44 ms·

U.S. house prices are rising exponentially faster than income

• cosmojg 5y ago
  A Georgist[1] land value tax, perhaps paired with a citizen's dividend (i.e. UBI), has long been the economically optimal solution to this problem. I've yet to see any proposal with better math behind it. [1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr...
  • Factorium 5y ago
    That would make sense only if the UBI functions exclusively as a tax credit against income taxes or land taxes. It could pair with a UBI for children, giving families a competitive advantage against investors for housing. The USA essentially has open borders with Central and South America right now, and a Democratic party itching to give tens of millions of people citizenship as part of a country-wide gerrymandering idea. UBI with cash handouts would not be a good idea in those circumstances. There will be a huge amount of fraud, at least.
• 1-6 5y ago
  The metaverse needs to steal some of the realestate market investments into metaestate
• jandrewrogers 5y ago
  This is significantly explainable in part by the steep decline in interest rates. People care more about the payment-to-income ratio than the price-to-income ratio.
  • DeathArrow 5y ago
    >People care more about the payment-to-income ratio than the price-to-income ratio. Then people should learn that price impacts payment too, not just the interest rates.
  • xyzzyz 5y ago
    Yeah, people miss the good old times with “affordable” houses, forgetting that back then mortgage rates were 9% or something like that, making the payments just as unaffordable as they are today.
    • xyzzy123 5y ago
      Early repayment is more difficult in a low rates, high values scenario. The impact of a small windfall or a pay raise put towards the mortgage gets levered by your rate. IMHO high rates / low values was a better situation for working stiffs. (I'm not 100% confident in this analysis; it seems like there should be an equivalence... but I don't think it's as symmetrical as it seems).
    • jeffreyrogers 5y ago
      This doesn't seem to fit the facts. Entire occupational classes today can't buy homes that a single income household could buy in the past. The quality of housing is better in some ways (much bigger, heating, AC in most areas, etc.) but that's not much consolation if you're priced out.
    • raverbashing 5y ago
      Yes, and together with it the flood of abusive loans with lower deposits and longer payback periods as if it would make homes "more affordable" (not) Student loans, mortgages, or "how to make money with lower interest rates", convince people to loan more and pay more interest (with a longer period)
    • DeathArrow 5y ago
      But let's suppose that someone has accumulated the cash and didn't need a loan. By lovering interest rates and raising prices, not only the people who had to take loans aren't in a better position, but people who did not need loans are also hit. The only winners are the ones speculating real estate.
• beefield 5y ago
  Sorry, I may have missed some math lesson, but what means "exponentially faster"?
  • dchapp 5y ago
    IME, when people say this, they mean that the difference between two quantities varies exponentially with time.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• 1680168l 5y ago
  Of course they are, that's the same as saying 'house prices are rising faster than income'. Both follow exponential growth curves, so if they have different exponents, the difference is always exponential too. Hyperbole, but also, still a serious issue.
  • VRay 5y ago
    Technically correct, the best kind of correct when talking about inflation curves
• cracker_jacks 5y ago
  When you make housing an investment, by definition, it has to become less affordable in the future. Until a country decides to stop making policy to support this notion that a basic need should be an appreciating asset and not a depreciating one like food, transportation, etc, this completely unsurprising trend will continue. It is a strange world we live in where we collectively believe that a basic need should increase in price over time.
  • cperciva 5y ago
    Nonsense. Investments should be profitable, but that profit doesn't have to take the form of capital gains. Plenty of businesses are profitable by using assets rather than by reselling them. The exception of course is if it's impossible to make a profit using the asset. Rent controls are very effective in this regard: If you ensure that being a landlord yields no operating profit, the only incentive to buy property is if there's hope of future capital gains.
    • judge2020 5y ago
      The point is that housing is required to live. Apartments aren't being built at a rate that keeps YoY growth in houses to <5%, which is a lot of growth compared to inflation and wage trends but would be healthier than the growth we're seeing in some regions (eg. Atlanta suburb Lawrenceville, with 27% YoY growth[0]). 0: https://www.zillow.com/lawrenceville-ga/home-values/ https://www.zillow.com/lawrenceville-ga/home-values/
  • dcolkitt 5y ago
    I don’t think this is necessarily true. The value of the land you own can increase over time, but the cost of a square foot of housing decrease, as long as density keeps increasing. Say I bought a house on a half acre for $500k. Then someone buys it for $750k and builds four houses on eight acre lots and sells them each for $300k. Owner occupied housing as an investment has produced a positive return but the cost of housing has gone down.
    • loeg 5y ago
• m0zg 5y ago
  Thing is, you don't need a ton of "income" to buy real estate if you're e.g. Black Rock, and money is ridiculously cheap right now. And Black Rock knows inflation is coming so they're looking forward to paying an inflation adjusted dime on each borrowed dollar. This is the "Russian Oligarch" strategy through which all of them have gotten rich in the 90s. Borrow eye watering amounts of money, buy assets, pay back with currency inflated into nearly nothing a few years later. Voila, you now have an insane amount of assets for effectively free. I bet it's also not just Black Rock that's doing this, and other 0.01%-ers with access to cheap, effectively unlimited, QE funds are pulling similar moves.
  • jodrellblank 5y ago
    UK bank Lloyds announced plans to buy 50,000 houses and become one of the nation’s biggest landlords by 2030 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjkdyy9xgn3o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjkdyy9xgn3o
    • dazc 5y ago
      I'd much rather rent a house from an established financial institution than an amateur landlord. The institution will have a realistic expectation of return and will usually carry-out it's responsibilities in a professional manner and, if not, can be held accountable in the courts. I also doubt the CEO of Lloyds will popping round on Saturday mornings to meddle with something or other?
      • m0zg 5y ago
        They have no plans to own this asset in perpetuity. They'll then sell it back to you for 10x the price in inflated currency. Banks didn't even want houses they already owned during 2008 housing crisis - during more normal times they are, strictly speaking, a depreciating asset that is a pain in the ass to maintain, so a lot of foreclosed homes just rotted empty. But we are not living in "normal times" at this point. We're in uncharted waters.
      • bombcar 5y ago
• seibelj 5y ago
  Can Modern Monetary Theory finally be put into the coffin? We printed barely any more in comparison to their recommendations and the economy overheated immediately, so much so that the democrats are likely to be swept in 2022. Stephanie Kelton, the major figurehead of the money printing theory, has been totally silent. I heard her on NPR repeatedly: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/20/958854717/modern-monetary-theory-classic https://www.npr.org/2021/01/20/958854717/modern-monetary-the... https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/09/02/rethinking-americas-deficit-myth-with-economist-stephanie-kelton https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/09/02/rethinking-americas-...
  • anonuser123456 5y ago
    In MMT when you print too much money, you contract the money supply through taxation. What do you think the Biden admin has been working hard on?
    • postingawayonhn 5y ago
      That's much harder to sell politically.
    • brendoelfrendo 5y ago
      Hm, I’m not versed on MMT to know much about this particular mechanism, but it seems like it would be foolish to make the pressure relief valve for your monetary policy something that is subject to approval by Congress.
    • roenxi 5y ago
      A strategy of first triggering high inflation then raising taxes may literally cause riots. It would have been a better strategy if, at some point in the last decade, the powers that be had stopped printing money and let some bankers go broke. Now that we're discovering (again) that printing money doesn't help there is a painfully transparent history of handouts to the wealthy, making it hard to justify politically why everyone else can't get in on the lurk.
      • 5y ago
• Lammy 5y ago
  "We found that since 1965, average home values have skyrocketed from $171,942 to $374,900 — a 118% increase. Meanwhile, median household income crept up just 15%, from $59,920 to $69,178 in 2021-inflation-adjusted dollars." 1965, you say? Real subtle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1968#Title_VIII%E2%80%94fair_housing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1968#Title... Here in California where I can't afford a home we amended the state constitution in 1964 to specifically overturn a 1963 state-level fair housing act and reinstate racial housing discrimination that wasn't overturned until a 1967 decision by the US Supreme Court: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_California_Proposition_14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_California_Proposition_14
  • rsj_hn 5y ago
    You can buy a home with 3% down and a government guaranteed mortgage. Lending standards were much higher in 1965, with LTV limited to about 50%, meaning you needed a 50% downpayment. Mortgage rates were also around 6% then. Obviously what you can afford with 50% down and a rate of 6% is very different than what you can afford with 3% down and a rate of 3%. That extra borrowing power meant house prices were bid up, and with that houses became much bigger[1], roughly twice the size today than in 1965, and with more features (more bathrooms, more bedrooms, better wiring, more forced A/C, better insulation, etc). I really wish people's knowldege of U.S. history would go a bit beyond civil rights. For example, in inflation adjusted terms, new automobiles cost $23K in 1965 (today's dollars) but today it's about 40K, or nearly twice as much. I am hoping that this is also not explained in terms of the civil rights act, but rather it's understood that cars have a lot more features today than in 1965 and it is much cheaper to obtain credit for buying them. [1] https://www.newser.com/story/225645/average-size-of-us-homes-decade-by-decade.html https://www.newser.com/story/225645/average-size-of-us-homes...
    • Lammy 5y ago
      > I really wish people's knowldege of U.S. history would go a bit more beyond civil rights. Have you ever heard anybody talk about how the 13th Amendment (outlawing slavery) has the exception for prisoners, and how our prison population is totally coincidentally comprised of one certain group of people over all others? https://sites.lib.jmu.edu/civic/2020/09/17/slaves-of-the-state-13th-amendment-mass-incarceration-and-the-prison-industrial-complex/ https://sites.lib.jmu.edu/civic/2020/09/17/slaves-of-the-sta... The 1973 Equal Credit Opportunity Act has an exception where it's still totally legal to deny someone a home loan if they're judged incapable of affording the home: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Credit_Opportunity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Credit_Opportunity_Act I would love to believe the modern day state I call home doesn't still reflect all of its founders' beliefs, but idk the more I learn about this stuff the worse it gets. It's pretty wild to read California's first gubernatorial address where they take the entire last third of the speech to basically say "no darkies tho": https://governors.library.ca.gov/addresses/s_01-Burnett1.html https://governors.library.ca.gov/addresses/s_01-Burnett1.htm... =============================================================== "Our Constitution has wisely prohibited Slavery with the State; so that the people of California are once and for ever free from this great social and political evil. But the Constitution has made no provision in reference to the settlement of free people of color within our limits, but has left the Legislature to adopt such legislation upon this delicate and important subject as may be deemed most essential to the happiness of our people. The Constitution excludes this class of persons from the right of suffrage, and from all offices of honor or profit under the State." "For some years past I have given this subject my most candid and serious attention, and I most cheerfully lay before you the result of my own reflections. There is, in my opinion, but one of two consistent courses to take in reference to this class of population, – either to admit them to the full and fee enjoyment of all the privileges guaranteed by the Constitution to others, or exclude them from the State. If we permit them to settle in our State, under existing circumstances, we consign them, by our own institutions, and the usages of own society, to a subordinate and degraded position, which is in itself but a species of slavery. They would be placed in a situation where they would have no efficient motives for moral or intellectual improvement, but must remain in our midst, sensible of their degradation, unhappy themselves, enemies to the institutions and the society whose usages, have placed them there, and for ever fit teachers in all the schools of ignorance, vice, and idleness." "Our position upon the Pacific, our commercial and mineral attractions, would bring swarms of this population to our shores. Already we have almost every variety of human race among us; a heterogeneous mass of human beings, of every language, and of every hue. That period is rapidly approaching, when the natural increase of population in the States East of the Rocky Mountains will render Slave labor of little or no value, and when investments in that species of property will cease to be remunerative. If measures are not early taken by this State, Slaves will be manumitted in the Slave States, and contracts made with them to labor as hireling for a given number of years, and they will be brought to California, in great numbers. Our State is now in a position to take an efficient stand upon this subject. A few years’ delay will make it almost, if not quite, impossible to do that which can be so easy accomplished now. If California will take a decided stand now, and firmly maintain it, a few years’ experience will demonstrate the practical utility of the measure. That weak and sickly sympathy – that misplaced mercy – that would hesitate to adopt a salutary measure to-day, but would suffer all the inevitable consequences of to-morrow, may consider the policy I propose as harsh in its character; but if it is calculated to produce the greatest good to the greatest number, it is the best humanity." "It could be no favor, and no kindness, to permit that class of population to settle in the State under such humiliating conditions, although they might think otherwise; while it would be a most serious injury to us. We have certainly the right to prevent any class of population from settling in our State, that we deem injurious to our society. Had they been born here, and had acquired rights in consequence, I should not recommend any measures to expel them. They are not now here, – except a few in comparison with the numbers that would be here, – and the object is to keep them out. I, therefore, call your most serious attention to this subject, believing it to be one of the first importance."
• wsc981 5y ago
  I'm convinced we're already living in a period of hyperinflation or we're very close. Governments can be quite creative in hiding actual inflation numbers (e.g. by not taking house prices or stock prices into the equation). Once people realise what's happening with their income and savings, perhaps there might start a large movement towards crypto currencies. Also, with crypto ETFs available soon, I suspect institutional investors will also want to divert part of their holdings into crypto, if legally possible to do so.
  • Nevermark 5y ago
    While I am familiar with many useful (or potentially useful) properties of different cryptocurrencies, avoiding investment crashes is most definitely not one of them.
  • diob 5y ago
    We are, it's just that the inflation is only noticeable in assets at the upper tier (housing, stocks, high end electronics, etc). No one is too interesting in buying up all the food, so there hasn't been immense inflation seen there. But I always find it funny that after the money printing in 2008 folks say there was no inflation. Yeah, not in everyday goods that the common folk would notice. But it's getting harder and harder for them to not notice the immense inflation on non everyday assets. The common folk are starting to realize it's impossible to make investments, they've effectively been priced out. I can't imagine it's going to end well.
  • inglor_cz 5y ago
    If this happens, expect a War on Crypto. The militarized police units already need new enemies, as MJ is being legalized all over the U.S.
  • throw_m239339 5y ago
    The first part of your comment is true. The second part of your comment is unrealistic. "Crypto" trading in general is one law away from being banned by every single government on the planet. If the dollar crashes, the Federal government will absolutely go after crypto trading.
• Synaesthesia 5y ago
  As economist Michael Hudson explains, banks will lends as much as they are able to, and that pushes property prices up. They're now 40-50% of income in places like San Francisco and New York. Paying more for housing means less for other expenses, so it's a net drain on the economy. If we can lower costs to people the economy could be more competitive.
• foolfoolz 5y ago
  unpopular opinion: house prices are high because people can afford them. of my friend group who are all in the early thirties age range nearly everyone owns a home. pay has gotten so high that you can get a starter home for ~$1.5M and live comfortably. it’s just concentrated to specific jobs. i hire engineers straight out of school who are making 3x compared to me a little over a decade ago. the prices still have room to go up
  • scottcodie 5y ago
    People with top paying jobs are still able to afford houses, thats nothing new. The problem is that there is a growing proportion of people that cannot.
    • scruple 5y ago
      > The problem is that there is a growing proportion of people that cannot. As housing prices rise at a faster rate than their annual earnings they watch their ability to ever own a home get further and further away from them.
  • skybrian 5y ago
    Because some people can afford them. We shouldn’t assume software engineers are typical.
  • silisili 5y ago
    This comment is so out of touch with reality I felt compelled to reply, to paint a realistic picture. Pay has gotten so high for one tiny group of people in one or two areas they can afford high housing prices. The most common profession in the US is a truck driver. The largest employer, I believe, is Walmart. In a segregated bubble, this would work. Hell, it's worked for a few decades. The problem now are the people who relied on 'cost of living high wages (wink wink)' are flexing their money all over the US. And truck drivers and Walmart employees are priced out. No, house prices don't have room to grow. Unless we are trending towards a feudal state, which it increasingly feels like is happening.
• ChuckMcM 5y ago
  I'm always a bit amused at this sort of article. At it's heart it is an attempt by someone who makes their living selling a thing (real estate) to instill a since of FOMO in order to motivate you to buy something now rather than perhaps later. You can't really fault them, it does tend to work. I happen to live in the "red hot" Bay Area and twice wince I've been living in my house its value has gone DOWN year over year rather than up. I have never considered it an "investment", rather it is a fixed cost that I have to pay to live indoors. My parents live in Las Vegas, and that housing market, which has been largely unconstrained, demonstrated exactly what that means. Houses in Vegas for a long time depreciated after you bought them, just like cars. They did that because there was so much new housing being built that you could buy a "new" house for the same price as a "used" house. Guess what, people opted for "new" and used houses needed to sell at a discount if they wanted to sell. One of the truisms for years was the value of a house was intimately tied to its location. This because it was close to jobs, or schools or what not. It is my hope that remote work really takes hold and you can work just as reasonably in a $100,000 house in Missouri as you can in a million dollar house in the Bay Area. That would really create some downward pressure on prices because of simple market dynamics.
  • bombcar 5y ago
    Prices are going up! Buy now before it’s out of control and you miss out! Prices are down! Buy now to get a great deal!
    • DeathArrow 5y ago
      >Prices are going up! Buy now before it’s out of control and you miss out! Prices are down! Buy now to get a great deal! Hurry up and buy now, in a few months a new crisis can come and we'll lose the opportunity to make nice profits.
    • SamuelAdams 5y ago
      Establishing a sense of urgency has always been a common sales tactic.
  • Noumenon72 5y ago
• nickpp 5y ago
  Heavily regulating a market massively constrains supply thus spectacularly increasing prices for in-demand products. Basic economics.
• ArtTimeInvestor 5y ago
  homes cost 5.4x what the average person earns in one year Wow, that sounds insanely cheap from a European perspecive. In Germany, which is the richest country in Europe, the average working person earns €2000 (after taxes) per month, so €24000 per year. Times 5.4 that is €129600. You can only dream about buying a house for that price here. The price of a house is ten times that. Even if it is not in a big city. Am I missing something?
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • k8sToGo 5y ago
    Richest country in Europe? GDP per Capita is much higher in Switzerland. In fact, it is almost double. But houses there are also very expensive. Basically unaffordable if you don't get help from either a second high income or money from parents etc.
    • WildGreenLeave 5y ago
      Switzerland is in Europe, but not in the European Union or the European Economic Area, it is in the Schengen area. So it depends a bit on which list you are taking. Also, parent said it is the richest in EU which of total value (GDP) is correct, but by GDP per capita isn't. But, Switzerland isn't first on the list either if you take GDP per capita because that spot is taken by Luxemburg. (Which is 27th on the GDP list) But parents point still stand, on a median income it is really hard to find a proper place in Europe. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_and_social_rankings_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe#Countries_by_GDP_(nominal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_and_social_rankings_...
      • k8sToGo 5y ago
        Thanks for correcting and educating. Now I know :)
    • izacus 5y ago
      And a house in Switzerland will cost you way north of 1mil CHF at average wage of 60k CHF (5 years of which is 300k CHF which doesn't buy you a shed in most cities). So his point kinda stands.
• acd 5y ago
  Central banks are creating new debt at unprecedented pace in history. That in turn lower bank loan interest rates has increased home prices. More persons can afford a larger home loan.
• throwawaysea 5y ago
  Cheap money (low interest rates) will cause things like real estate to inflate. If you go back 30-40 years, you wouldn’t be able to get a loan with single digit interest rates (https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/historical-mortgage-rates/ https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/historical-mortgage-rates...). It was normal to have to pay 10-15% interest. Purchasing power has also improved over time (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...). So you have more people, who are richer, and have better access to money, competing for homes. Additionally, those same people are able to afford much bigger and more expensive homes that have more features, more safety, more square footage, more everything. Isn’t it fully expected that house prices rise, particularly given the monetary policies that followed the subprime crisis? But leaving all of that aside: if this is a debate about affordability, people can always choose to live in different places with different costs of living if they do not like their current location. That’s what is supposed to happen - a response to prices that then cools demand and causes prices to level off. No one is entitled to live in a high demand high cost of living desirable urban center at whatever price they want, doing whatever job they do. People have to either work harder or smarter to earn more and afford their dream house, or adjust to the realities of life as we all do.
• bartwe 5y ago
  One reason folks can't move to more affordable cities is the companies seem stuck in each others gravity well and keep bunching up in just a few unaffordable spot.
• BirdieNZ 5y ago
  As with all property prices, it is important to distinguish between land value and capital improvements. Land value has been increasing, because land in desirable locations is in limited supply and is not able to be added to (with minor exceptions). This means that land is a monopoly, which is why land-owners are able to extract economic rents from the land far beyond what other investments can afford, compared to the work you put in. There's a fantastic book which explains this, and Scott Alexander's blog has a book review (by someone else) which is an easy summary: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr... It helps explain why we have poverty in the midst of extreme wealth.
  • bombcar 5y ago
    Capital improvements also had a bump up (but it maybe recede) - my fire insurance rider for “replacement cost + code updates” is now almost twice what it was a few years ago - reflecting the increase in building costs.
• stretchwithme 5y ago
  That's how bubbles work.
• TedShiller 5y ago
  Anyone who thinks denser housing will lower housing costs has not been to cities with dense housing.
  • eloff 5y ago
    I have seen this work in Panama City, Panama for one where zoning is almost all high density. Apartment prices have been flat to down for nearly a decade there despite high economic and population growth.
    • TedShiller 5y ago
      Great to hear it worked… in Panama.
      • eloff 5y ago
        What's that supposed to mean. That it can't work elsewhere. Why not?
  • jbjbjbjb 5y ago
    The density adds to the appeal like a gravitational pull towards that city.
• rmanolis 5y ago
  The prices rise because the 1% gets cheap loans from bankers and bankers get cheap loans from central bank that prints money which devalues our wages. In summary, the 1% decrease our wages , they decrease their debt and they increase the prices in the housing market. Value your dollar by stopping printing and the 1% will start selling to pay their debt.
• DeathArrow 5y ago
  If everybody buys houses they can't afford, can't we see the 2008 crisis being repeated soon?
  • ptmcc 5y ago
    The thing is that a lot of people buying houses right now can afford them. The income divide is growing and the gulf between the economic haves and have-nots is widening. The supply of housing, particularly in desirable areas, is still constrained to the point that there are more qualified buyers than not. And the have-nots are locked out of the market entirely. Lending standards are significantly higher than leading up to 2008. Are they still too loose? Debatable. But we are not seeing the flagrant disregard of DTI, abuse of ARMs, and flagrant dereliction of lender due diligence like in the years leading up to 2008. Whatever the next crisis or crash is will look different and have different causes than the last. IMO, that ownership is out of reach for an increasingly large portion of the population will be part of the breaking point, not a death spiral of defaults and securitized junk loans that shouldn't have been issued in the first place.
• simonh 5y ago
  As long as incomes rise faster than inflation, disposable income rises exponentially faster than overall income. Suppose your disposable income is 10% of your total income of 50k, so you have costs of 45k and 5k to spend. Let's say your total income rises by 10%, but your cost of living rises by 5%. You now earn 55k, and have costs of 47.25k (5% increase on 45k spending). Your total income went up by 10%, but your disposable income went up from 5k to 7.75k, that's a 55% rise. More than 5x leverage! I first noticed this early in my working life when a small increase in pay made a dramatic change to my disposable income. This means as your pay and career advances you can devote rapidly increasing resources to the highest priority spending in your life. For a lot of people, especially those with children, that's housing. Since a lot of people have that as a priority, and we're competing for a static or slowly growing housing stock, we're constantly bidding up prices against each other. Yes there are other factors too, like low interest rates, of course, but I think this is the main dynamic driving it.
  • throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Exactly. All the well paid white collar professionals have dumped a fat pile of money onto the housing market in any given urban area. Before you needed to be fabulously wealthy to own real property in Manhattan. Now you need to be fabulously wealthy to own real property within an hour of Manhattan (though there's probably a few edge cases)
• DeathArrow 5y ago
  US government threw $200 billion of taxpayers money in reviving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after a crisis which they helped making possible. By subsidizing borrowing the government is pushing the prices up and making life worse for both the people who have to borrow to get a house and the people who previously didn't have to borrow to buy a house. Also the prices rising because anyone can borrow and letting anyone to borrow whether they can afford it or not will make another crisis more probable. But at least some politicians got votes because they appeared to be siding with "the people".
• efrafa 5y ago
  It’s not just US. I bought a land (950m2) to build a house in 2016 for 38k €, now after just 5 years its value is 110k €. (Nothing has changed since then) My house cost me about 120k € to built in 2017, and now that house (with price of land included) is 350k. (Thats the official quote from bank) And this is in eastern Slovakia, near big city.
• bendbro 5y ago
  Whatever the cause, I'm absolutely sure it has nothing to do with our central bank conjuring 120 billion new dollars per month to buy up mortgage backed securities.
• jillesvangurp 5y ago
  One thing to consider with the housing market is that housing scarcity, which is the driver for this pricing, is partially caused by population increases. However, population growth is predicted to stagnate in large parts of the world, and has already stagnated in some places. Some countries are going to see a shrinking population. Particularly wealthy countries. So, we're used to prices going up forever but what happens when housing demands stops growing and housing supply starts growing due to more people dying than get born? Interesting question to answer if you are making long term investments in real estate. Of course part of the world are still going to have significant growth. I don't have the answer but a good wisdom shared by pilots and system administrators is that everything that goes up must come down.
  • IkmoIkmo 5y ago
    > Some countries are going to see a shrinking population. Particularly wealthy countries. That's not entirely clear. In terms of births it's correct, but at any point in time there's millions of people ready to migrate to wealthy countries if they'd let them, and these countries spend billions a year on all kinds of measures to (except for some), keep most of them out. At the moment it looks like most rich countries such as US/Canada, western-europe etc, will keep growing due to migration from places with birth surplus. Apart from that, we're seeing substantial increases in housing demand simply from preferences alone. The number of single-person households grew by 7x while the population grew by 2x since 1960, for example. The household size (persons) has halved despite household size (square foot) having doubled. Even if we had fewer people, we'd still want to live larger and share our homes with fewer people. That's directly linked to fewer marriages/children etc. In that sense, the drop in births is also correlated with an increase in single-person households and fewer people sharing a home, increasing housing demand, and at least partially compensating the smaller population. In other words, I doubt we'll be seeing any drastic price drops from this demographic change alone, there's too many other factors, some of which correlate in the opposite direction.
• throwawaymanbot 5y ago
  Blackrock.
• IkmoIkmo 5y ago
  So? It's a fact, but why does it matter? You'd think it's obvious: home prices typically dictate affordability, and affordability is what we ultimately care about. But in housing it's more nuanced. Home prices * financing prices dictate affordability. That latter price, to finance (i.e., interest rates), have been dropping for 50 years, making it cheaper and easier to borrow and thus cheaper to afford certain price levels. It's key to focus on these interest rates as the other portion (principal paydown) isn't an expense and doesn't make one any poorer, as it just exchanges cash for home equity, which can be reversed again upon sale. A much easier way to look at this entire discussion is simply to look at monthly fees as a percentage of income. The main fees to look at are either fees to rent the home directly (rent), or fees to rent the money to buy the home (interest rates). Rent in particular is increasing as a percentage of income, but it's much less crazy than some people seem to think. For interest rates it's even been dropping despite increasing home prices. [0] I'm definitely not seeing any data that indicates exponential decreasing affordability which is what we should care about. [0] http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/mortgage-and-rent-affordability.png http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/0...
• black_13 5y ago
  Maybe Charlie Munger can design planned communities for us.
• bgitarts 5y ago
  The numbers in the article seem wrong. The median family income in 1965 was ~$6,900 (https://www2.census.gov/prod2/popscan/p60-049.pdf https://www2.census.gov/prod2/popscan/p60-049.pdf) and the median home price in 1965 was certainly less than $100k, probably more in the area of $25k.
  • Felz 5y ago
    You're not adjusting for inflation, which they are. Still, I have no idea where they're getting their numbers, which seem comically wrong. > Accounting for inflation, house prices have soared by 118% since 1965, despite the fact that income has only increased by 15%. They use the median for that, which seems to have actually increased by 60%: https://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci120a/immigration/Median%20Household%20Income.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci120a/immigration/Media... I'm not sure why nobody else seems to have brought this up- it's a serious flaw in the article.
• wiradikusuma 5y ago
  In Indonesia, Covid affected a lot of people financially. So I thought: * For home-seekers: less buying power -> less demand -> cheaper house * For home-owners: cant afford mortgage -> need to sell -> cheaper house Heck even govt is giving incentives to increase transactions. Why US different?
• cletus 5y ago
  My position: 1. Abolishing landlords is not the answer (I see a lot of people suggest this). Ownership is a barrier. Rental properties are useful. If there are no landlords there are no rentals unless you want the government to be your landlord. Nobody wants that; 2. Investment funds should not be landlords. Landlords should be local to the area. Likewise, no one entity should be allowed to have too much beneficial ownership of housing stock in any one area; 3. Real estate has special treatment for asset reporting. This needs to end; 4. If you own real estate in NYC, for example, then the city and state should deem you a resident of that state for tax purposes and tax you accordingly; 5. Properties without a clear beneficial owner (eg owned through layers of LLCs) should be taxed punitively in property taxes. You can have your anonymity if you really care but it's going to cost you; 6. Residents of trailer parks and mobile home parks should have the right to collectively purchase that park. There is a quite frankly disgusting effort by investors to buy up these properties and then extort the poor people who live on them (eg [1]). This shit needs to be illegal; and 5. This protection should extend to apartment buildings too. This is essentially the origin of the cooperative ("coop") in NYC. Today, coops still account for ~80% of apartments in Manhattan. People have in the last 100+ years gravitated to cities for employment. Cities have a lot of advantages. But this has constrained supply of suitable housing stock artificially. There is a lot of cheap housing in the US still but not where it's useful. My hope is that the pandemic is a catalyst for a change that will allow people to move away from a few urban centers. Having more medium-sized cities in various regions is generally better for everyone. [1]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/what-happens-when-investment-firms-acquire-trailer-parks https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/what-happens-w...
  • namdnay 5y ago
    (6) - what do you mean by “should have the right”? Anyone has the right to buy a trailer park, including The residents.
    • cletus 5y ago
      I mean if a sufficient number of residents support it, they can forcibly purchase the land or building they're sharing as a cooperative. Of course, they should pay market rates for it. Think of it as a private application of eminent domain. As far as I'm concerned, the rights of people to live in the homes they technically own without being extorted by a REIT who owns the land those houses sits on trumps property "rights" of REITs. Worldwide this sort of thing does happen. Example: the UK system of leasehold/freehold.
• baybal2 5y ago
  Is USA becoming China?
• denton-scratch 5y ago
  As I feared, the author doesn't know what "exponential" means. You can't have a thing that's "exponentially faster" than another thing. The title should be "US house prices are rising faster than income".
• cranium 5y ago
  Question for the HN people: how would you bet on house prices going down in a near future ? Let's say you own your house and want to hedge against it losing value, or you are an outsider just interested in taking this side. In the financial market you would buy a put option or short the stock (among other possibilities) but I can't see myself borrowing a house to sell it and buy back when the market is lower. REIT stocks maybe ?
• pirate787 5y ago
  No one is talking about +40% US immigration over the past generation, which is probably the largest single factor in demand for housing.
• mercy_dude 5y ago
  If you thought the housing market in US is bad, wait till you see the housing market in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Netherland… I happen to be unfortunate to be a Canadian who lives in a postal code where housing prices have gone up by 70% within last 2yrs. I am not kidding. When my tech salary isn’t even able to keep up with the housing market growth you have to question the reality of the situation. We made peace we are going to be the forever renter. There is no way we will pay 1.1M for a 2bd condo. A side effect of that is to have to either delay having kids or have no kids at all which is sad but again a reality. I wish I could move to US where at least it is not this out of control. There are still places you can buy in Washington state for 700k. Our liberal government has done nothing but propping up the housing market for boomer votes at the expense of the future of millennials and GenZ.
  • __s 5y ago
    There's a lot of affordable housing in Canada outside the GTA & Vancouver I bought a house at the end of 2014 for 130k in London Ontario. Prices have indeed gone up, worth about 350k now, but that's still affordable
    • mercy_dude 5y ago
      In which postal code you see houses are going for 350k? The average home price in London,Ontario is 624k [0] [0]https://homesforlife.ca/london-ontario-real-estate-market-stats https://homesforlife.ca/london-ontario-real-estate-market-st...
      • __s 5y ago
        N5Z. I'm not afraid to live on the East side Medians are better than averages Lot of houses like this: https://www.remax.ca/on/london-real-estate/199-fairway-avenue-wp_id305831804-lst https://www.remax.ca/on/london-real-estate/199-fairway-avenu... Maybe I could sell my house for 400k. Neat. But there are places below 400k, like https://www.remax.ca/on/london-real-estate/69-marlborough-avenue-wp_id305586581-lst https://www.remax.ca/on/london-real-estate/69-marlborough-av...
• b20000 5y ago
  every time you hear from a realtor or read a site like this it’s “this is a HOT market, buy NOW” … the BS gets pretty tiring. this site is supposedly for the consumer to gain an “edge”, however, there is a big fat “find agent” button in the top right corner.
• Bombthecat 5y ago
  Don't worry! It will get better around 2040!
• superfunny 5y ago
  In America, the size of the median home has increased from under 1,500 square feet in 1973 to over 2,400 square feet today, an increase of 60%. Perhaps that has some impact on the increase in home prices?
  • danans 5y ago
    The size of a house is a secondary factor in the price. The single biggest factor is simply location. The largest price run up has been in cosmopolitan urban locations that are thriving economic and cultural centers, where the size of homes tends to skew smaller, not larger. Also remember that most recently built large houses became larger in part by reducing the quality of construction. The 1990s through 2010s were infamous for that type of construction.
• echopurity 5y ago
  At least all the money printing didn't cause any inflation.
• CosmicShadow 5y ago
  Welcome to Canada
• jollybean 5y ago
  Hyperinflation, they're just afraid to say it.
• kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
  And we are adding 1% to our population each year, making housing that much more scarce even if nothing else changes.
• k2enemy 5y ago
  Unfortunately the article is extremely sloppy with the numbers and that makes it very hard to understand what is really going on. Primarily, they keep mentioning "average house-price-to-income ratio" but appear to be using average home price and median income. Both housing price and income distributions are enormously skewed. In the Unites States average income is almost double median income and that difference has been increasing over time. So right there, even if median house price to median income has stayed constant, you would notice the pattern pointed out. I don't doubt the central premise that housing prices are rising faster than income within household, but unfortunately the article does nothing to show it.
• mensetmanusman 5y ago
  People that think housing prices can never be solved remind me of the infamous we ‘can’t drill our way to lower gas prices’ quote. Well.. it didn’t age well, fracking was invented in the context of a policy framework that only exists in the US, and now America has 7x lower gas prices than the EU/APEC and can’t export fast enough due to liquification capacity. This is to say that there is likely a technology/policy innovation pathway to disrupt this current situation, but people aren’t thinking on a large enough scale yet… and investors, unfortunately, aren’t aligned to fix this because they own existing assets. This means, the policy framework required to fix this tragedy of the commons looks something like making it profitable for investors to make money by 10x’ing the housing supply, 10xing the manufacturing speed, etc.
  • acdha 5y ago
    Do you have a citation on that 7x claim? That’s significantly higher than the <2x for natural gas or <1x for crude oil differences shown on the economic data but it’s closer to what you’d see if you were comparing retail prices without noting the differences in tax rates.
    • mensetmanusman 5y ago
      https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energy/Why-is-Asia-paying-five-times-more-than-America-for-natural-gas https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energy/Why-is-Asia-paying-f... Note: I should have said 5x :$ thanks for asking about a citation!
      • acdha 5y ago
        Here's the long term history and forecasts — it's definitely going to be cheaper but I wouldn't expect 5x to exist on a long-term, especially when you consider the impact of the switch to renewables against the cost of constructing new liquefaction plants: https://www.statista.com/statistics/252791/natural-gas-prices/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/252791/natural-gas-price...
  • Tiktaalik 5y ago
• dzab 5y ago
  Yes, prices are elevated, but nowhere near the point any median price to median income analysis suggests. The flaw in the price to income ratio is the cost of borrowing (interest rates). Most home buyers consider what they can “afford” by comparing their monthly income against their monthly mortgage payment. For this reason, a more accurate way to consider the cost of home ownership is through various affordability indices which take interest rates and other borrowing conditions into account. Calculated Risk [1] and First American [2] do an excellent job of this. A rise in interest rates will likely stifle current home price appreciate unless wage growth offsets this increase at the same time. [1] https://calculatedrisk.substack.com/p/real-house-prices-price-to-rent-ratio-897 https://calculatedrisk.substack.com/p/real-house-prices-pric... [2] https://www.firstam.com/economics/real-house-price-index/ https://www.firstam.com/economics/real-house-price-index/
  • rossdavidh 5y ago
    Well, if any significant percentage of the existing mortgages are adjustable-rate mortgages, then as soon as rates begin to rise, a lot of them will go from affordable to unaffordable, all at the same time. Which ought to sound familiar...
• MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  It's so bad here that you can work your ass off on the national AVERAGE income and the bank still won't lend you enough for a house... Hope your parents have money!
• hourislate 5y ago
  When the government constantly erodes the value of the dollar, what can anyone expect? Money flows into the physical assets (capital preservation). Gold use to be the go to to protect wealth but it couldn't be leveraged to earn anything more than whatever the market said it was worth, housing on the other hand can be rented/leased earning a monthly return (especially with super low interest rates). Just go and try and buy some land 200-300 miles outside of civilization, where it use to costs 10k for a 100 acres, now it's 500k. Anyway, the US has a far way to go before this becomes a problem, other countries like Canada, UK, etc are complete fucked. The average young person is making 50k and a house is 1.5 - 2 million.
• dragonwriter 5y ago
  The national trend they claim is based on new home prices to national median household income, which is misleading (new homes are disproportionately built in “hot” areas and generally targeting the high end of the local market), so a lot of that represents growing local and between localities inequality. The local trends are...unclear in meaning. They use the ZHVI, which should be more representative of housing in general, but its not clear what it is against. They describe rather than cite data, and the description “estimated family income” from HUD doesn't say much—it should be household, not family income, but a bigger issue is it isn't clear what summary statistic of family income their source uses (median? mean? something else?). The local trends
• Mikeb85 5y ago
  Land is scarce, people aren't...
• beezle 5y ago
  From the data I have seen, it does not look exponential. Anyone interested in real estate should check out the CalculatedRisk blog (or substack for only realestate). Guy has been doing this stuff for a very long time. https://calculatedrisk.substack.com/p/real-house-prices-price-to-rent-ratio-897 https://calculatedrisk.substack.com/p/real-house-prices-pric...
• danschumann 5y ago
  Does pay within the housing industry go up with home prices?
• nemo44x 5y ago
  A whole article discussing housing costs and no mention of how interest rates falling for 40 years has contributed to this. Inflation adjusted the monthly payment for a home is about what it was 40 years ago in most places. Jack interest rates up to 10% and suddenly everything will look cheap and those income to price ratios will drop, but the monthly payment will be the same.
  • pixelatedindex 5y ago
    I disagree that interest rates play that much of a major role - if a house is worth 100k, a 10% interest is pretty affordable. If the house is worth 1M, it becomes so unattainable that the interest rate isn’t the deciding factor.
  • JamesBarney 5y ago
    I think this is one of the reasons Texas has remained affordable.(that and less anti development regulations) We have a high property tax which dampens the effects of interest rate changes on property value.
    • nemo44x 5y ago
      Texas has infinite space and builds builds builds. Also, most of Texas is not attractive to most people. But the places that are have built out more and more. There are plenty of spaces inside these desirable locations that aren’t affordable though.
  • adam_arthur 5y ago
    That's not true. Inflation adjusted home prices are at a massive all time peak, higher than the 2000s housing bubble. https://cdn.dqydj.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/median-home-price-us-1951-may-2021.png https://cdn.dqydj.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/median-home... Of course, as you mentioned, this doesn't normalize for interest rates, so some could argue housing is still fairly valued. But what about when rates rise? It will be interesting to see how it trends, and whether the move to a more uniformly geographical spread of population becomes inflationary or deflationary. There are strong arguments for both sides, but it will come down to the weighting of those variables. It seems to me the short term impact will be inflationary, but longer run impact deflationary.
• nostrademons 5y ago
  Note price-to-income ratios worldwide, by country: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_count... And by city: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings.jsp You have to scroll very far down to get to any U.S city. Price-to-income ratios in top Chinese cities are about 40; ratios in top Californian cities are about 8. Much of this is because of Federal housing policy that's very deliberately designed to subsidize homeowners. America has a cultural belief dating to the immediate post-WW2 period that everybody should be able to own a house; this is unique to this period and country. In most other countries (and time periods throughout history), there is a landlord class and a renter class. This trend, if not explicitly reversed, has a long way to run.
  • freddie_mercury 5y ago
    It isn't unique at all to post-war America. I live in Vietnam and it is exactly the same here and always has been. Just go to Wikipedia's page on home ownership by country and you'll see that pretty much every country is the same. People think they should be able to own their own house. It's a human thing. The US isn't even in the top 40 when it comes to home ownership rates.
    • honkdaddy 5y ago
      I think there's a big difference between home ownership and house ownership, no? The quintessential American Dream usually involves owning a house with a lawn and a garage. This is the type of living with I think is less accessible to the middle class in the rest of the world, even countries with high home (apartments, typically) ownership rates like Romania, but Americans and Canadians like myself grew up believing was expected with a middle class income.
  • jeabays 5y ago
    > In most other countries (and time periods throughout history), there is a landlord class and a renter class. And we hope more go the path of land reform, destroying the parasitic landlord class and returning property to the people.
• fasteddie31003 5y ago
  You really need to look at your salary as how many years does it take to buy an average house in your area. It makes your 6 figure salary look a lot less if you look to the past. My parents bought a $150k house in the 80's when they had a combined income of $50k. That's only 3x annual income to house. That same house is probably going for $500k now. I'd say a family in that area might have a combined income of $100k now. That means the house costs 5x the annual income to house now. This trend is not great. Inflation is the silent tax that working folks need to deal with everyday.
  • linuxftw 5y ago
    In 1985, the average 30 year mortgage interest rate was 13.5%. A $150k house paid off exactly on time would have cost $618k total. This would also be a 41% debt to income ratio for a $50k income. A $500k house today with a 30 year mortgage at 2.5% paid off on time will have paid $711k total. With only a $75k salary, this would be a 31% DTI. Granted, taxes an insurance are going to be more now than they were then, but housing doesn't seem significantly more expensive.
    • endisneigh 5y ago
      doesn't seem like a great comparison as you can refinance.
      • SmellTheGlove 5y ago
        In 1985 you weren't going to refinance to 2.5%. It's a valid comparison at two points in time, I think.
        • endisneigh 5y ago
          the point is that even after just 10 years you could've changed your interest rate to be just a third. If you take the lowest possible interest rates for each year in the 30 year period it would be much closer to the rate now than the rate then.
• mindvirus 5y ago
  Do broker fees and taxes drive this as well? In NYC, there's a 6% broker's fee, and another 2% in taxes - and some buildings charge another 1-2% flip fee. So transaction costs eat 10% of the value, meaning people need at least a 10% appreciation to cover for this. At the very least this leads to a much less liquid market, but I could see it leading to run away price increases as everyone tries to break even.
• web2sucks 5y ago
  It’s rising because government made it difficult to make new homes. It’s the California government and climate change activists that are making it difficult to build homes.
• polskibus 5y ago
  My bet is that offshore money is now flowing into housing en masse. Not just ordinary rich people trying to escape inflation, it's the offshore-rich establishment trying to own even more of the world.
• ineedasername 5y ago
  I'd like to see how much these #s are distorted by extremes, especially at the upper edge. I'm guessing the median would be lower than the average. It would be very interesting if they re-ran these #s but excluded the top & bottom 10% of homes along with the top & bottom 10% of incomes. I think it's extremely likely we'd still see a significant gap, but possibly one that is much smaller. Anecdotally, I know the house I mostly grew up in only appreciate by about 18% accounting for inflation, compared to a wage increase of about 14% for the same period of time. As for right now, we're seeing rising prices partly due to urban flight, specifically from cities that were epicenters of covid infections but in general as WFH becomes much more acceptable. My workplace was 100% "no, never, not at all" on WFH for the past decade. When given no choice though, things worked alright, and that stance is now untenable in this job market, so there is now a very accommodating policy, making it much more tenable for people to move an extra 45-90 minutes away where housing is cheaper. That has the effect of raising prices in those areas though.
• ok123456 5y ago
  Mao was right.
• johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
  Not just in the U.S. A house around the corner from me was listed for $350,000 CAD. It was an absolute dump. Looked like your typical crack house. Completely falling apart and abandoned. The area is half decent though, and a friend of mine was looking to move here recently, with a budget of $400k. So I suggested this house to him. Apparently the house sold for $640,000 CAD. Almost double the asking price. For a teardown that's going to cost another $300,000 to turn into a decent house. I could not believe it. That same house would have sold for $50,000 in this area 10 years ago.
  • cma 5y ago
    What about 13 years ago? 10 years ago was nadir of the global financial crisis and housing crash (~13, bubble peak).
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• exabrial 5y ago
  Just ran into an interesting scam landlords are pulling. It used to be 30 days notice to vacate. Landlords are pumping this up to 60-90 days in their rental agreements. They hide this in a 20 page leasing agreement then hammer their residents when they try to move. In a free market, this wouldn't be an issue: renters would tell landlords to eat crap and walk. But there are two major issues: first, housing is a tightly regulated market controlled by a cartel of realtors who have lobbied to pass multiple laws to prevent people from selling their houses "without a realtor". The second is a series of leasing Cartels that all collude to use the same lease, giving renters very poor choice. Here's the thing: in this market, there is no way in hell you can tell a buyer we'll close in 60+ days. This further exacerbates the housing market traffic jam, meanwhile the landlords and realtors are the only ones winning. The only way out to is de-regulate the absolute crap out the market and releasing the market from the cartels that control it.
  • seattle_spring 5y ago
    While I agree it's a scummy landlord tactic, I don't buy that this affects anyone's ability to purchase a home in any way whatsoever. If you can't afford a one month overlap of rent then you cannot afford a home, period. Further, most people overlap anyway so they can make sure the new home is situated before filling it with stuff.
• bacan 5y ago
  Seems doubtful. Last i heard Zillow was selling houses at loss
• fleddr 5y ago
  Some perspective from the Netherlands... We've had more demand than supply since WW2. Which follows that price will be as high as the people can afford at a maximum. And with "people", I mean not the general people. If supply is low, you only need a small subset of people to be able to afford a house. I want to stress how the supply/demand dynamic is leading, and how a lot of well intended policy has a counter productive effect. For example, when we bought a house 20 years again, there was whopping 8% "transfer tax". That's tends of thousands of EUR in pure tax. The government figured that it would make housing more affordable by reducing this tax to 2%, and sometimes 0. The market immediately seizes this extra price room. Hmmm, another try. Old people have capital and it should be possible for them to transfer a tax free amount to their children, to aid in purchasing a house. The market immediately seizes this extra price room. An idea not yet executed is to raise the standard mortgage period from 30 years to 40 years. I think you can guess what that will do to prices. It's not an issue you can fix with a tax tweak. You can't even fix it with the nuclear option of drastically increasing interest rates. I repeat: If supply is low, you only need a small subset of people to be able to afford a house. You can raise it to 10%, it doesn't matter. Increasing supply is very difficult and no permanent solution in already dense areas, which is why I believe managing demand is the answer. We should stop organizing society around these "black hole" cores of very crowded countries or cities.
• lifeplusplus 5y ago
  Regulatory hijacking in NYC is one cause, Uber and Lyft are required to charge more
• drnonsense42 5y ago
  I’m aware this is not the only issue, but we’ve really jumped the shark by letting private equity and tech companies prey on private home prices. We’re turning into a set of case studies for future societies as our candle snuffs out. Entrepreneurs are no longer rewarded - the great spoils belong to speculators and the vampire class.