5 ms·
The demand for housing is not the problem. It's the supply that is the problem. The supply is being kept artificially low
by jostmey 9y ago
The demand for housing is not the problem. It's the supply that is the problem. The supply is being kept artificially low
- charlesdm 9y agoBecause if you're a landlord with significant property holdings, what would you do? You'd lobby the government not to increase supply, of course.
- ynniv 9y agoNo, you would build more if you could.
- oxymoran 9y agoLandlords do not build they own. Contractors and developers build. If you could own one building and charge $2500 or own 5 building and charge $600 each, what would you choose? You would make $500 more owning more buildings, but you would also have more overhead and work managing them all.
- ynniv 9y agoIs this a trick question? I would build another one AND charge $600 each. Developers build for clients with money, like landlords.
- jandrese 9y agoWhy not both? This is classic Supply and Demand curves.
- Bartweiss 9y agoSure, but in normal markets both supply and demand shift to reach equilibrium. In urban housing markets, increasingly supply is approximately illegal, so what would be manageable demand for any other resource drives runaway price growth like we see here. The argument for not blaming high-salary tech workers is that when they demand anything other than housing (nootropics or standing desks or whatever other stereotype we might choose), prices don't react anywhere near as strongly.
- jandrese 9y agoIncreasing supply shouldn't be that hard. High rise apartment buildings can house thousands of people using a small amount of real-estate. Opposition to them is mostly political. They do make it more difficult to design your city services, but that's not an insurmountable problem either. The Bay area should look a lot more like Manhattan, not that Manhattan is the gold standard in affordable housing...
- hn0 9y agoThe dominant factor driving house prices is mortgage credit inflation, not supply and demand, both the hypothesis and the data for this are very strong. See for instance: https://seekingalpha.com/amp/article/4161999-mother-deflations https://seekingalpha.com/amp/article/4161999-mother-deflatio...