4 ms·

More luxery houses would lower prices for luxery housing, but not necessarily for affordable housing. I don't know how much those are competing markets

alisonkisk 5y ago
They compete strongly. Rich people pay a lot for junky apartments due to the shortage.
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  Somehow I doubt that's a considerable driver of affordable housing prices, but it's possible. Where did you get that from?
  - dnautics 5y ago
    You ever seen techies living in the mission district?
nerfhammer 5y ago
New housing is always relatively "luxury" because newness is itself a luxury. Much of what is relatively affordable now was relatively "luxury" when it was built. But if you stop building anything new it would be like trying to keep the price of cars down by banning new cars – what will happen after a decade or two if you did that?
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  To use your car analogy- just because a new car will be worth more than a used one (and this is much more true of cars than houses), that doesn't mean there's no such thing as a luxery car. Sure, newness is a type of luxery (I'm not sure how much housing price depreciates with time, but I'll believe you on this one), but new houses can be built to cater to wealthy buyers or to cater to lower income buyers.
ajmurmann 5y ago
In addition to the relation between luxury housing market and affordable housing market that others are calling out, regulations and other hurdles to build are a reason expensive units are built rather than cheap ones. If you need 15 permits to build in SoMa and changes requested by one council can require going through the process for another permit again, your fixed cost gets so high that you really have no choice but to build expensive units. I'm sure housing cost would quickly get under control of SF for example were to eliminate any height and other zoning constraints and have as the only requirement that you are able to get insurance for your building.

alisonkisk 5y ago

They compete strongly. Rich people pay a lot for junky apartments due to the shortage.

TchoBeer 5y ago
Somehow I doubt that's a considerable driver of affordable housing prices, but it's possible. Where did you get that from?
- dnautics 5y ago
  You ever seen techies living in the mission district?

nerfhammer 5y ago

New housing is always relatively "luxury" because newness is itself a luxury. Much of what is relatively affordable now was relatively "luxury" when it was built. But if you stop building anything new it would be like trying to keep the price of cars down by banning new cars – what will happen after a decade or two if you did that?

TchoBeer 5y ago
To use your car analogy- just because a new car will be worth more than a used one (and this is much more true of cars than houses), that doesn't mean there's no such thing as a luxery car. Sure, newness is a type of luxery (I'm not sure how much housing price depreciates with time, but I'll believe you on this one), but new houses can be built to cater to wealthy buyers or to cater to lower income buyers.

ajmurmann 5y ago

In addition to the relation between luxury housing market and affordable housing market that others are calling out, regulations and other hurdles to build are a reason expensive units are built rather than cheap ones. If you need 15 permits to build in SoMa and changes requested by one council can require going through the process for another permit again, your fixed cost gets so high that you really have no choice but to build expensive units. I'm sure housing cost would quickly get under control of SF for example were to eliminate any height and other zoning constraints and have as the only requirement that you are able to get insurance for your building.