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And yet Tokyo does not have this problem despite growing 50% in population over the last two decades. If you make building housing illegal prices rise. Demand a

And yet Tokyo does not have this problem despite growing 50% in population over the last two decades. If you make building housing illegal prices rise. Demand and supply are going to meet somewhere and if you restrict supply prices will rise. If you restrict it more they'll rise more or faster. Compare San Francisco, Seattle and Houston in a US context. The more you restrict supply the more prices rise.

PebblesHD 5y ago
I completely agree, but Tokyo also has sensible tax policies to encourage providing housing, and a government that aims for zero unemployment. I really like their model of ensuring jobs are available so people have money to consume private sector housing, and that there is always such housing available because there is always someone to consume it. There’s about 50 seperate policies places like Sydney and Seoul would need to change to head down that path, but the interests of those in power are largely in keeping prices high it seems…
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  If there is demand for housing and you do not make supplying that demand illegal someone will supply it. People live in dormitories in Hong Kong right now. Perfectly safe but middle class busybodies don't like flophouses, SROs or dormitories so they make it illegal. If it was legal to provide housing in San Francisco in dorms it would be done. If it was legal to build residential skyscrapers in New York Queens would look like Brooklyn if not Manhattan. Make building housing legal and the market will provide.
  - xyzzy123 5y ago
    When you build roads, you get more traffic. I wonder if the following is true? When you build more apartments you get more density and more inward migration and more concentration of opportunity, until the marginal migrant can't afford or doesn't want to live there. The same sort of people are miserable when there's more density as when there was less, except there's more of them. [NOTE: I mostly agree with you and this comment is a bit of a non-sequitur but I hadn't thought about the idea that the problem might actually be "moloch" (in slate star codex terms)].
    - thriftwy 5y ago
      Not building roads/apartments is not a solution, unless you really want to cosplay middle ages in your country. So you will have to build something, somewhere. Actually, roads and apartments are in counter-balance. More resedential high-rises in semi-walkable distance from business districts and public transit = less roads are needed (but there is still congestion due to bottlenecks). More spread-out houses - more traffic as people will drive tens of miles to work. Korea is not sufficiently large that you could stick people so far they're not able to come to megapolis and congest it.
      - mathverse 5y ago
        Korea frequently tries to decentralize and build new districts and cities from scratch.It just does not work because of korean culture.
        thriftwy 5y ago
        It does not work anywhere in the world. Business and people are quite content with "old" districts and cities.
        mathverse 5y ago
        It's not that.It's the korean approach of doing things.The "bbali bbali" culture where korean ingenuity gets pushed back by their impatience and the need to re-invent themselves very quick. They like to designate certain areas to specific industries and then wonder why it's not such a good approach. Look at Songdo or Pangyo Techno Valley.Both rushed and without much thought. As soon as the gov subsidies ran out the companies wanted to move back because it was both as expensive as in Seoul downtown with little of other benefit. Also 99% of the companies there were korean anyway.
        imtringued 5y ago
        I am wondering if a super super block model would work. You take a 3x3 block of houses and label it a super block. Then you build a 5x5 block of super blocks and then put commercial zoning in the middle.
  - ximeng 5y ago
    https://hongkongfp.com/2017/02/16/1-killed-2-injured-blaze-subdivided-flat-sham-shui-po/ https://hongkongfp.com/2017/02/16/1-killed-2-injured-blaze-s... The subdivided flats are not perfectly safe.
forgotmyoldname 5y ago
One wonderful thing about Japan is that houses are as much of an investment as toothbrushes. The minute someone uses it, its value drops immensely. 10 years is old but still somewhat livable and generally cheap. Once you get past 20 years, locals basically see the house as scrap. It's really easy to buy cheap houses or apartments over 20 years old. Some clueless foreigners new to Japan see these prices and think they can flip them and resell to get rich, and they're always disappointed to find out it doesn't work that way. 40-50 year old houses can be bought for around car prices if you're willing to live 30 minutes from a smallish city. You're basically just paying for the land at that point.
- killtimeatwork 5y ago
  Sounds like a monumentally wasteful practice from environmental standpoint. Are these disposable houses made from wood, or brick/concrete?
  - djbebs 5y ago
    It's necessary given that regular earthquakes cause unseen damage to houses.
- bserge 5y ago
  That doesn't quite make sense. You're basically paying for the land in many European cities, too, so how is the price of the building an important factor? It's the land that's very expensive.
  - forgotmyoldname 5y ago
    Random land outside of the middle of urban centers isn't that valuable, especially when population isn't growing. What is someone going to do, hold onto it for decades and hope someone buys it from them at a 10x markup and be enough to offset the taxes they paid? In some places (or at least the US), old houses generally gain value. Of course, land is valuable in and of itself, but there's no shame in buying a 100 year old house in the US. There's no worry of earthquake damage, generally no risk of extensive mold due to a drier climate than East Asia, nobody really worries about ghosts infesting the home, etc. Plus, 100 year old American houses are quite honestly probably better than the cardboard and paper mache houses that have been common recently. In my experience, 1920s apartments were much nicer than the post 1970s places I lived in.
OneTimePetes 5y ago
The demand for black-market money concrete sugar cubes to store investment money far outstrips the actual need and thus there is no market anyway.

PebblesHD 5y ago

I completely agree, but Tokyo also has sensible tax policies to encourage providing housing, and a government that aims for zero unemployment. I really like their model of ensuring jobs are available so people have money to consume private sector housing, and that there is always such housing available because there is always someone to consume it. There’s about 50 seperate policies places like Sydney and Seoul would need to change to head down that path, but the interests of those in power are largely in keeping prices high it seems…

barry-cotter 5y ago
If there is demand for housing and you do not make supplying that demand illegal someone will supply it. People live in dormitories in Hong Kong right now. Perfectly safe but middle class busybodies don't like flophouses, SROs or dormitories so they make it illegal. If it was legal to provide housing in San Francisco in dorms it would be done. If it was legal to build residential skyscrapers in New York Queens would look like Brooklyn if not Manhattan. Make building housing legal and the market will provide.
- xyzzy123 5y ago
  When you build roads, you get more traffic. I wonder if the following is true? When you build more apartments you get more density and more inward migration and more concentration of opportunity, until the marginal migrant can't afford or doesn't want to live there. The same sort of people are miserable when there's more density as when there was less, except there's more of them. [NOTE: I mostly agree with you and this comment is a bit of a non-sequitur but I hadn't thought about the idea that the problem might actually be "moloch" (in slate star codex terms)].
  - thriftwy 5y ago
    Not building roads/apartments is not a solution, unless you really want to cosplay middle ages in your country. So you will have to build something, somewhere. Actually, roads and apartments are in counter-balance. More resedential high-rises in semi-walkable distance from business districts and public transit = less roads are needed (but there is still congestion due to bottlenecks). More spread-out houses - more traffic as people will drive tens of miles to work. Korea is not sufficiently large that you could stick people so far they're not able to come to megapolis and congest it.
    - mathverse 5y ago
      Korea frequently tries to decentralize and build new districts and cities from scratch.It just does not work because of korean culture.
      - thriftwy 5y ago
        It does not work anywhere in the world. Business and people are quite content with "old" districts and cities.
        mathverse 5y ago
        It's not that.It's the korean approach of doing things.The "bbali bbali" culture where korean ingenuity gets pushed back by their impatience and the need to re-invent themselves very quick. They like to designate certain areas to specific industries and then wonder why it's not such a good approach. Look at Songdo or Pangyo Techno Valley.Both rushed and without much thought. As soon as the gov subsidies ran out the companies wanted to move back because it was both as expensive as in Seoul downtown with little of other benefit. Also 99% of the companies there were korean anyway.
      - imtringued 5y ago
        I am wondering if a super super block model would work. You take a 3x3 block of houses and label it a super block. Then you build a 5x5 block of super blocks and then put commercial zoning in the middle.
- ximeng 5y ago
  https://hongkongfp.com/2017/02/16/1-killed-2-injured-blaze-subdivided-flat-sham-shui-po/ https://hongkongfp.com/2017/02/16/1-killed-2-injured-blaze-s... The subdivided flats are not perfectly safe.

forgotmyoldname 5y ago

One wonderful thing about Japan is that houses are as much of an investment as toothbrushes. The minute someone uses it, its value drops immensely. 10 years is old but still somewhat livable and generally cheap. Once you get past 20 years, locals basically see the house as scrap. It's really easy to buy cheap houses or apartments over 20 years old. Some clueless foreigners new to Japan see these prices and think they can flip them and resell to get rich, and they're always disappointed to find out it doesn't work that way. 40-50 year old houses can be bought for around car prices if you're willing to live 30 minutes from a smallish city. You're basically just paying for the land at that point.

killtimeatwork 5y ago
Sounds like a monumentally wasteful practice from environmental standpoint. Are these disposable houses made from wood, or brick/concrete?
- djbebs 5y ago
  It's necessary given that regular earthquakes cause unseen damage to houses.
bserge 5y ago
That doesn't quite make sense. You're basically paying for the land in many European cities, too, so how is the price of the building an important factor? It's the land that's very expensive.
- forgotmyoldname 5y ago
  Random land outside of the middle of urban centers isn't that valuable, especially when population isn't growing. What is someone going to do, hold onto it for decades and hope someone buys it from them at a 10x markup and be enough to offset the taxes they paid? In some places (or at least the US), old houses generally gain value. Of course, land is valuable in and of itself, but there's no shame in buying a 100 year old house in the US. There's no worry of earthquake damage, generally no risk of extensive mold due to a drier climate than East Asia, nobody really worries about ghosts infesting the home, etc. Plus, 100 year old American houses are quite honestly probably better than the cardboard and paper mache houses that have been common recently. In my experience, 1920s apartments were much nicer than the post 1970s places I lived in.

OneTimePetes 5y ago

The demand for black-market money concrete sugar cubes to store investment money far outstrips the actual need and thus there is no market anyway.