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So, I live in Wallingford (the community mentioned here). In one of those Craftsman houses, no less. Here's the thing: Wallingford will be valuable and therefo

So, I live in Wallingford (the community mentioned here). In one of those Craftsman houses, no less. Here's the thing: Wallingford will be valuable and therefore expensive no matter what kind of housing you build here. Literally anything. There are some crappy midcentury studio apartments that go for 2k a month not 10 blocks from here, because the location is great even if you don't have a house. That means that basically everybody who doesn't develop property professionally is misdiagnosing the situation. The NIMBYs say that rezoning will cause property values to crash. That's just not in line with available evidence from Ballard and similar, and flies in the face of reason besides. When your lot can be a beloved home to another family or a pile of income to a developer, math says the developer will eventually win the bidding war. Most of the YIMBYs are wrong because housing prices just aren't going to come down that much here, and much of what comes in will be rentals. Those rentals will be luxury units because they can be, and will therefore be 2500+ a month. That's within a few hundred dollars of an existing mortgage (on one of the cheaper houses-- not the million dollar 3000+ sqft thing down the road) but without the potential upside.

chrischen 9y ago
Housing prices not coming down from increased unit implies some sort of market-resistant magical mumbo jumbo in that area. That doesn't sound plausible. Everything reacts to changing supply and demand, and increasing supply will always drop prices, somewhere. Increasing luxury units will mean a vacating of those non-luxury units currently occupied by luxury dwellers.
- iamcasen 9y ago
  I think what you and others don't understand is that, there is SO MUCH demand, and SO MUCH money that no matter how much you build, the prices simply won't go down. From a developer's perspective, building a brand new apartment building is ludicrously expensive, you simply MUST charge very high rent, or your whole project is not feasible.
  - lazyasciiart 9y ago
    This isn't true, unless you're silently inserting caveats like "given that we all know that we can't build enough to meet demand" which turn it into a vacuous tautology. Consider: if the amount of housing available within Seattle city limits was multiplied by 10 tomorrow, would prices go down?
    - debatem1 9y ago
      Yes, I was speaking to the actual situation in Seattle with all the caveats that implies. Most important among those is that HALA is an actual policy that describes what will be rezoned, how, and when. It notably will not permit 10x growth in Wallingford.
      - lazyasciiart 9y ago
        Ok, so what you actually meant to say was "the Seattle housing market is totally responsive to supply and demand, but we are consciously limiting supply". Since we both agree that 10x the current number of houses would bring prices down, then there's a far more useful investigation to be done into what the lowest number of houses that needs to be built in order to reduce prices. That discussion is the one that needs to be actually had in order for policies like HALA to come from an informed and rational plan. Claiming "nothing will ever lower prices!!!!!1" is the opposite of that discussion. edit: wait, you're not even the poster I responded to. What the hell?
        debatem1 9y ago
        Frankly, I don't think starting out with spherical cows and a neoclassical economics textbook is a rational approach to the housing problem. If you want to engage in it that's cool and you do you, but it's a bit like expecting everyone to start speaking Esperanto just because you happen to think it's a good idea. In my view, any successful policy is going to have to be both incremental and carefully balanced to take everyone along for the ride. That will piss off lots of people who think the other side is trying to destroy or deny them the things they love, but it's pretty much the only way forward.
- c22 9y ago
  The magical mumbo jumbo that makes this work is the fact that Seattle is the fastest growing city in the US [0], thus demand is increasing constantly. [0] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-once-again-nations-fastest-growing-big-city-population-exceeds-700000/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-once-...
  - chrischen 9y ago
    So therefore that demand needs to be satisfied. Seattle isn't the only place that has that problem. San Francisco, and most of California suffer from it. So did Tokyo, but they've ballooned to provide a quality living for over 10 million people.
- debatem1 9y ago
  No need for mumbo jumbo. Supply greatly outstips demand and HALA is not that ambitious of a plan (and took many years to get through). There just aren't enough new units in the plan to cause prices to drop.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
tmh79 9y ago
so what is the solution to expensive rents in your mind?
- debatem1 9y ago
  I mean, what problem are you trying to solve? If the concern is that it takes roughly $60k/household just to live in Seattle, the answer is higher wages. Even if that acts as a drag on King county GDP, the King county housing market is north of 100% of GDP; better to endanger the smaller value. And personally, I don't think higher minimum wages will be a net negative in the long run-- but I could be wrong. If I was, we could fix it later though. If you're trying to solve the problem of not being able to rent a place you like independent of not being able to afford a baseline place, the only answers are market distortions in your favor. The proposals I've heard for that are sort of a "fair, cheap, effective-- pick two" deal. Personally I think the best approach is more and better transit, since that raises the utility (and therefore underlying value independent of market value) of homes both close and far from the urban core. But it is definitely on the fair, effective, not cheap side of that triangle.
lukeschlather 9y ago
Housing prices in Seattle will only come down if there's a downturn in the tech industry. But that doesn't mean it's wrong to encourage density to reduce prices.
- debatem1 9y ago
  I'm... not sure of this. A sharp spike in interest rates could make mortgages less attractive and dampen demand. Or, more positively, the Northgate or Othello areas could come up and start to look more like Ballard and increase the attractiveness or property away from the urban core. Either would dampen the hottest markets.
iamcasen 9y ago
I agree completely. I live in portland, and just next door they tore down a nice craftsman bungalow which the developer purchased for 450k, and then built an enormous 3-story monstrosity in. All the other homes in the neighborhood are 1 or 2 stories, so this gigantic building sticks out like a laughably sore thumb. There are six 2-bedroom units, and each unit will probably sell for 500k. There is no parking since the building fills up the entire lot. You know who lived in the bungalow before? a low-income family. Do you think this new condo building helped them have affordable housing? NOPE! All this development does is push people who were already here out, and allow a flood of rich folks to move in. It does nothing for affordability.
- kd0amg 9y ago
  Do you think this new condo building helped them have affordable housing? On its own, the new building probably has not moved housing prices enough to help them more than that $450k they just sold for.
  - iamcasen 8y ago
    Well the people living there were renting from an absent landlord who owned the home for a long time. So their rent was probably pretty great. Now I imagine they are likely leaving the city altogether since it will no longer be affordable to live there.

chrischen 9y ago

Housing prices not coming down from increased unit implies some sort of market-resistant magical mumbo jumbo in that area. That doesn't sound plausible. Everything reacts to changing supply and demand, and increasing supply will always drop prices, somewhere. Increasing luxury units will mean a vacating of those non-luxury units currently occupied by luxury dwellers.

iamcasen 9y ago
I think what you and others don't understand is that, there is SO MUCH demand, and SO MUCH money that no matter how much you build, the prices simply won't go down. From a developer's perspective, building a brand new apartment building is ludicrously expensive, you simply MUST charge very high rent, or your whole project is not feasible.
- lazyasciiart 9y ago
  This isn't true, unless you're silently inserting caveats like "given that we all know that we can't build enough to meet demand" which turn it into a vacuous tautology. Consider: if the amount of housing available within Seattle city limits was multiplied by 10 tomorrow, would prices go down?
  - debatem1 9y ago
    Yes, I was speaking to the actual situation in Seattle with all the caveats that implies. Most important among those is that HALA is an actual policy that describes what will be rezoned, how, and when. It notably will not permit 10x growth in Wallingford.
    - lazyasciiart 9y ago
      Ok, so what you actually meant to say was "the Seattle housing market is totally responsive to supply and demand, but we are consciously limiting supply". Since we both agree that 10x the current number of houses would bring prices down, then there's a far more useful investigation to be done into what the lowest number of houses that needs to be built in order to reduce prices. That discussion is the one that needs to be actually had in order for policies like HALA to come from an informed and rational plan. Claiming "nothing will ever lower prices!!!!!1" is the opposite of that discussion. edit: wait, you're not even the poster I responded to. What the hell?
      - debatem1 9y ago
        Frankly, I don't think starting out with spherical cows and a neoclassical economics textbook is a rational approach to the housing problem. If you want to engage in it that's cool and you do you, but it's a bit like expecting everyone to start speaking Esperanto just because you happen to think it's a good idea. In my view, any successful policy is going to have to be both incremental and carefully balanced to take everyone along for the ride. That will piss off lots of people who think the other side is trying to destroy or deny them the things they love, but it's pretty much the only way forward.
c22 9y ago
The magical mumbo jumbo that makes this work is the fact that Seattle is the fastest growing city in the US [0], thus demand is increasing constantly. [0] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-once-again-nations-fastest-growing-big-city-population-exceeds-700000/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-once-...
- chrischen 9y ago
  So therefore that demand needs to be satisfied. Seattle isn't the only place that has that problem. San Francisco, and most of California suffer from it. So did Tokyo, but they've ballooned to provide a quality living for over 10 million people.
debatem1 9y ago
No need for mumbo jumbo. Supply greatly outstips demand and HALA is not that ambitious of a plan (and took many years to get through). There just aren't enough new units in the plan to cause prices to drop.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

tmh79 9y ago

so what is the solution to expensive rents in your mind?

debatem1 9y ago
I mean, what problem are you trying to solve? If the concern is that it takes roughly $60k/household just to live in Seattle, the answer is higher wages. Even if that acts as a drag on King county GDP, the King county housing market is north of 100% of GDP; better to endanger the smaller value. And personally, I don't think higher minimum wages will be a net negative in the long run-- but I could be wrong. If I was, we could fix it later though. If you're trying to solve the problem of not being able to rent a place you like independent of not being able to afford a baseline place, the only answers are market distortions in your favor. The proposals I've heard for that are sort of a "fair, cheap, effective-- pick two" deal. Personally I think the best approach is more and better transit, since that raises the utility (and therefore underlying value independent of market value) of homes both close and far from the urban core. But it is definitely on the fair, effective, not cheap side of that triangle.

lukeschlather 9y ago

Housing prices in Seattle will only come down if there's a downturn in the tech industry. But that doesn't mean it's wrong to encourage density to reduce prices.

debatem1 9y ago
I'm... not sure of this. A sharp spike in interest rates could make mortgages less attractive and dampen demand. Or, more positively, the Northgate or Othello areas could come up and start to look more like Ballard and increase the attractiveness or property away from the urban core. Either would dampen the hottest markets.

iamcasen 9y ago

I agree completely. I live in portland, and just next door they tore down a nice craftsman bungalow which the developer purchased for 450k, and then built an enormous 3-story monstrosity in. All the other homes in the neighborhood are 1 or 2 stories, so this gigantic building sticks out like a laughably sore thumb. There are six 2-bedroom units, and each unit will probably sell for 500k. There is no parking since the building fills up the entire lot. You know who lived in the bungalow before? a low-income family. Do you think this new condo building helped them have affordable housing? NOPE! All this development does is push people who were already here out, and allow a flood of rich folks to move in. It does nothing for affordability.

kd0amg 9y ago
Do you think this new condo building helped them have affordable housing? On its own, the new building probably has not moved housing prices enough to help them more than that $450k they just sold for.
- iamcasen 8y ago
  Well the people living there were renting from an absent landlord who owned the home for a long time. So their rent was probably pretty great. Now I imagine they are likely leaving the city altogether since it will no longer be affordable to live there.