4 ms·

Anyone who believes dense housing will lower rent or home prices has never been to a city with dense housing

kevinburke 5y ago
Buy a single family home, tear it down and construct a fourplex, sell each unit of the fourplex for less than the single family home cost to purchase. Congrats, you have lowered home prices by adding dense housing.
- TedShiller 5y ago
  Ever been to NYC?
  - kevinburke 5y ago
    Yes, New York is expensive because it doesn't build enough housing. Per capita, New York builds less new housing than California (1.8 permits per 1000 residents vs. 2.7 permits), and that's saying something, because California does not build a lot of housing. New construction in NYC is opposed by residents who are opposed to the Manhattanization of Manhattan. Michael Bloomberg significantly downzoned the city while he was in office. Tokyo is even bigger than New York, and you can rent a one bedroom in the heart of downtown for $1,000 a month, because they actually build a lot of new housing there. "New York City issued fewer housing unit permits on a per capita basis than nearly every other large city, including not only fast-growing Seattle and Austin, but also cities that face similar constraints to development. New York issued permits for 40 percent fewer units per capita than San Francisco, half as many as Boston, and nearly two-thirds less than Washington, D.C. New York also lags on other metrics like the net change in the number of housing units." https://cbcny.org/research/strategies-boost-housing-production-new-york-city-metropolitan-area https://cbcny.org/research/strategies-boost-housing-producti...
    - TedShiller 5y ago
      Well there ya go
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    Are you talking about the place that made 40% of the buildings in Manhattan illegal by passing stricter zoning regulations? That NYC?
Ericson2314 5y ago
Dense prosperous cities do attract population inflows, but this validates that they are good places to be. As the world (not US) urbanizes and population growth slows, we could perhaps reach a dense urban equilibrium, but until then cities must continue to grow, even if they are already dense.
jelliclesfarm 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
TulliusCicero 5y ago
Tokyo is waayyyy cheaper to rent in than comparably prosperous/important cities in the US like NYC or SF. It's a metro of 40 million that's nationally important on a level unseen in the US -- it's like you took NYC and SF and LA and combined them all into one megacity. And yet rent prices there are...well, they're still somewhat expensive, but less so than you'd expect, definitely. NYC is more than 2x as expensive as Tokyo for rent: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Japan&city1=Tokyo&country2=United+States&city2=New+York%2C+NY&displayCurrency=USD https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... This is particularly true if you look at the case of a 1 bedroom commuter (not in city center) apartment: $2200 in NYC, $700 in Tokyo. Almost like letting people building housing supply to meet demand actually works.
- DocTomoe 5y ago
  The Greater Tokyo Area (and you have to take the whole area into account when talking about affordable housing) is about 5400 square miles, slightly larger than Connecticut, about 7 times the size of New York City, and still twice the size of the Bay Area. Tokyo "feels" knit closer together mostly because they don't suck at public transport.
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    And has population density of 2,631/km2 compared to Bay Area's 431/km2. What's your point?
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    A large portion of "Tokyo" includes mountainous areas where nobody lives. In any case, even if you expand your NYC search to include nearby parts of Jersey or whatnot, you're not gonna find $700 1br's as a common thing. And then if you look at the Bay Area having a low overall population density but it's still really expensive, it's pretty obvious what needs to happen.
- TedShiller 5y ago
  That’s because Tokyo is not as dense, because he’s also huge by area.

Buy a single family home, tear it down and construct a fourplex, sell each unit of the fourplex for less than the single family home cost to purchase. Congrats, you have lowered home prices by adding dense housing.

TedShiller 5y ago
Ever been to NYC?
- kevinburke 5y ago
  Yes, New York is expensive because it doesn't build enough housing. Per capita, New York builds less new housing than California (1.8 permits per 1000 residents vs. 2.7 permits), and that's saying something, because California does not build a lot of housing. New construction in NYC is opposed by residents who are opposed to the Manhattanization of Manhattan. Michael Bloomberg significantly downzoned the city while he was in office. Tokyo is even bigger than New York, and you can rent a one bedroom in the heart of downtown for $1,000 a month, because they actually build a lot of new housing there. "New York City issued fewer housing unit permits on a per capita basis than nearly every other large city, including not only fast-growing Seattle and Austin, but also cities that face similar constraints to development. New York issued permits for 40 percent fewer units per capita than San Francisco, half as many as Boston, and nearly two-thirds less than Washington, D.C. New York also lags on other metrics like the net change in the number of housing units." https://cbcny.org/research/strategies-boost-housing-production-new-york-city-metropolitan-area https://cbcny.org/research/strategies-boost-housing-producti...
  - TedShiller 5y ago
    Well there ya go
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  Are you talking about the place that made 40% of the buildings in Manhattan illegal by passing stricter zoning regulations? That NYC?

Ericson2314 5y ago

Dense prosperous cities do attract population inflows, but this validates that they are good places to be. As the world (not US) urbanizes and population growth slows, we could perhaps reach a dense urban equilibrium, but until then cities must continue to grow, even if they are already dense.

jelliclesfarm 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

TulliusCicero 5y ago

Tokyo is waayyyy cheaper to rent in than comparably prosperous/important cities in the US like NYC or SF. It's a metro of 40 million that's nationally important on a level unseen in the US -- it's like you took NYC and SF and LA and combined them all into one megacity. And yet rent prices there are...well, they're still somewhat expensive, but less so than you'd expect, definitely. NYC is more than 2x as expensive as Tokyo for rent: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Japan&city1=Tokyo&country2=United+States&city2=New+York%2C+NY&displayCurrency=USD https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... This is particularly true if you look at the case of a 1 bedroom commuter (not in city center) apartment: $2200 in NYC, $700 in Tokyo. Almost like letting people building housing supply to meet demand actually works.

DocTomoe 5y ago
The Greater Tokyo Area (and you have to take the whole area into account when talking about affordable housing) is about 5400 square miles, slightly larger than Connecticut, about 7 times the size of New York City, and still twice the size of the Bay Area. Tokyo "feels" knit closer together mostly because they don't suck at public transport.
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  And has population density of 2,631/km2 compared to Bay Area's 431/km2. What's your point?
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  A large portion of "Tokyo" includes mountainous areas where nobody lives. In any case, even if you expand your NYC search to include nearby parts of Jersey or whatnot, you're not gonna find $700 1br's as a common thing. And then if you look at the Bay Area having a low overall population density but it's still really expensive, it's pretty obvious what needs to happen.
TedShiller 5y ago
That’s because Tokyo is not as dense, because he’s also huge by area.