we found in Austin was a combination of two factors: First, awareness of the futility and selfishness of "growth elsewhere" as a solution is much higher in younger people — and by younger, I mean currently under fifty. Generational turnover in Austin had been eating away at the NIMBY majority, and conversations about housing in Austin have long been polarized more by age than by left/right political…

Texas' high property taxes play an important role. Owners are incentivized to permit new development to satisfy demand and keep their taxes low.

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

#877

Post by cyberax »

simianwords wrote: post #637
cyberax wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, misclicked on this one: 2024 (ACSDP5Y2024.DP05): 979539. The 1Y series is indeed https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDP1Y2024.DP05?q=Austin,+TX at 993771. I believe this is a statistical outlier, and is not reflecting the true population. So let's test my prediction, shall we? The 2025 data will be released in April. If my prediction holds, then the population figures for Austin will be nearly flat or falling. I…

I still don't see your point. The population increased in Austin while the rents decreased. Even if nearly flat, the rent fell down by ~19% in real terms. How do you explain that?

First, even if we assume that the number is correct, it's a very slight increase over the 2019 levels. Just around 2% growth within 5 years.

Second, I made a prediction that this number was simply incorrect, and we'll see it going down this year.

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

#878

Post by leaves83829 »

lkbm wrote: post #853
left-struck wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 part of it, but I definitely have known quite a few renters who opposed building more housing. Denial of supply and demand, as well as general dislike of "rich developers" is strong in many groups. Incentives are typically the strongest force to watch, but so are various cultural/political narratives people come up with. People clearly don't all vote in our own economic interests in many situations. I'd assume…

This! >> I'd assume this is largely because in the current information ecosystem, people don't understand what's in their economic interests.

It's wild that even renter's aren't voting for more housing. I think it's because basic economics isn't taught in k-12 or even college anymore and this is causing a lot of problems.

Of course, there are other solutions too, like starting new cities and incentivizing companies to move there in the beginning. People follow jobs, they have to, now more than ever. if companies move there, people will follow. How is that we used to be able to create new cities and yet now, we all the sudden can't. has our material wealth really dropped so low that we can't afford to build new cities?

and what about down-sizing? in hong kong, you could create bed sized units at a fraction of the cost of a full sized apartment. microapartments? etc? all NOT legal. i think it's wrong of the city to decide that for people. individuals should be able to decide whether they want that or not, rather than being forced onto the streets.

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

#879

Post by zozbot234 »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #874
4fterd4rk wrote: post #858

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally these people oppose the building of "luxury housing" because they don't get how ALL housing increases supply/reduces market price. Also the idea of a developer building a kind of... predistressed property has never made any sense to me.

> ALL housing increases supply/reduces market price. I can tell you firsthand that that is absolutely not true. The massive rush to renovate or build new short-term rentals in the 2010s had a disastrous impact on rental prices around my city, especially coupled with historically low interest rates that made these enterprises far less risky. It’s also incredibly disruptive to neighborhoods/communities, not just becaus…

Taxing short-term rentals would handily address these issues while still allowing people to derive some income from their otherwise vacant pieds-a-terre and vacation homes.

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

#880

Post by Windchaser »

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.

Investment companies own only about 2% of the housing market, and most of these are rented out. Investment companies aren't really the cause of housing prices remaining high - in moderate- and high-demand areas, we simply aren't building enough to keep up with demand.
Post reply on HN