9 ms·

Many of us are homeowners. Speaking for myself, I simply believe affordable housing for all is more important than my property value.

by fra 7y ago

bluGill 7y ago
If it is only in your backyard it is better for your property value in the long run: eventually someone will offer you a ton of money to replace your house with a large apartment complex. If it is everywhere that can build, than the builders can take whatever property comes up - and because they have to compete with other developers for renters they are likely to build smaller so on both counts property values don't increase as fast.
- dv_dt 7y ago
  That's what I don't understand, increasing density usually means price / sqft for all real estate in the area goes up. I often wonder if the analysis on why people shoot down zoning changes is incorrectly attributed to price or property tax, and is mostly people resisting any change.
  - mertd 7y ago
    Not every NIMBY is motivated by greed. Some just want to stay put, pay property taxes like it's 30 years ago and drive to their favorite burger shack in under five minutes. That particular generation also holds on to the doctrine that density is bad for environment.
    - pc86 7y ago
      There's only a generational correlation because the 80 year old retiree is much more likely to own nice property with low property taxes (if you live in a state that only reassesses at sale) than the 28 year old with a young family. Young couples with money can be just as viciously NIMBY-esque as old couples with money.
  - darawk 7y ago
    That's not universally true though. Many times new development will block a view, or it might run the risk of bringing in "undesirable" groups which would lower property values. There is definitely a long-run argument that values will go up if you increase the power of network effects...but it's always better if the locality next door does it, and not you. Unfortunately the incentive problem here is real, and there isn't a super obvious solution to it. At least, not to me. Trying to shift the culture and convince people to vote against their own economic incentives is great and all, but I don't think it is destined for success at any significant scale.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    If price goes up or down is complex. In an area that has a small amount of demand stopping building ensures that those who want to live there have to keep bidding higher. If those who want to live there have a lot of money only a few people who want to live there but don't can push prices up greatly. It may well be that the area only needs to build a small number of units to fill demand, and additional units will need to lower prices to get a buyer. Supply is limited of course, but so is demand - I wouldn't take a free house in the Bay Area as my job is several time zones away and so the free house is still a net cost to me (if only to replace the roof ever 30 years)
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    Its pretty easy, your standard of living declines and sucks. I grew up in a single family detached home in Queens, NY in the 80s as the shift to bigger condos and rentals started. The newer buildings are almost always shoddy and ugly, and dealing with landlords for property issues suck as compared to the homeowner.
    - lopmotr 7y ago
      The owner of your detached house would have been very happy though, wouldn't he? The issues you listed wouldn't affect him, but the opportunity to sell to an apartment developer would.
  - hodgesrm 7y ago
    There's resistance to change but economics are far more important and explain the consistent opposition across the state. It's not as simple as sell your house and make a profit, then find something nicer. If your neighbors sell first to the developer of the N-story apartment building it can drop the value of houses around it. Also, buying a house in California resets your property taxes to current property value (a legacy of Prop 13). I suspect it will be hard to solving the housing problem without unwinding Prop 13 and some of the other issues that make it harder for people to sell homes.
    - dv_dt 7y ago
      How does Prop 13 make it hard to sell your home? It only affects the owners property taxes but not the property buyer's. At the time of purchase, there's no delta to the buyers taxes vs a property that was taxed at a full market rate assessment the whole time.
      - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
        Affecting the seller's still creates a delta because the seller is also a buyer of wherever they're going to live next. Causing the new place to have much higher property tax than the existing place makes it harder to leave the existing place. And then fewer people do it, even if they e.g. don't need a place that big anymore.
        dv_dt 7y ago
        That seems like a stretch, it doesn't increase the market price or the tax on the new property that the seller is acquiring, if anything it lets the owner save more money so they have more options to buy.
        AnthonyMouse 7y ago
        It does increase the tax on the new property that the seller is acquiring, because for a given level of government spending, if the government gets less tax revenue from long-term owners they have to get more from newer owners. It also increases the minimum price the seller is willing to accept for the property, because they won't sell unless the buyer offers enough to compensate them for the higher tax rate they'll have to pay on the new property. It increases the bid/ask spread on long-held properties, so that more often no transaction takes place at all until e.g. the owner dies and the property is sold in an estate sale for less than the owner would have been willing to accept if they were still alive.
- harikb 7y ago
  It doesn't work quite like that. Builders buying livable property and demolishing it make economical sense only in a very very few percentage of homes. My guess is < 2% of entire area we talk about. For the other 98%, it is far far cheaper for the builder to get it rezoned from the goverment. Remember, we don't have a lack of land. There is plenty of prime, commute friendly, land available in SF-Bayarea and most other CA cities. Old SFH will get demo-ed and gets rebuilt as SFH - just because bulldozing a $200k+ building + spending $600k to rebuild - can only be justified by a crazy SFH owner who can justify it all in terms of getting his/her dream home.
i_am_nomad 7y ago
There’s already plenty of places to build affordable housing. Nearly all of it is outside the Bay Area. But evidently, living in Modesto, or Bakersfield, or God forbid Kansas is some kind of horrible punishment, and it’s wrong to deny people the “right” to live near San Francisco.
- bluGill 7y ago
  People live where the jobs are. I know someone who bought a house in North Dakota for the value of the propane in the tank outside. There are no jobs in the area so the former owner was just glad to be rid of it. The guy I knew was glad to have a place to sleep near his secret hunting place, he had no intent of spending more than a few days a year there.
- eropple 7y ago
  I mean, I don't live in SF, but I spent a pretty good chunk of change to buy a house in the Boston area because I can't rationalize living in, say, northern New Hampshire, regardless of the savings. I value other things more that just don't exist there. People want to live where there's culture and work. Why should they not?
notJim 7y ago
Also a homeowner, and I'm a YIMBY (or PHIMBY) for selfish reasons as well. My neighborhood is mostly old white people, because they bought their houses years ago and stayed put. Not that I have anything against them, but I'd love to have a more diverse, younger neighborhood. More neighbors also means more customers for local businesses, which means more shops and restaurants in walking distance. More neighbors would eventually also mean better public transit, because the ridership would demand it. I think the selfish benefits of more housing are often overlooked due to fear of change.
- Swizec 7y ago
  > More neighbors also means more customers for local businesses, which means more shops and restaurants in walking distance Big reason I moved from Ljubljana, Slovenia to San Francisco. There’s just more stuff here and it’s amazing. The economies of scale are insane. I have more good restaurants within walking distance now than I used to have in the whole city.
  - YarickR2 7y ago
    FWIW I'm seriously considering doing the reverse. I don't care about restaurants, but cleanness and neatness and uniqueness in Slovenia is something I miss dearly in Cali
    - Swizec 7y ago
      You know I feel that all the time and then I go back to visit and after two days I’m like “Oh that’s why I left, there’s nothing to do here” What I miss most is real nature. Trees that are properly green, the changing of seasons, the mountains in the distance. That’s what I miss most. And good european food. Super hard to find in SF
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  >Also a homeowner, and I'm a YIMBY (or PHIMBY) for selfish reasons as well. My neighborhood is mostly old white people, because they bought their houses years ago and stayed put. Hmm, here I am thinking I don't really care about the skin color of my neighbors. It's none of my business. But, I try and not judge people on immutable characteristics like color and age.
zhoujianfu 7y ago
What I don’t get is wouldn’t allowing more development in a neighborhood increase property values? Like if your single family home’s lot gets up zoned, didn’t you just hit the jackpot in terms of the land value?
- lazyasciiart 7y ago
  Yes. But you might be irrationally convinced that black people and drug dealers will overrun the neighborhood as soon as an apartment building goes in, and that will make property values decrease instead.
- tathougies 7y ago
  Yes, I don't get this. I would love to turn my home into a duplex (probably going to start with an airbnb though due to bad tenant law in our state). Sounds like the best way to go from homeowner to asset owner.
- rcpt 7y ago
  Why Are There NIMBYs? https://www.dartmouth.edu/~wfischel/Papers/00-04.PDF https://www.dartmouth.edu/~wfischel/Papers/00-04.PDF When all your wealth is tied up in a single leveraged asset anything that might lead to a big change in it is more risk than most people will tolerate.

Many of us are homeowners. Speaking for myself, I simply believe affordable housing for all is more important than my property value.

by fra 7y ago

Many of us are homeowners. Speaking for myself, I simply believe affordable housing for all is more important than my property value.

bluGill 7y ago

If it is only in your backyard it is better for your property value in the long run: eventually someone will offer you a ton of money to replace your house with a large apartment complex. If it is everywhere that can build, than the builders can take whatever property comes up - and because they have to compete with other developers for renters they are likely to build smaller so on both counts property values don't increase as fast.

dv_dt 7y ago
That's what I don't understand, increasing density usually means price / sqft for all real estate in the area goes up. I often wonder if the analysis on why people shoot down zoning changes is incorrectly attributed to price or property tax, and is mostly people resisting any change.
- mertd 7y ago
  Not every NIMBY is motivated by greed. Some just want to stay put, pay property taxes like it's 30 years ago and drive to their favorite burger shack in under five minutes. That particular generation also holds on to the doctrine that density is bad for environment.
  - pc86 7y ago
    There's only a generational correlation because the 80 year old retiree is much more likely to own nice property with low property taxes (if you live in a state that only reassesses at sale) than the 28 year old with a young family. Young couples with money can be just as viciously NIMBY-esque as old couples with money.
- darawk 7y ago
  That's not universally true though. Many times new development will block a view, or it might run the risk of bringing in "undesirable" groups which would lower property values. There is definitely a long-run argument that values will go up if you increase the power of network effects...but it's always better if the locality next door does it, and not you. Unfortunately the incentive problem here is real, and there isn't a super obvious solution to it. At least, not to me. Trying to shift the culture and convince people to vote against their own economic incentives is great and all, but I don't think it is destined for success at any significant scale.
- bluGill 7y ago
  If price goes up or down is complex. In an area that has a small amount of demand stopping building ensures that those who want to live there have to keep bidding higher. If those who want to live there have a lot of money only a few people who want to live there but don't can push prices up greatly. It may well be that the area only needs to build a small number of units to fill demand, and additional units will need to lower prices to get a buyer. Supply is limited of course, but so is demand - I wouldn't take a free house in the Bay Area as my job is several time zones away and so the free house is still a net cost to me (if only to replace the roof ever 30 years)
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Its pretty easy, your standard of living declines and sucks. I grew up in a single family detached home in Queens, NY in the 80s as the shift to bigger condos and rentals started. The newer buildings are almost always shoddy and ugly, and dealing with landlords for property issues suck as compared to the homeowner.
  - lopmotr 7y ago
    The owner of your detached house would have been very happy though, wouldn't he? The issues you listed wouldn't affect him, but the opportunity to sell to an apartment developer would.
- hodgesrm 7y ago
  There's resistance to change but economics are far more important and explain the consistent opposition across the state. It's not as simple as sell your house and make a profit, then find something nicer. If your neighbors sell first to the developer of the N-story apartment building it can drop the value of houses around it. Also, buying a house in California resets your property taxes to current property value (a legacy of Prop 13). I suspect it will be hard to solving the housing problem without unwinding Prop 13 and some of the other issues that make it harder for people to sell homes.
  - dv_dt 7y ago
    How does Prop 13 make it hard to sell your home? It only affects the owners property taxes but not the property buyer's. At the time of purchase, there's no delta to the buyers taxes vs a property that was taxed at a full market rate assessment the whole time.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      Affecting the seller's still creates a delta because the seller is also a buyer of wherever they're going to live next. Causing the new place to have much higher property tax than the existing place makes it harder to leave the existing place. And then fewer people do it, even if they e.g. don't need a place that big anymore.
      - dv_dt 7y ago
        That seems like a stretch, it doesn't increase the market price or the tax on the new property that the seller is acquiring, if anything it lets the owner save more money so they have more options to buy.
        AnthonyMouse 7y ago
        It does increase the tax on the new property that the seller is acquiring, because for a given level of government spending, if the government gets less tax revenue from long-term owners they have to get more from newer owners. It also increases the minimum price the seller is willing to accept for the property, because they won't sell unless the buyer offers enough to compensate them for the higher tax rate they'll have to pay on the new property. It increases the bid/ask spread on long-held properties, so that more often no transaction takes place at all until e.g. the owner dies and the property is sold in an estate sale for less than the owner would have been willing to accept if they were still alive.
harikb 7y ago
It doesn't work quite like that. Builders buying livable property and demolishing it make economical sense only in a very very few percentage of homes. My guess is < 2% of entire area we talk about. For the other 98%, it is far far cheaper for the builder to get it rezoned from the goverment. Remember, we don't have a lack of land. There is plenty of prime, commute friendly, land available in SF-Bayarea and most other CA cities. Old SFH will get demo-ed and gets rebuilt as SFH - just because bulldozing a $200k+ building + spending $600k to rebuild - can only be justified by a crazy SFH owner who can justify it all in terms of getting his/her dream home.

i_am_nomad 7y ago

There’s already plenty of places to build affordable housing. Nearly all of it is outside the Bay Area. But evidently, living in Modesto, or Bakersfield, or God forbid Kansas is some kind of horrible punishment, and it’s wrong to deny people the “right” to live near San Francisco.

bluGill 7y ago
People live where the jobs are. I know someone who bought a house in North Dakota for the value of the propane in the tank outside. There are no jobs in the area so the former owner was just glad to be rid of it. The guy I knew was glad to have a place to sleep near his secret hunting place, he had no intent of spending more than a few days a year there.
eropple 7y ago
I mean, I don't live in SF, but I spent a pretty good chunk of change to buy a house in the Boston area because I can't rationalize living in, say, northern New Hampshire, regardless of the savings. I value other things more that just don't exist there. People want to live where there's culture and work. Why should they not?

notJim 7y ago

Also a homeowner, and I'm a YIMBY (or PHIMBY) for selfish reasons as well. My neighborhood is mostly old white people, because they bought their houses years ago and stayed put. Not that I have anything against them, but I'd love to have a more diverse, younger neighborhood. More neighbors also means more customers for local businesses, which means more shops and restaurants in walking distance. More neighbors would eventually also mean better public transit, because the ridership would demand it. I think the selfish benefits of more housing are often overlooked due to fear of change.

Swizec 7y ago
> More neighbors also means more customers for local businesses, which means more shops and restaurants in walking distance Big reason I moved from Ljubljana, Slovenia to San Francisco. There’s just more stuff here and it’s amazing. The economies of scale are insane. I have more good restaurants within walking distance now than I used to have in the whole city.
- YarickR2 7y ago
  FWIW I'm seriously considering doing the reverse. I don't care about restaurants, but cleanness and neatness and uniqueness in Slovenia is something I miss dearly in Cali
  - Swizec 7y ago
    You know I feel that all the time and then I go back to visit and after two days I’m like “Oh that’s why I left, there’s nothing to do here” What I miss most is real nature. Trees that are properly green, the changing of seasons, the mountains in the distance. That’s what I miss most. And good european food. Super hard to find in SF
SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
>Also a homeowner, and I'm a YIMBY (or PHIMBY) for selfish reasons as well. My neighborhood is mostly old white people, because they bought their houses years ago and stayed put. Hmm, here I am thinking I don't really care about the skin color of my neighbors. It's none of my business. But, I try and not judge people on immutable characteristics like color and age.

zhoujianfu 7y ago

What I don’t get is wouldn’t allowing more development in a neighborhood increase property values? Like if your single family home’s lot gets up zoned, didn’t you just hit the jackpot in terms of the land value?

lazyasciiart 7y ago
Yes. But you might be irrationally convinced that black people and drug dealers will overrun the neighborhood as soon as an apartment building goes in, and that will make property values decrease instead.
tathougies 7y ago
Yes, I don't get this. I would love to turn my home into a duplex (probably going to start with an airbnb though due to bad tenant law in our state). Sounds like the best way to go from homeowner to asset owner.
rcpt 7y ago
Why Are There NIMBYs? https://www.dartmouth.edu/~wfischel/Papers/00-04.PDF https://www.dartmouth.edu/~wfischel/Papers/00-04.PDF When all your wealth is tied up in a single leveraged asset anything that might lead to a big change in it is more risk than most people will tolerate.