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I didn't turn a 180. I laid out that housing supply cannot keep up with the rise in demand in my first two paragraphs, which leads to the conclusion that the ri

by adt2bt 8y ago

I didn't turn a 180. I laid out that housing supply cannot keep up with the rise in demand in my first two paragraphs, which leads to the conclusion that the rise in demand will result in a rise in prices.

manfredo 8y ago
Housing supply can keep up with rising demand of enough of it gets built. If not enough of it is being built then Seattle needs to address why construction is too slow, to expensive, etc. There are individual cities that have larger populations than the entirety of Washington State that have lower rents than Seattle. Demand does not cause higher prices , lack of supply causes prices.
- adt2bt 8y ago
  It takes a long time for housing to get built, or rather upzoned, bought out by a private developer, deconstructed and then rebuilt. It would have looked absolutely foolish 10 years ago to start the process of upzoning and building as much housing as we'd have needed to keep housing prices flat over the last decade. Like I said in my original comment, if we had known how much was coming down the pike, we'd have started the process of building more housing immediately. We did not (and could not) know, so we're doing the next best thing and building as much as possible right now. Your argument about individual cities is a red herring. Show me a city that went through a similar level of high wage worker growth in such a short amount of time and somehow managed to build enough housing to keep housing prices flat.
  - manfredo 8y ago
    Sure it may be difficult to accommodate the demand quickly. But at this point you've agreed on the point I'm making: the lack of supply - not the demand - of housing is what causes rents to rise. There are cities with orders of magnitude greater demand for housing that have low rents because the supply exists. A rapid spike in demand will probably be accompanied with a temporary increase in cost as supply catches up, but it will not result in long-term cost increases unless the supply is constrained. Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, etc. are not dense cities by any means. If apartment buildings are taking 10 years to get built then there is massive mismanagement or onerous regulation going on.

by adt2bt 8y ago

manfredo 8y ago

Housing supply can keep up with rising demand of enough of it gets built. If not enough of it is being built then Seattle needs to address why construction is too slow, to expensive, etc. There are individual cities that have larger populations than the entirety of Washington State that have lower rents than Seattle. Demand does not cause higher prices , lack of supply causes prices.

adt2bt 8y ago
It takes a long time for housing to get built, or rather upzoned, bought out by a private developer, deconstructed and then rebuilt. It would have looked absolutely foolish 10 years ago to start the process of upzoning and building as much housing as we'd have needed to keep housing prices flat over the last decade. Like I said in my original comment, if we had known how much was coming down the pike, we'd have started the process of building more housing immediately. We did not (and could not) know, so we're doing the next best thing and building as much as possible right now. Your argument about individual cities is a red herring. Show me a city that went through a similar level of high wage worker growth in such a short amount of time and somehow managed to build enough housing to keep housing prices flat.
- manfredo 8y ago
  Sure it may be difficult to accommodate the demand quickly. But at this point you've agreed on the point I'm making: the lack of supply - not the demand - of housing is what causes rents to rise. There are cities with orders of magnitude greater demand for housing that have low rents because the supply exists. A rapid spike in demand will probably be accompanied with a temporary increase in cost as supply catches up, but it will not result in long-term cost increases unless the supply is constrained. Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, etc. are not dense cities by any means. If apartment buildings are taking 10 years to get built then there is massive mismanagement or onerous regulation going on.