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Based on who you ask, Seattle is adding between 18,000 to 30,000 new people a year. If somehow 100k new houses appeared on the market, prices would plummet. Su
by com2kid 7y ago
Based on who you ask, Seattle is adding between 18,000 to 30,000 new people a year.
If somehow 100k new houses appeared on the market, prices would plummet. Sure the dropping prices would cause more people to move here, but not 70k more.
And even if 70k more did move here, add another 100k houses and at that point prices will go down.
Right now Seattle adds less housing per year than the # of people who move here. Of course housing prices are shooting up.
In regards to only high end housing being built, this is due to three factors:
1. The price of land, speculation has made land incredibly valuable, partially because
2. The only market being served is the high end, until that market has been saturated with housing, housing developers will continue to target it. 100k new high end housing units and that market will have been rung dry and land prices will start to come down.
3. Building regulations encourage high end housing to be built. This is starting to change, but low price housing isn't really buildable now days, though I imagine if #2 is solved, builders will start lobbying and this will get fixed. (If that is the route that is taken, society may not enjoy the long term repercussions but that isn't new! Best to have the building codes amended now in a reasonable forward thinking way)
- sokoloff 7y ago> Right now Seattle adds less housing per year than the # of people who move here. Of course housing prices are shooting up. Surely the average number of people per household is greater than unity. Wouldn't the comparison of new housing units to new households be the right figures to compare?
- com2kid 7y agoIn 2017 Seattle added ~8700 new houses. Average household size in Seattle in 2 people. Figure it is probably under 2 on average for people moving to the city. So Seattle is under-building 2k-4k houses (conservatively! 10k worst case) per year, and has been for quite some time now. Of course prices are going up and people are being priced out.
- sampo 7y ago> In regards to only high end housing being built In any case, someone moving into a high-end home means they left some other less high-end home available for someone else.
- martinald 7y agoThis. I really don't understand how so many people don't understand this.
- maxsilver 7y agoBecause there's no such thing as a "less-high-end" home. Person A leaves the housing unit they bought for $100k (back when housing had sane prices), to move into a $800k condo. Person B is trying to buy housing in a $200k neighborhood, where everything is currently priced at $600k. Person A's housing unit they just "left", gets listed for sale at $650k. By your perspective, you perceive this as a "less-high-end" home just opened up. But for 95% of everyone in the country, this is perceived as yet-another $50k jump in the market price. There is no such thing as "less-high-end" homes anymore. There is no such thing as trickle-down housing. Property values rise too fast (even in areas where construction outpaces population growth).
- chii 7y agoThe condo is worth however much people will pay for. Presumably when person A's old condo is up for sale at 650k there's a buyer. Person A moved to condo B for 800k, and freed up condo A worth 650k, and there fore someone else with 650k can move in (which in turn frees up their old place). I dunno what's trickle down if this ain't it.
- jahewson 7y agoWhat if “someone else” doesn’t own “an old place” in the same housing market? Like say, all the new people moving to an area?