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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

#941

Post by wilkommen »

a2dam wrote: post #824
wilkommen wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that building more housing helps, but a lack of supply is not the only cause of high housing prices. Wealth inequality is also a huge driver, possibly the primary driver. If wealth is allocated in a society in a sufficiently lopsided way, then a small number of people can buy up literally all the assets in the society. Regular people are bidding against a small cadre of ultra-wealthy people who can't possibly…

This can also be fixed by increasing supply. People buy housing as an investment because they expect it to increase in value. The best way to counteract that is to build and continue building so that doesn't happen.

There's only so much land in the places where people want to live. You can't increase the housing supply enough to stop housing from being an asset in a society where wealth is sufficiently unequally distributed. By virtue of its unique scarcity, land (and therefore housing) will always be an asset, and in a society with increasing wealth inequality, the price of assets will always be going up.

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

#942

Post by Sankozi »

underlipton wrote: post #825
Sankozi wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RC of course is inhibitor. It lowers value of the house, which lowers builder's profit, which lowers number of new investments.

Unless builders aren't building for profit. Create an entity with a mandate to build and the funds to make it solvent. Basic and dignified shelter that enables all the other economic activity does not need to be a profit center.

This is possible but requires lots of money and oversight. I have never heard about scheme like that that replaced private investors. But as a way to offset some RC problems it could probably work.

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

#943

Post by HDThoreaun »

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.

Investing in housing only makes sense when supply is limited. The way to stop investors from hoarding housing is to make housing a bad investment by building a lot of it so cornering the market is impossible.

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

#944

Post by hahahacorn »

bluegatty wrote: post #935
hahahacorn wrote: post #927

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rent control is not 'warping markets' - it's the notion that 'homes are markets' that is 'warped' - that's the basis of the problem. something can be essential + morally important + still governed by supply/demand constraints, this is such a silly statement to make. If there was no market, there would be no efficient allocation of resources. You need to make homes abundant to have the most economically (and thus, m…

It's a bit disturbing and dystopian that one counldn't think of any other way to 'distribute things efficiently' than markets ... but worse, that even contemplating that there could be 'other ways' would be 'silly'. This is the genteel version of "BUT THAT'S COMMUNIST!!" in response to any kind of policy that isn't rooted in a really narrow purview of markets. Also - it's also a misrepresentation to consider that 're…

Oh boy, that's a lot of poetic waxing.

> It's a bit disturbing and dystopian that one counldn't think of any other way to 'distribute things efficiently' than markets ... but worse, that even contemplating that there could be 'other ways' would be 'silly'.

It's not disturbing, nor dystopian. And I didn't say there isn't any other way of distributing things efficiently, but there is no way of distributing _more_ efficiently.

Ultimately, you understand the beauty of markets, or you don't. Under the right conditions (fair markets, open information, competition, no monopoly), the invisible hand of the market distributes more efficiently and fairly than any individual or team ever could, without requiring the labor of an expert to be spent doing something that the invisible hand of the market could, leaving them to use their highly valuable skillset in some other way to actually benefit mankind.

My argument is specifically predicated on the fact that a housing market is well positioned to benefit, and doesn't because of poor policy decisions, like rent control, overly restrictive zoning, poorly designed tax schemes, etc. - which you assumed it isn't and then broadly and generally said I don't understand market limitations, agreed with me in a super roundabout way, and made sure to include some irrelevant nonsense about power arbitrage instead of value creation wrt housing. You lack focus and brevity. Truth comes from understanding things simply, not complicating the domain until you can apply any lens you want to view it in any way you choose.

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

#945

Post by HDThoreaun »

torginus wrote: post #843
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…

Why should housing be an investment?

Because we live in a democracy and voters want housing to be an investment because they own housing

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

#946

Post by CyberDildonics »

mountainriver wrote: post #925
CyberDildonics wrote: post #901

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

That is quite literally what you are implying

There is no universe where there is even a slight connection between what I wrote and your fake quote.

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

#947

Post by robocat »

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…

> 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...

Teaching economics is not the solution (see papers on financial literacy). Rationality is hard and even highly educated people have terrible models of cause and effect. Even your own dependency analysis implies that voting for X helps to get Y (which hasn't been my personal experience).

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

#948

Post by dctoedt »

pembrook wrote: post #608
donkeybeer wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't housing, like any other goods, be as cheap as possible for as high quality as possible?

Because "cheap" government housing has never been "high quality" in the history of the world. Those two properties are antithetical. Humans don't have a ton of preferences for the electricity they consume or the water they drink, just that it exists. It's a commodity, so a good task for government. Housing is not an undifferentiated commodity and is subject to extreme variances in preference. Markets do differentiati…

> Because "cheap" government housing has never been "high quality" in the history of the world. Those two properties are antithetical.

I've lived in military on-base housing. It can be just fine ... or sometimes not.

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

#949

Post by ajross »

mountainriver wrote: post #865
ajross wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> adding more people to an area increases congestion, period

Yes, but so what? That's tautological. "Adding more people" isn't an independent variable, it's the economic ground truth over which we're trying to optimize.

The point is that if you need to build N units of housing to match your M added economic activity, building them denser leads to less congestion.

I mean, duh. This really isn't a complicated idea.

Again, you're imagining a single community divorced from inconvenient ideas like "population growth" or "economic development" (and even going so far as to conflate those with "destruction").

Well, sorry. It's desirable because it's developing. You don't get to change the minds of all the people that want to live there, all you can do is help them decide where to live.

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

#950

Post by dkarl »

keyboard_slap wrote: post #876
dkarl wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People see lower property taxes as a silver lining for short-term swings in the market, but I don't know anybody who thinks this is a short-term swing that they can ride out.

Nobody is happy about their property values going down long term. It exposes them to the risk of a big loss if they're forced to sell because of events in their life.

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