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You seem to believe that vacancy rates are high enough that we could make a dent in the problem by trying to lower them. Is there any evidence of that? None tha

You seem to believe that vacancy rates are high enough that we could make a dent in the problem by trying to lower them. Is there any evidence of that? None that I know of. These suggestions seem unlikely to accomplish much, and they seem driven by a assumption that inequality and greed of the wealthy is the problem rather than local government red tape and NIMBYs holding back construction. More supply reduces prices. Econ 101. It is strange how many people seem to think Econ 101 somehow doesn't apply to housing.

kennywinker 5y ago
In my city, Vancouver, there were something like 100,000 empty homes maybe 5 years ago. More than enough vacant homes to house the entire homeless population a few times over. Now, do market forces work well enough that filling those homes pushes the cost of housing down low enough that those people can afford a home? Idk. We put in an empty home tax a couple years ago, but I don't think the dust has settled on if it has succeeded in filling those homes. If it has, it certainly hasn't resulted in noticeably lower housing costs for anyone yet.
- civilized 5y ago
  Vancouver isn't trying nearly hard enough. Housing is much more affordable in places where supply is allowed to grow without government interference. Unfortunately there are very few such places, but states that are more free to build in, like Texas, are much more affordable and people have been migrating for the low prices. Speculative hoarding of the scarce resource of housing can lead to houses sitting empty, but speculation would be pointless if the resource weren't artificially constrained to be scarce.
  - kennywinker 5y ago
    > Housing is much more affordable in places where supply is allowed to grow without government interference I just don't believe this. I'm sorry. The difference between texas (which part, for one thing) and vancouver isn't down to real estate regulation. There are plenty of places in BC where you can buy a home for texas prices, and real estate regulation isn't that different city to city.
    - civilized 5y ago
      I don't understand. The world is complicated, but some things are simple. Gravity makes things fall. Increasing supply reduces price. How is this a dubious idea? If developers are getting rich off building more, that means housing is crazy scarce, so scarce that people will fill the pockets of anyone who builds it. That means you need to build Way More Housing. Econ 101. If you give a starving person a carrot and they were still starving after eating it, would you say that feeding has failed? Quantity matters! A lot!
      - jimbob45 5y ago
        If there were 500 million homes in the US and all 500 million were owned by one corporation who rented them out to the population, would you say the solution is: A. Build more houses (and cross your fingers that the corporation doesn’t snatch those up too) B. Criminalize renting to some degree
        civilized 5y ago
        If the corporation is making that much money from its renting monopoly then the developer should just keep the property it builds and rent it out. If five developers do this, you'll start to see price competition and prices will go down. The rich hoarders and speculators will get screwed badly. As they should be. Except... they will beg the government to do something, tell some heart-rending narrative about those nasty rich developers, the government will do something, and they'll get to stay rich. I may see a different villain here than you do.
        jimbob45 5y ago
        I don’t think you’re wrong that there’s a solution that the free market would provide (maybe not yours but I’m a believer in the invisible hand). However, that’s no good for preventing another situation like this in the long-run and there’s no benefit to allowing renting other than destroying the environment and shifting some bank account numbers. This is all separate from high-efficiency renting (i.e. apartments) because that uses the land well.
- ch4s3 5y ago
  The vacancy rate there is 2.6%, according to the CMHC, which is quite low. That rate is generally considered a housing crisis.
  - kennywinker 5y ago
    Assuming that's metro vancouver (not greater vancouver), with a population of 631k, 2.6% would be 16,000 empty homes. The "we just need to let developers build more houses" people should take a long think on what 16k vacant homes is doing to the market.
    - ch4s3 5y ago
      That’s just not how housing works. A unit of housing has to be vacant between residents to be repaired, and periodically updated. Leasing a full building often takes a full year. People have existing leases and mortgages. At time you may have a mismatch between types and locations of units and what people looking for housing need. There are all kinds of reasons a unit can be temporarily empty. The 16k units you’re citing won’t stay empty for long, but other units in the system will go temporarily unfilled. This is necessary for a functional housing market. In order for prices to decline you need a vacancy rate of more than 5%. Prices will continue to rise even at 4% vacancy. The economics here are well studied and well established. Housing economists broadly agree. If there’s anything that markers are great at doing, it’s producing lots of stuff at decreasing marginal cost. Housing is no different.
      - civilized 5y ago
        Yep, there's a natural rate of unemployment and a natural rate of housing vacancy. No surprises here. No One Weird Tricks to make housing affordable. Just good old supply and demand.
    - porb121 5y ago
      How many vacant homes is the right number? If there are very few vacant homes, then every time someone needs to move homes, they have to be shuffling homes with someone else. That's not efficient or tenable.
- syspec 5y ago
  I remember reading that basically people were paying 500 / month to live in mansions as a way for homeowners to avoid paying the vacancy tax
yellowapple 5y ago
> and they seem driven by a assumption that inequality and greed of the wealthy is the problem rather than local government red tape and NIMBYs holding back construction. Not only is said assumption pretty dang reasonable, but the former is outright the cause of the latter (specifically: rich landowners lobbying local and state governments to hinder development and shift tax burdens onto literally anything other than the land value they're hoarding).
- civilized 5y ago
  There are NIMBYs elsewhere in this comment tree telling me that evil rich developers lobby to have zoning relaxed so they can destroy the city with their horrible high-rises. So which is it? Which class of evil rich person controls everything? Or is it possible that the YIMBY progressives who actually watch this issue in their local communities are right, and the biggest problem is NIMBYs vetoing everything to protect their "neighborhood character" and "the environment"? NIMBYs hold a lot of power in local governments. They may be almost the only ones to turn out in many local elections and referendums.

kennywinker 5y ago

In my city, Vancouver, there were something like 100,000 empty homes maybe 5 years ago. More than enough vacant homes to house the entire homeless population a few times over. Now, do market forces work well enough that filling those homes pushes the cost of housing down low enough that those people can afford a home? Idk. We put in an empty home tax a couple years ago, but I don't think the dust has settled on if it has succeeded in filling those homes. If it has, it certainly hasn't resulted in noticeably lower housing costs for anyone yet.

civilized 5y ago
Vancouver isn't trying nearly hard enough. Housing is much more affordable in places where supply is allowed to grow without government interference. Unfortunately there are very few such places, but states that are more free to build in, like Texas, are much more affordable and people have been migrating for the low prices. Speculative hoarding of the scarce resource of housing can lead to houses sitting empty, but speculation would be pointless if the resource weren't artificially constrained to be scarce.
- kennywinker 5y ago
  > Housing is much more affordable in places where supply is allowed to grow without government interference I just don't believe this. I'm sorry. The difference between texas (which part, for one thing) and vancouver isn't down to real estate regulation. There are plenty of places in BC where you can buy a home for texas prices, and real estate regulation isn't that different city to city.
  - civilized 5y ago
    I don't understand. The world is complicated, but some things are simple. Gravity makes things fall. Increasing supply reduces price. How is this a dubious idea? If developers are getting rich off building more, that means housing is crazy scarce, so scarce that people will fill the pockets of anyone who builds it. That means you need to build Way More Housing. Econ 101. If you give a starving person a carrot and they were still starving after eating it, would you say that feeding has failed? Quantity matters! A lot!
    - jimbob45 5y ago
      If there were 500 million homes in the US and all 500 million were owned by one corporation who rented them out to the population, would you say the solution is: A. Build more houses (and cross your fingers that the corporation doesn’t snatch those up too) B. Criminalize renting to some degree
      - civilized 5y ago
        If the corporation is making that much money from its renting monopoly then the developer should just keep the property it builds and rent it out. If five developers do this, you'll start to see price competition and prices will go down. The rich hoarders and speculators will get screwed badly. As they should be. Except... they will beg the government to do something, tell some heart-rending narrative about those nasty rich developers, the government will do something, and they'll get to stay rich. I may see a different villain here than you do.
        jimbob45 5y ago
        I don’t think you’re wrong that there’s a solution that the free market would provide (maybe not yours but I’m a believer in the invisible hand). However, that’s no good for preventing another situation like this in the long-run and there’s no benefit to allowing renting other than destroying the environment and shifting some bank account numbers. This is all separate from high-efficiency renting (i.e. apartments) because that uses the land well.
ch4s3 5y ago
The vacancy rate there is 2.6%, according to the CMHC, which is quite low. That rate is generally considered a housing crisis.
- kennywinker 5y ago
  Assuming that's metro vancouver (not greater vancouver), with a population of 631k, 2.6% would be 16,000 empty homes. The "we just need to let developers build more houses" people should take a long think on what 16k vacant homes is doing to the market.
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    That’s just not how housing works. A unit of housing has to be vacant between residents to be repaired, and periodically updated. Leasing a full building often takes a full year. People have existing leases and mortgages. At time you may have a mismatch between types and locations of units and what people looking for housing need. There are all kinds of reasons a unit can be temporarily empty. The 16k units you’re citing won’t stay empty for long, but other units in the system will go temporarily unfilled. This is necessary for a functional housing market. In order for prices to decline you need a vacancy rate of more than 5%. Prices will continue to rise even at 4% vacancy. The economics here are well studied and well established. Housing economists broadly agree. If there’s anything that markers are great at doing, it’s producing lots of stuff at decreasing marginal cost. Housing is no different.
    - civilized 5y ago
      Yep, there's a natural rate of unemployment and a natural rate of housing vacancy. No surprises here. No One Weird Tricks to make housing affordable. Just good old supply and demand.
  - porb121 5y ago
    How many vacant homes is the right number? If there are very few vacant homes, then every time someone needs to move homes, they have to be shuffling homes with someone else. That's not efficient or tenable.
syspec 5y ago
I remember reading that basically people were paying 500 / month to live in mansions as a way for homeowners to avoid paying the vacancy tax

yellowapple 5y ago

> and they seem driven by a assumption that inequality and greed of the wealthy is the problem rather than local government red tape and NIMBYs holding back construction. Not only is said assumption pretty dang reasonable, but the former is outright the cause of the latter (specifically: rich landowners lobbying local and state governments to hinder development and shift tax burdens onto literally anything other than the land value they're hoarding).

civilized 5y ago
There are NIMBYs elsewhere in this comment tree telling me that evil rich developers lobby to have zoning relaxed so they can destroy the city with their horrible high-rises. So which is it? Which class of evil rich person controls everything? Or is it possible that the YIMBY progressives who actually watch this issue in their local communities are right, and the biggest problem is NIMBYs vetoing everything to protect their "neighborhood character" and "the environment"? NIMBYs hold a lot of power in local governments. They may be almost the only ones to turn out in many local elections and referendums.