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For anyone outside the very rich, housing is not a consumer-driven market. When you're looking for housing, your choices are basically to move into something t

For anyone outside the very rich, housing is not a consumer-driven market. When you're looking for housing, your choices are basically to move into something that exists, or living in a van by the rive. You don't get to put a construction crew to work to build your dream home. So when millenials move into the burbs, that's not an indication that they want to. Suburban housing exists in enough quantity. Urban housing does not.

pc86 9y ago
> You don't get to put a construction crew to work to build your dream home. If you want to you absolutely can, without being "the very rich." It just takes more work, and the availability of vacant land. Yes, I understand vacant land doesn't exist in NYC or the Bay Area but for most of the country it's trivial to buy a half acre (or larger) lot with water and sewer hookups already, and get a construction loan for the building of a house. Yes it's more logistics and you need to management the mortgage for the land and the construction loan(s) separately but if you're not in a very concentrated urban area it's doable for anyone in the middle class or above who actually wants to do it.
- mywittyname 9y ago
  > most of the country it's trivial to buy a half acre (or larger) lot with water and sewer hookups already Not really. Having just gone through this process myself in the midwest, we found it impossible to find land within a reasonable commute to the city that was not already owned by a major developer. The handful of plots a year that we came across were basically the undesirable ones that you'd have to be desperate to build on, or that required a private road to be constructed for access. We got lucky and a town close to the city parceled off an old park. But it took years of looking to stumble upon this. We were honestly beginning to look into the cost of demoing an existing house.

pc86 9y ago

> You don't get to put a construction crew to work to build your dream home. If you want to you absolutely can, without being "the very rich." It just takes more work, and the availability of vacant land. Yes, I understand vacant land doesn't exist in NYC or the Bay Area but for most of the country it's trivial to buy a half acre (or larger) lot with water and sewer hookups already, and get a construction loan for the building of a house. Yes it's more logistics and you need to management the mortgage for the land and the construction loan(s) separately but if you're not in a very concentrated urban area it's doable for anyone in the middle class or above who actually wants to do it.

mywittyname 9y ago
> most of the country it's trivial to buy a half acre (or larger) lot with water and sewer hookups already Not really. Having just gone through this process myself in the midwest, we found it impossible to find land within a reasonable commute to the city that was not already owned by a major developer. The handful of plots a year that we came across were basically the undesirable ones that you'd have to be desperate to build on, or that required a private road to be constructed for access. We got lucky and a town close to the city parceled off an old park. But it took years of looking to stumble upon this. We were honestly beginning to look into the cost of demoing an existing house.