Is resistance to zoning changes economically motivated? I'm not absolutely sure it necessarily is. In San Francisco, I actually think that nimbyism may not be

Is resistance to zoning changes economically motivated? I'm not absolutely sure it necessarily is. In San Francisco, I actually think that nimbyism may not be the result of a desire to maximize the value of an asset. Here's why - it's true that the value of a SFH in many parts of SF would drop if a large apartment were built next door, if that house could only be sold as a SFH. But what would the value of the land beneath it be if zoning restrictions were relaxed? To be clear, I'm not sure, but I have a friend who owns a SF on one of those rare streets that is zoned R-2, and some of his neighbors have been cleared to build two flats where there was once a SFH. The two flats sell for considerably more than the SFH would have. Now, this might still reflect scarcity, and a rare flat in an otherwise SFH neighborhood might be more desirable than an entire neighborhood of them (maybe, but not necessarily, I doubt it - nob hill and Russian hill are more expensive than the SFH parts of the sunset and excelsior, and Manhattan/(+ some other parts of New York), one of the few urban areas that is more expensive than SF, is also the only large scale urban area that is considerably more densely built. Even if lots of people were to build 2 or 3 unit flats, vertically, that's a huge amount of additional housing. The value of the land sitting beneath the SFH would reflect this, even if the current owner chose not to undertake the project. I also believe that greater density in SF might very well stimulate additional economic activity, which could end up offsetting the additional supply, eat least enough that 3 apartments would be worth more than one house on the same plot of land (again, if density meant lower prices, Manhattan would be the cheapest place to rent in the entire US, and Nob Hill would be much cheaper than the Sunset). When I heard what people on this street had done, I was almost jealous. They replaced their aging SFH with two apartments that were just as spacious and nicer, building vertically. The backyard is now shared, but it's still big. And they got so much $$ for the additional unit that their mortgage is paid off with a nice fat chunk of change left over. I suspect that much of SF's famous nimbyism is actually motivated by a desire for things to stay the same. People like their SFH neighborhoods, and don't really want it to chance. They don't want to tear down their house and build a bunch of flats, even if this would be a way to wring a lot more money out of their investment - and because they don't want to, they don't stand to benefit if their neighbors do this either. Alternatively, they might not be aware of this possibility. Or, in a city of 75% renters, they may rent and not see any benefit to this new construction - at best, disruption during construction, at worst, losing their current rental. It may indeed be selfish, but I'm not sure it's asset maximization behind all this.