971–980 of 1001 posts
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You conveniently forgot immigration. Canada alone has added 500.000 people to their populace since the beginning of the year.
Immigration Numbers alone are Wörth nothing. How many people emigrated. How many people died? Tell me how the Population Numbers chnaged per years instead If Just looking at Immigration.
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The issue is always lack of building. Higher interest rates just mask the problem and hand more money to rich people for no effort. The problem is that the private housing production system responds to increased credit availability only at the margins and does not over produce. That’s largely because houses are still hand built and not really substitutable like a vehicle. You don’t generally have a choice of two hous…
>The issue is always lack of building. This is why NY is cheaper than the midwest.
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> Total number of dwellings per thousand inhabitants, 2022 and 2011 The issue here is that demand shifts regionally over time. Dwelling units in Detroit don't satisfy demand in San Francisco. The result is that you continually have to increase supply in the places demand currently is. To keep prices flat, the number of units per thousand inhabitants has to increase over time, because the number of empty units in area…
> Dwelling units in Detroit don't satisfy demand in San Francisco. They do help though. Individuals need to realize they can’t afford to live in a place like California and have to give up that luxury if they want more affordable housing arrangements.
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Multi-faceted and interrelated: a lot of housing would become a less attractive investment vehicle if near-substitutes were more plentiful. An overseas investor buying a Vancouver condo assumes that the asset will have high resale value (in addition to its use value as, e.g., a rental or airbnb). But in a saner world, housing would depreciate in value over time in proportion to its use and maintenance, like other dur…
but the land it's built on is an appreciating asset.
People intuitively jump to the conclusion that the problem is caused by a lack of building. While more building would help, a lack of it isn't the main cause of this problem. Ask yourself, do Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Britain, Ireland, etc, all have the same inability to build or is there maybe some other common cause? In my view this is symptomatic of a more fundamental issue - global asset price infla…
In Swedish big cities, prices are also ridiculously high despite investment in properties being much harder than in Australia or the US due to some strict rules regarding renting out. I live here now but lived in Australia before. Prices in Stockholm are more or less on par with Perth or Brisbane I think (i.e. crazy, but not at the completely off-the-charts Sydney prices, at least... when I lived in Sydney like 20 ye…
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This is a lot of mental gymnastics to pretend people don't need places to live. More people are born, hence more housing is needed.
Actually, California population (for example) has fallen by >400k over the last several years. The first falling year was 2019, 2020 saw a small rise ( 300k, 2022 a fall of ~150k, and 2023 a fall of ~50k. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/states/california... That includes both births/deaths and in/out migration. Population growth rate has been generally falling since 1990 (except for a peak in 2000) and sig…
People intuitively jump to the conclusion that the problem is caused by a lack of building. While more building would help, a lack of it isn't the main cause of this problem. Ask yourself, do Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Britain, Ireland, etc, all have the same inability to build or is there maybe some other common cause? In my view this is symptomatic of a more fundamental issue - global asset price infla…
Then again, with higher interest rates, the lower prices don't mean anything unless they drop significantly faster than interest rates are raising, yes?
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Is inequality bad in and of itself? If there's a healthy market of buyers and sellers, but also a lot of inequality, is that a problem?
Yes, it is bad. The distribution of wealth determines the distribution of resources. The housing stock is limited. It ends up being mainly owned by those with a lot of money, in the process putting prices up beyond even what the middle class can afford. Building new houses won't fix this as the new houses will end up being owned by the rich as well.
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but the land it's built on is an appreciating asset.
Purchasing a single piece of land with the expectation that it will increase in value, is similar in many ways as to do so with single stocks. Land and stock tend to go up in value. But land also sometimes go to 0, just like stocks. With the booming American car industry in the 50's and 60's, who would have thought that houses in Detroit could go from having a premium price in 1970 to be sold for $1 40 years later? W…
People intuitively jump to the conclusion that the problem is caused by a lack of building. While more building would help, a lack of it isn't the main cause of this problem. Ask yourself, do Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Britain, Ireland, etc, all have the same inability to build or is there maybe some other common cause? In my view this is symptomatic of a more fundamental issue - global asset price infla…
All those countries killed their manufacturing and offshored it over the last 40 years. Factories and manufacturing meant good jobs located far away from major cities, and towns/communities built up around those jobs.
Now all the jobs are located in large cities so housing prices there are going through the roof. If you are young you almost have to move to a major city if you want to start your career. Meanwhile there are "ghost cities" and other dwindling towns where you can buy a house for pennies.