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

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

#901

Post by CyberDildonics » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 6:09 PM UTC

mountainriver wrote: post #867

CyberDildonics wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is this supposed to be a reply to me? Who are you quoting?

No one ever said "no downsides", no one said "infinite growth" and the comment I replied to was just talking about standard apartments being "souless".

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

#902

Post by abustamam » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 6:13 PM UTC

taormina wrote: post #772

abustamam wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article only talks about rent, not price of housing, which I think is an important data point. Homeowners don't want housing prices to fall. Ever. They don't care about rent prices (at least, not directly). But renters care about both — obviously lower rent prices are good, but many want to be able to enter the housing market but it's prohibitively expensive. Perhaps falling rent prices has a similar effect on ho…

The house prices DID go down here in Austin.

Good to know. The article didn't mention that but it seems like glaring omission.

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

#903

Post by testing22321 » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 6:23 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #795

testing22321 wrote: post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It can be both affordable and an investment - it cannot (and will not) perpetually be a market-beating top-tier investment . All of the items above can have drastic unintended consequences; the way to keep prices affordable is to make sure that supply is always outstripping demand by a bit. Some examples of unintended consequences: * I can't add an ADU to my existing property which would add one more dwelling unit *…

> It can be both affordable and an investment

By definition if something is affordable, it’s not a good place to store money with the goal of it increasing.

> All of the items above can have drastic unintended consequences.

Yes, absolutely. These are not fully fledged solutions, but a starting point. Some of them may need an asterisk or two. Of course, unintended consequences are perfectly fine if the final result is better than what we have today

> I can't add an ADU to my existing property which would add one more dwelling unit

Your wife or kid could own it. If you don’t have either of those, you don’t need two homes.

> Subdivision of property is discouraged

Subdivision and sell is perfectly encouraged.

> This might be the closest to doing something though it could substantially discourage non-citizen immigrants (legal or not)

I am a non citizen immigrant in Canada. I just had to bide my time until I became a PR then could buy a house. Perfect.

> This has been tried before and had well-documented issues, but might be doable if they can provide a "floor"

Again, it doesn’t have to be perfect, just better than what we have now.

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

#904

Post by ej88 » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 6:29 PM UTC

underlipton wrote: post #820

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.

I don't know how much I buy this. Washington, DC added about 60,000 units between 2015 and now, so a little less proportionally to Austin (with 1 million residents vs 650k). Metro area, 160k more in DC, with a population of 3 million (vs 2.5 million in Austin). Even if DC's unit add is slower than Austin's, you'd expect median rent changes to be within the ballpark, right? Maybe only a slight increase instead of the…

Accounting for inflation, rents barely moved from 2022-2024 in D.C.: https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/average-rent-by-yea...

I suspect most of the rent increase is due to inflation (sticker price). Nonetheless rents are still rising, which means 60k units were not enough to outweigh demand.

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

#905

Post by 4fterd4rk » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 6:30 PM UTC

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…

STRs reduced the supply of housing. You’re making my point.

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

#906

Post by BenFranklin100 » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 6:33 PM UTC

terminalshort wrote: post #235

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s going to take a SCOTUS decision overturning Ambler vs Euclid in my opinion. We certainly will not see zoning reform until the Boomers die.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but the boomers will never die. Gen X will become the new boomers, and then the millennials after them. Individual people die, but interests stay the same.

There’s a lot of truth here, but two countervailing points: first younger generations own homes than Boomers at equivalent ages; second Boomers are particularly blind to the effects of zoning and strongly oppose development due to see firsthand the effects of 1950s urban redevelopment. They also love cars.

Us younger generations will have seen firsthand the negative effects of zoning, we do not possess a visceral opposition to development, and there is much greater appreciation of walkable neighborhoods.

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

#907

Post by testing22321 » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 6:37 PM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #787

testing22321 wrote: post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> one human can own one residential property. No companies or businesses can. So, in other words, you want everyone who cannot afford to outright buy a house to be homeless?

Not at all. The government should step on and rent them as rent to own systems. Make no profit

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

#908

Post by performative » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 6:50 PM UTC

this is completely anecdotal, but there's a pretty cool trend i notice where urban places with reasonable renter economies tend to fall into one of three categories

1) "b- to c-tier" cities that build build build build build (austin, slc, phoenix)

2) de-industrialized cities that already have the housing stock (chicago, baltimore, detroit, pittsburgh, philly, worcester)

3) struggling smallish towns and cities that leaned into building better downtowns (there's a billion of em)

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

#909

Post by pandaman » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 6:50 PM UTC

leaves83829 wrote: post #878

lkbm wrote: post #853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Many people are not driven entirely by their economic interests, thus you can see people wearing clothes not from the Walmart bargain bin, driving cars with electric windows, and eating out instead of cooking rice and beans at home. Renters, just like home owners, want to live in the most comfortable home they can afford in general.

People who lament the lack of rentable pods and don't understand why anyone would pay more for a bigger house in a quitter neighborhood or just for a nice view exist, but you are in the minority. Thus renters are not going to vote to live in a ghetto so they could save a few hundred on rent.

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

#910

Post by TulliusCicero » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

CharlieDigital wrote: post #101

TulliusCicero wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's typically local residents who fight this. There's a "fuck you, got mine" tendency to pull up the ladder once you've made it.

It is more complicated than that. A few years back when my youngest entered 1st grade, I attended some meetings where the superintendent talked about school expansions in the pipeline due to confirmed property development projects. Namely, when new housing is added, there are infrastructure considerations and corresponding expenses that translate to higher taxes . Civil planners have formulas for how much the student…

It's a real issue, but the solution is probably just to have more of these decisions at the metro area or state level. Otherwise you just get specific cities or neighborhoods that say 'no' to housing, and that causes severe economic/financial problems (see: coastal California).

Housing growth is necessary, but it should also be spread out.