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Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand. 75% of Auckland is zoned for 1 or 2 story buildings (according to http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.

• elyobo 9y ago
  This is definitely a major contributor and absolutely needs to be addressed, but it's not the only thing. Improving supply by permitting an increase in density has to be part of the solution, but without also fixing the tax incentives it's only a partial fix.
• marlokk 9y ago
  is it xenophobic to prefer free-range beef too?
• microcolonel 9y ago
  Apartments suck. Most people vastly prefer not to live near them or in them if they have the option. If they have 1000x the land (still remembering that a lot of that is grazing land), then what they need is transport, houses, shophouses, townhomes, and lowrises. If the land price is higher in the the middle of town, then so be it. At least the current residents aren't having the sky systematically parceled away by a corrupt bureaucracy for paltry favours. I'm not totally fond of the way NIMBYism ends up working, but the fact is that these people would otherwise have their land value degraded by amendments to local zoning. The rules for projects like this should at least include compensation for the decrease in assessed value of their property.
  • harryh 9y ago
    This comment reminds me of the old Yogi Berra gem: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." If people didn't want to live in downtown apartments the prices wouldn't be so high.
    • closeparen 9y ago
      This is a non sequitor. The “nobody likes high rises” argument is about the people who don’t want to look at high rises. Obviously their aesthetic satisfaction is more important that others having places to live.
      • elyobo 9y ago
        The OP mentioned living in them, so the reply was on point - clearly some people _do_ want to live in them. I love my apartment, but would admittedly be less keen on suburban apartment living as the convenience factor would probably not be so hot.
        • microcolonel 9y ago
          > ...if they have the option This would qualify as them having no option. If they want to live in the city, they want to live in the city; but if you're trying to make a city that people will continue to want to live in, apartment buildings may be the worst way to accomplish it.
          • closeparen 9y ago
            If it contains only small buildings, it isn't a city. Perhaps you mean village, town, or suburb?
            • microcolonel 9y ago
              I have a hard time labeling it. A sprawling continuous town centre is really what I'm thinking of: low rises, shophouses, some mid-rises. But ideally fewer mechanistic glass plinths blocking out the sky. I just think you can justify the amenities and convenience of a well developed city without half the buildings being forty or more floors.
• toomuchtodo 9y ago
  There is nothing wrong with being NIMBY with your own land. It belongs to the citizens of New Zealand, not the top bidder.
  • PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    Then the citizens of New Zealand should zone it so that more citizens of New Zealand can live on it. Blaming it 100% on foreigners is a smokescreen.
    • FooHentai 9y ago
      >Blaming it 100% on foreigners is a smokescreen. Only a vocal few are 'blaming it 100% on foreigners'. I say this as a foreigner in NZ. What is recognized and being responded to here is that foreign investment in property/land in NZ is A factor contributing to the current housing bubble in the country. A factor. One factor. Not the factor. How much of a factor? Difficult to establish since there has been wilful obfuscation of the facts. Right now the gathered official information on foreign property market activity in NZ puts it at anywhere from 3% to 57%. Yes, the data really is that flawed and it's likely not an accident. Alongside this is a high rate of immigration (this is different from foreign investment land/property holdings, but the two do intertwine especially when it comes to properties being purchased by overseas students on temporary visas, which appears to be fairly widespread). That's about it as far as factors that the racists and anti-racist racists can jump on board and shout about. Another factor is the geographic realities of NZ (while Auckland's low building height zoning seems unnecessary, it's very much a necessity for most of the rest of NZ which is one of the most earthquake-prone regions of the world). Yet another factor is the expense and complications of constructing new housing stock here. First, the country's remoteness means a great deal of materials required must be shipped great distances and this costs both dollars and time. Second, there is a stranglehold monopoly on the supply of many building materials wherein a single corporate entity has managed to lobby for esoteric compliance requirements for said materials, to the point that they are functionally the only possible provider of said materials. Third a great portion of the building workforce has been tied up with the Christchurch rebuild (that little thing six years ago that pretty much levelled the third largest city in the country). This drove a reduction in workforce, materials and equipment availability for the rest of the country and so development has been consequently slower since. That rebuild is by no means complete. Finally, zoning is not as simple as 'just do it'. Aside from the tectonic risk mentioned earlier, New Zealand maintains high percentages of protected green areas within it's cities, and aside from the aspirational and cultural reasons behind this, it's a important element of maintaining the country's overseas reputation as a clean, green tourism destination. Since that's 4% of GDP here (9% if you count the downstream stuff), it's important to maintain it, and chucking up dense residential, commercial, or industrial actively harms that reputation and will reduce GDP. On top of this, you can't simply change zoning and expect infrastructure to keep pace. It must be built to accommodate higher density and then the higher density can follow. As mentioned earlier, NZ's remoteness is a significant barrier to the kind of infrastructure investments required (and ten plus years ago too, if you want to look at solving the problems of today). So, this is just a slice of what is a very complicated situation. I have by no means covered all the major factors above, just a few. This move to reduce foreign property speculation in NZ is sound, but only part of the picture. With any multi-faceted economic issue the impacts may not be exactly what is desired and the second-order effects of this might bring things that are even worse.
• toomanybeersies 9y ago
  It always blows my mind that there are masses of single story houses within a couple of kilometers of the Sky Tower and the rest of the CBD. There's still single story buildings within a 10 minute walk of the center of the city.
• IncRnd 9y ago
  > instead of addressing underlying economics (limited supply meeting increasing demand causing raising prices) by increasing supply... This is an economic solution. They chose to lower demand to keep prices down. If you would do something differently, say raise supply to keep prices down, how would you do that? Would you make more land? What would happen to people who you rezoned out of their houses?
  • bobsman123 9y ago
    Rezone to allow for more apartments and larger houses. It’s pretty simple.
    • IncRnd 9y ago
      Now we are getting to the actual discussion. Of couse, land can be rezoned, but _why_ do that? Why is it a 'better' solution to increase supply through effectively removing people from their homes instead of decreasing demand through denying purchase of homes?
      • wbl 9y ago
        You can outlaw making homes, but if you don't outlaw making babies, where will the people live?
        • IncRnd 9y ago
          Where do they live now? P.S. Nobody is outlawing the making of homes. That's false hyperbole on your part.
          • wbl 9y ago
            What do you think bans on duplexes, apartment buildings, and row houses do in a city?
            • IncRnd 9y ago
• pxeboot 9y ago
  Is there any evidence that relaxing zoning restrictions drastically reduces housing prices in a somewhat short timespan? Wouldn't developers stop investing in new projects as soon as prices became stable or started dropping slightly, causing the same cycle to start again when demand catches up in a few years?
  • freeone3000 9y ago
    Restricted supply of housing is a net social loss: https://urbanpolicy.berkeley.edu/pdf/QR2005.pdf https://urbanpolicy.berkeley.edu/pdf/QR2005.pdf Developers would stop investing in projects as soon as projects became forecasted to be unprofitable. If the housing supply is being artificially restricted below its clearing price, there's a gap between minimum profitable housing unit, and the housing units that can currently be sold. The idea behind lifting the zoning restrictions is to allow supply to reach market clearance. And if it turns out that if new housing wouldn't be profitable, there won't be any changes. (Though a pattern we see in cities with less strict zoning (see: Montreal) is that we get expensive, cramped apartments near the city center, with lots of empty land around the edges. This is okay too! It's good for other reasons, by reducing commute times and making mass transit more affordable. Density is good!)
    • closeparen 9y ago
      The pro-market argument falls on deaf ears. We don’t need to deregulate, we need to regulate smarter. Low density uses such as low rises and houses are wasteful and unsustainable, and should be as difficult to get approval for as skyscrapers are today. Public policy should not back down. It should seek to lower-bound density rather than upper-bound it. I think there’s a decent contingent of YIMBYs who do oppose development - the suburban kind. I think it would be productive to reframe as pro-density rather than pro-market.
      • nosuchthing 9y ago
        Tokyo is a case study in how zoning and deregulation on developments in urban centers has created a healthier real estate market: In Minato ward — a desirable 20 sq km slice of central Tokyo — the population is up 66 per cent over the past 20 years, from 145,000 to 241,000, an increase of about 100,000 residents. In the 121 sq km of San Francisco, the population grew by about the same number over 20 years, from 746,000 to 865,000 — a rise of 16 per cent. Yet whereas the price of a home in San Francisco and London has increased 231 per cent and 441 per cent respectively, Minato ward has absorbed its population boom with price rises of just 45 per cent. And this is for a particularly popular part of Tokyo. In the 1980s, Japanese cities were experiencing the same inflated housing bubbles that U.S. cities are today. Their planning methods, moreover, were rooted in Western notions about separating uses and limiting density. The federal government recognized that these regulations were the problem, so in 2002, it passed the Urban Renaissance Law. The law stripped municipalities of the ability to control private property. As a result, owners can build a variety of uses on their land, regardless of resistance from local bureaucrats or neighbors. https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/08/12/tokyos-affordable-housing-strategy-build-build-build/&refURL=https://www.reddit.com/&referrer=https://www.reddit.com/ https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.for...
• wallace_f 9y ago
  Emotional logic and snap-decision making is kind of a staple in NZ. For example, it's illegal to grow an avocado tree. They're still banning books there and good ones at that. A pro-democracy advocate was targeted by the NZ gov to win favor with Fiji.(1) Government over-regulation, permits and licensing on everything under the sun. A man set himself on fire to protest the horrible family court system, and a woman thrown in jail after letting her kid ride an ATV. Frankly, it's kind of terrifying. 1-https://theintercept.com/2016/08/14/nsa-gcsb-prism-surveillance-fullman-fiji/ https://theintercept.com/2016/08/14/nsa-gcsb-prism-surveilla...
  • KamBha 9y ago
    https://www.nowtolove.co.nz/news/viral-news/hilarious-rumour-being-spread-that-this-is-illegal-in-new-zealand-3587 https://www.nowtolove.co.nz/news/viral-news/hilarious-rumour...
  • FooHentai 9y ago
    >Emotional logic and snap-decision making is kind of a staple in NZ. For example, it's illegal to grow an avocado tree. Oh goodness, have you been suckered into the 'illegal gardening' joke? >A man set himself on fire to protest the horrible family court system That man's wife had left him and taken their kid to Japan. I'm not sure what kind of non-horrible family court system you imagine NZ could have, which would be able to direct outcomes in the Japanese system.
    • wallace_f 9y ago
      Haha, I'm actually aware of that gardening meme, but it looks like I could very well be wrong about the avocado ban. There was a legitimate largscale theft of avocados in recent history, and I was sure from that I had learned it's illegal to begin growing your own. I did a quick Google search and can't find a source for that. It may be a totally erroneous idea, or it may be related to difficulty getting permits to grow them commercially. As for family court, you know in NZ it is a frequent but macabe quip: it is easier to kill your wife than divorce her? People say that for a reason, and people don't just light themselves on fire so easily.
• lancewiggs 9y ago
  The referenced article from 2015 is out of date - the unitary plan was updated to reflect higher density in 2016. Still nowhere near what it should be though. I live in a 5 story complex next to downtown - it's an amazing place to be here in Auckland. http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/82540876/New-Unitary-Plan-recommends-greater-housing-density-for-Auckland http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/82540876/New-Unitary-Plan-re...
  • visarga 9y ago
    This page really freaked me off not knowing it was autoplaying sounds. The sound itself was unexpected, I thought something was happening with the room.
    • lancewiggs 9y ago
      Sorry about that. Long exposure to Stuff and NZHerald means all auto play is switched off.
• rb808 9y ago
  > ‎‎75% of Auckland is zoned for 1 or 2 story buildings Sounds like a great place to live > Here's 97% of your house pricing problem. Not foreigners, not low interest rates, not land taxing policies. Not really, you can still have a small city and keep it a that way if you keep the population under control and avoid speculation, which is sounds like what they're doing. You could turn it into a big city like Los Angeles or Vancouver but that just creates different problems - and as they show - doesn't even keep prices low.
  • nosuchthing 9y ago
    If you want to live in a low density city, there's plenty of other smaller cities, suburbs, and sparsely populated rural areas where that makes sense. If you're seeking to artificially limit growth and prohibit buildings from being developed in the largest urban area in the country, than it'll inevitably suffocate economic growth as younger generations and entrepreneurs turn elsewhere.
    • mantas 9y ago
      It will help local younger generations to get affordable housing. What it will turn away is foreign investors in real estate, just seeking where to park their money (e.g. Vancouver). It will limit only unsustainable growth which would lower (possibility of) crisis usually following influx of cheap money (e.g. most of Europe in '08).
      • chronicy292 9y ago
        > It will help local younger generations to get affordable housing. And since when is affordable housing in popular dense Urban areas a right for younger generations? If the younger generation can't afford it, they should take a loan, just like they did to college.
      • conanbatt 9y ago
        You are forgetting the effects of getting so much foreign cash into your economy.
• Bromskloss 9y ago
  > by increasing supply Or reducing demand, I suppose, if they value their current way of living. Of course, discouraging population growth, if that is doable, is more long term, and might not have much effect immediately.
  • rumcajz 9y ago
    Or make possibility of remote work mandatory, where applicable, so that people don't have to move to the big cities.
• asta123 9y ago
  This was the exact explanation of housing affordability issues in Sydney and Melbourne and apartment supply has been crancked up with building restrictions dropped to address this over the last 5 years. Number of cranes in these two cities has been compared to total number of cranes in all of Nth America. And still all of this supply has again been followed by constant growth in property prices with no dent in addressing affordability issues. I think you greatly understimate global forces at play when it comes to speculation levels in this asset class in some major metropolitan cities.
  • kevinburke 9y ago
    If they had done nothing, it's likely things would have gotten even more expensive...
    • tmnvix 9y ago
      Yes, but that wasn't the only option. They could have addressed the tax incentives that encourage people to speculate, but that is too politically unpalatable.
      • TomMarius 9y ago
        The conclusion: don't mess with the market, it ends badly.
  • elyobo 9y ago
    Well, it has managed to keep apartment prices in the Melbourne CDB pretty flat.
    • jen729w 9y ago
      Yeah but look at the apartments. They’re Bladerunner-esque cubes that nobody likes. I wouldn’t want to live in one. My girlfriend did (in Southbank) and hated it.
      • 9y ago
• zerr 9y ago
  On the other hand, not everyone wants to live in or look at apartment buildings concrete jungle.
  • wickawic 9y ago
    So now they get expensive tiny houses and bigotry!
  • masklinn 9y ago
    There's a huge gulf between "single-occupancy houses" and "concrete jungles". Inner-city Paris is mostly apartment buildings and a far cry from a "concrete jungle" (despite being the highest-density western metropolis), Tokyo's outer special wards mix small appartment buildings and single-occupancy houses and are no "concrete jungles" either. Just because you house multiple families in the same building does not mean you head straight for highrise central or ultra high-density concrete slabs.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • 1897235234 9y ago
      >There's a huge gulf between "single-occupancy houses" and "concrete jungles". Not really. It isn't an acceptable drop in quality of life that I would ever be willing to take. >Inner-city Paris Not affordable. Most people live in high-rises in the outer areas. Also paris isn't very nice anymore anyway.
    • _kyran 9y ago
      Until you hit the banlieues Paris feels extremely claustrophobic compared to say Auckland or Melbourne.
  • naasking 9y ago
    > On the other hand, not everyone wants to live in or look at apartment buildings concrete jungle. Most people don't. Unfortunately they also want to live close to work, which is probably closer to city centres, which is where almost everyone works, which means you can't simultaneously satisfy both desiderata. The greater good here is higher density housing, not aesthetics.
• eps 9y ago
  Coming from Vancouver I can tell you with certainty that Chinese will gobble up ALL apartment space if it's available and drive their prices to the insane levels too. This will result in a construction boom leaving behind fields of unoccupied residential towers. Apartments are not the remedy and Chinese money is not a scapegoat, it's a hurricane-level force of real-estate.
  • alkonaut 9y ago
    Are they bought as speculation by foreign residents?If that's the case then just fix it by making it less attractive to buy for speculation. For example, a tax on property matched with a deduction on income. If you don't have any income then the property tax would be higher than any expected yearly gain in property prices.
    • raquo 9y ago
      The new BC government was planning to implement such a tax. Until they were elected, now no one really knows.
    • h0l0cube 9y ago
      > For example, a tax on property matched with a deduction on income. You mean income derived from the property? Seems like that could inflate rental prices, and shift the affordability problem to another set of people. The state government in Victoria (Australia) is planning to tax vacant properties, but it's self reported and seems easy enough to dodge. At first the proposed measuring water usage to determine if the property was vacant, but then you can only tax as much as it would cost to leave a tap on. http://www.sro.vic.gov.au/node/5816 http://www.sro.vic.gov.au/node/5816
      • alkonaut 9y ago
        > You mean income derived from the property? No, a regular property tax based on the value of the property. Such as 1% of the value paid in tax every year. The idea would be that it would be zero net effect if you live in the country (i.e. it's a property tax + income tax deduction that effectively make them together be a "tax on properties owned by foreigners")
• tmnvix 9y ago
  Melbourne is not much different in that regard (geographically massive with a relatively sparse population for a city of its population size). Sydney too. Melbourne is also experiencing a housing crisis similar to Auckland's due to a boom in prices. So should Melbourne also pull out all the stops to encourage new building? Interestingly, Prosper Australia has been tracking Melbourne's true vacancy rate for over a decade now, publishing their findings in their Speculative Vacancies Report[1]. Before you look at the report, a couple of questions: 1) Do you believe prices are being driven up due to a shortage of homes? (Your comment suggests you do.) 2) If prices were being driven up due to a shortage of homes, would you expect the areas that experience the highest capital gains to have the lowest vacancy rates? (I think most people would agree with this.) Now, the most interesting finding from the Speculative Vacancies Report for me was that in fact, contrary to what most people would expect, areas with the highest capital gains correlate strongly with those areas that have highest number of empty dwellings. My own suspicion is that the demand that is driving up prices is not demand for homes, but demand for investments. A speculative boom creates extra demand. In 2007, the Irish thought they had an undersupply of housing. A short time later it was revealed that they actually had a massive oversupply (once investment/speculative demand was removed). The RBA in Australia is pointing to the same thing in Melbourne (Docklands has a vacancy rate of ~25%+, other sought after areas are approaching 15-20% according to the report mentioned above). The best thing that Auckland can do to tackle house prices is to address the demand side of the supply and demand equation. There are tonnes of options for doing this but mostly this is an issue caused by easy credit and tax incentives for investing in property. That's the place to solve this problem. It would be folly to encroach on green areas or otherwise spoil our environment in a mad rush to build. If we do that... Ireland here we come! [1] https://www.prosper.org.au/2015/12/09/speculative-vacancies-8/ https://www.prosper.org.au/2015/12/09/speculative-vacancies-...
  • eecc 9y ago
    Very well argued, bravo! I was about to suggest the same but had no data to support this interpretation, just anecdotal that IMHO it’s the lack of profitable investments opportunities and tonnes of cheap capital sloshing around that’s fueling these bubbles all over the world
• moomin 9y ago
  Auckland’s aversion to apartment buildings seems to be justified: http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/342461/high-rises-in-auckland-wellington-fail-quake-standards http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/342461/high-rises-in-... As an aside, bear in mind that, due to the quirks of New Zealand law, it doesn’t apply to Australians. But yeah, it’s a dumb rule likely to create immigrant enclaves. And that never ends well.
  • masklinn 9y ago
    "apartment building" != "high rise". Japanese zoning (which you'd expect to be quite concerned about quake standards) does not distinguish single-occupancy houses and apartment buildings, as a result non-central urban residential zones have a significant mix of houses and apartment buildings of 2~4 floors and 4~10 flats/floor e.g. this is a typical apartment building on the outskirts of Tokyo City: https://www.google.be/maps/@35.6352621,139.6260533,3a,75y,206.11h,100.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sEWKRjkMIAUjD1x_FoTKjVg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.be/maps/@35.6352621,139.6260533,3a,75y,20... In much the same way, "inner-city" parisian appartment buildings mostly follow the Haussmannian standard of 5 floors.
• alexasmyths 9y ago
  False choice! What if New Zealanders don't want apartment buildings? They just want to be able to live in affordable homes? I'll give you a more direct economic argument: when a foreigner 'buys a home' in say, Toronto - what they are benefitting from is the 'stability of the economy' - which is paid for by the local citizens. The legal system, justice system, heck - even the education system - all play a factor in 'keeping those home prices up'. So it's only fair that foreigners pay more taxes - otherwise they are externalizing those costs, just like a company dumping Co2 in the air. Having lived in SF, Toronto, Paris and London - I'm acutely aware of how this globalism issue is working out. I also lived in Germany were real estate prices are very stable. We do not want 'free trade' for our domiciles - this is not a solution. If you are not living in a home - it should be taxed - if you are not a citizen, taxes should be higher. If's funny people are accusing Jacinda of 'Venezuela' i.e. socialism - if Donald Trump did this - they'd call him a 'Nationalist' or 'Fascist' or whatever. There will always be 'internal problems' but the globalization of homes has to be addressed.
• didibus 9y ago
  I like your logic, but I feel a few things don't add up for me. 1. What are the benefits to a city and its local inhabitants of a foreigner buying an existing residential home that it will not inhabit? It seems there are none to me, unless the city taxes that home way way more. 2. Why would foreigners invest in the construction of new rental homes or apartment buildings if the rental price wasn't high enough to profit from? In that I mean, I feel you'll only get foreign investment to grow your city once its already too expensive to live in. As they build more and it becomes affordable again, they'd stop investing, and it will become unaffordable again. Keeping the city in a perpetual state of unaffordability.
  • toyg 9y ago
    The advantage of course is capital flowing to the country: someone sold that house and now owns currency that was introduced from outside the system, which will now be spent or invested in the country. And housebuilding is not linked only to rent, but rather to sale prices: if homeowning is culturally valued, people will pay to buy at higher prices.
    • lhopki01 9y ago
      Housing isn't like every other good that you can sell. It sits on land which is extremely scarce. At what point does selling housing abroad become a bad thing? When 5% of homes are empty? When 10% of homes are empty? 50%?
      • conanbatt 9y ago
        Land is not scarce at all. Its virtually unlimited. You can find and buy land for dirt cheap, sometimes even free. The value of land is proportional to the income you can get from using it, so the forces that regulate land value and rent are irrelevant to the amount of land, but with what you can get from them. If tomorrow Auckland duplicated wages, rentals would skyrocket there, without changing demographics or land.
    • RobertoG 9y ago
      "[..] now owns currency that was introduced from outside the system, which will now be spent or invested in the country." With the current (in most countries) banking system, the money available for investing is not limited by the quantity of money in the system, but by the availability of projects with a good return. A commercial bank can create money if they think that they will have a good return (risk wise). Banks don't lean reserves. An investor can borrow money from a bank if it has a good project. Interest rates are decided by the Central Bank depending of the goals for the country economy. So, the idea of "money available for investing" doesn't make sense in the current fiat economies.
• afpx 9y ago
  So, you don’t think foreign demand has all that much to do with it? If 97% of high prices comes from zoning and regulations restricting supply, then I have a get-rich-quick scheme for you. All you have to do is buy some cheap property in a small town somewhere and convince the locals to pass regulations. The prices will just rise.
• RobertoG 9y ago
  "The real fix is politically unpopular." If the real fix is politically unpopular, is it a real fix? I mean, what people want should be accounted somehow, that's the point of a democracy, isn't it?
  • naasking 9y ago
    > I mean, what people want should be accounted somehow, that's the point of a democracy, isn't it? What people want is often contradictory. They want affordable, nice housing near their work, but given most people work near other people, they don't want high density housing like condos. You can satisfy all of these demands simultaneously.
    • amyjess 9y ago
      The ideal solution would be to eliminate the concept of a central business district entirely and arrange businesses into office parks thoroughly dispersed among suburban sprawl.
      • naasking 9y ago
        I might agree, but you still have the same density problems, and you now also have the problem of people commuting into residential areas with schools and such. I'm not sure, while the idea seems appealing at first glance, it seems fraught with problems.
      • damnyou 9y ago
        This is how Silicon Valley is organized, and it's terrible.
  • RantyDave 9y ago
    The real fix is to start behaving like a large city and put rail out to the suburbs.
• robbyt 9y ago
  This is always the opinion parroted by people in SF. Come live in NYC, and you'll see how well expansive development of massive condo buildings helps housing affordability. (Spoiler: it doesn't) The buildings are built with promises to investors of huge target rents. New developments typically rent for 20% more than smaller/older buildings, and the rents will be increased annually for the unfortunate ones who rent in these new buildings. These buildings use many tricks to make it seem affordable, like 2 months free rent, free parking, etc. But they're expensive, and they drive up rent in the surrounding buildings. SF, please wake-up and realize that the city is not the enemy in the housing crisis, it's the profiteering.
  • cturner 9y ago
    NYC has a long history of rent control, which is Venezuela style. It is not directly linked to immediate affordability (your point), but I make the point because NYC is not a strong example of a functional zoning culture.
  • weeksie 9y ago
    Do a little more research. NY has not built nearly enough to keep up with demand and much of the outer boroughs are not zoned to build as dense as needed. That's before even getting into the weird economics of rent control. Today's luxury housing is tomorrow's affordable housing. Being angry at lux high rises is like a dog being angry at its owner after a bee stings its ass. Without those high rises for the hedge fund bros to move into, they occupy merely nice apartments, pushing the rest of us into tenements and everybody else out to the fringes.
  • lazerpants 9y ago
    Anecdotally, the huge developments in Downtown Brooklyn are driving down prices, not raising them. We negotiated a 15% lower rent by threatening to move to a fancy high-rise a few months ago just one subway stop away.
• beaverkiwi 9y ago
  You cant compare New Zealand with other countries and their solutions. Condo's and apartments don't work for Auckland, the entire premise of the country is outdoor living, why would you move to a country in the middle of nowhere, the only attraction is the natural beauty, to live in a artificial environment with no outdoor space? It would be like moving to the rain forest and living in a sky scrapper. Condos make sense in America where it's always to hot or to cold but New Zealanders are shamed if they spend too much time indoors. The enjoyment of condos comes from online shopping and restaurants, but NZ has the highest shipping costs and the culture is to cook at home. The whole point of NZ is everyone gets their slice of paradise, but once you move to apartment territory your just dealing with population management, quality of life goes down and disconnection with the land breeds mental deficits that bleed into policy (every country has it's hatred of people from Paris/Toronto etc). One of the nightmares of NZ is that it's beaches turns into Hawaii's with giant hotels and thousands crowding the surf. It's a fundamental difference in thinking that foreign investors are not aware of, they just try to shoehorn their learnt development strategy into the place. It has bad effects on the locals on many levels and turning NZ into another branch of starbucks just makes it loose all appeal. The problem is for the quality of lifestyle NZ'er expect, there is a population limit. Fortunately increasing population is no longer needed for economic growth.
  • lancewiggs 9y ago
    While this argument is used a lot, downtown Auckland has risen from essentially no people to 50,000 in 15 years or so. Meanwhile the city is 40% born overseas, let alone people who have spent considerable time overseas. We don’t all want to mow the lawns in the weekend, and people come from all over Auckland to enjoy the waterfront that is on our back door..
  • RantyDave 9y ago
    Well, some people are born here so they don't need to move countries. And there isn't a "point" of NZ. We're a large island in the South Pacific - we have huge problems with poverty, family violence, and (I believe) the worst teenage suicide rate in the OECD.
• RantyDave 9y ago
  It's not xenophobic, it's reality. There are large numbers of wealthy+ Chinese who basically want to own something the Chinese government can't take away on a whim. Can't say I blame them. Because China is big and we are little this has a disproportionately large effect on our house prices - which makes them look like a good investment etc. etc.