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In some cases, your conclusion is correct while the problem is completely different. I live in a college town, where rent and housing prices obey different laws

In some cases, your conclusion is correct while the problem is completely different. I live in a college town, where rent and housing prices obey different laws of economics. Unlike the Bay Area, a brisk 15 minutes drive in any direction will bring you to dirt cheap rural property, but because a huuuuuuge proportion of renters are college students, they tend to live in the city and put the rent on their student loans instead of moving further out and spending time (and money, on a car) commuting. It’s not as if a college student is going to throw in their hands and say “well, I could get an Ivy League degree at the school I was accepted to, or I could get a second-Tier degree somewhere else and pay half the rent.” Case in point, Ithaca’s Collegetown neighborhood used to be a sleepy community of large rental houses, but over the last 20 years it’s been heavily developed into very large, tall apartment blocks, all while Cornell built massive developments of dorms and grad student housing complexes. And rents just keep climbing higher and higher...

osdiab 8y ago
I've always been surprised by how expensive Princeton is even though short drives in any direction can be much cheaper. Students seem to be mostly in student housing anyway, and anybody who lives there in any other capacity probably has a car, is it just prestige of being there that pumps up the rent?
- jseliger 8y ago
  I've always been surprised by how expensive Princeton is even though short drives in any direction can be much cheaper AAA estimates the TCO of a car to be $8,500/yr: https://newsroom.aaa.com/auto/your-driving-costs https://newsroom.aaa.com/auto/your-driving-costs. Even if you're only "a short drive away," you then have to pay for parking on or near campus, which is likely dear: https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/7/19/15993936/high-cost-of-free-parking https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/7/19/15993936/high-cost-of-f.... Finally, commuting sucks: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/there-and-back-again https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/there-and-back... from a social and psychological perspective. People love living around other people who can they chat with and befriend; that's why current zoning laws prohibiting such developments are so pernicious.

osdiab 8y ago

I've always been surprised by how expensive Princeton is even though short drives in any direction can be much cheaper. Students seem to be mostly in student housing anyway, and anybody who lives there in any other capacity probably has a car, is it just prestige of being there that pumps up the rent?

jseliger 8y ago
I've always been surprised by how expensive Princeton is even though short drives in any direction can be much cheaper AAA estimates the TCO of a car to be $8,500/yr: https://newsroom.aaa.com/auto/your-driving-costs https://newsroom.aaa.com/auto/your-driving-costs. Even if you're only "a short drive away," you then have to pay for parking on or near campus, which is likely dear: https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/7/19/15993936/high-cost-of-free-parking https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/7/19/15993936/high-cost-of-f.... Finally, commuting sucks: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/there-and-back-again https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/there-and-back... from a social and psychological perspective. People love living around other people who can they chat with and befriend; that's why current zoning laws prohibiting such developments are so pernicious.