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Housing is already very cheap in places no one wants to live in. Housing is already affordable in the United States compared to other countries when you compar

Housing is already very cheap in places no one wants to live in. Housing is already affordable in the United States compared to other countries when you compare median house price to median income. If you want to see where the United States is headed go look at London, Vancouver, Paris, etc. As urbanization in the United States accelerates for many reasons, including climate change, I see house prices in desirable areas increasing even further.

nikanj 5y ago
If you want to look at US you should look at EU. Don't compare US to France, compare California to France and Montana to Romania.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  Even if you do like for like the United States is much cheaper than Europe when comparing median income to median house price. Add in the highly subsidized mortgages and it’s a slam dunk in favor of the United States. The housing crisis is a meme basically centered around 15 locales in the states.
  - nikanj 5y ago
    > The housing crisis is a meme basically centered around 15 locales in the states. Yes, because that's where the people are. The housing crisis heatmap is pretty much the US population heatmap ( https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/ ). Houses are cheap in the vast emptiness of the rural US. The EU doesn't really have similar unpopulated areas.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      Ok, compare urban areas then. USA is still cheaper.
      - bradlys 5y ago
        Compare places with equal density is likely a better way to go about it.
        endisneigh 5y ago
        OK, USA is cheaper still. Manhattan, density of 70K per square mile. Levallois-Perret, density of 67K per square mile. Manhattan, $1.5K/sqft median price L-P, $1,177/sqft median price Manhattan median household income - $118,161 L-P median household income - $59,758.46 It's not even close...
        bradlys 5y ago
        Compare those who actually buy though. Comparing raw incomes and real estate prices doesn't make any sense either. Again - a bad comparison. There are many parts of the world that have highly inflated real estate prices compared to average incomes but no one in the median income buys them at those prices. Places like Taiwan and Singapore are even worse by those measures but clearly people can live there... Do you think people in Manhattan on a $118k/yr income are buying real estate? (They're not)
        endisneigh 5y ago
        Ok, use rent, it’s still more expensive. United states is cheaper compared to other countries no matter how you slice it. Why don’t you just accept facts lol. People in other countries have to spend more of their income for housing. Feel free to post data showing how affordable other countries are for their citizens
        naveen99 5y ago
        Are you taking into account property taxes ?
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Maybe eastern half of Montana compares to Romania.
  - harambae 5y ago
    Yeah Montana is actually wildly more expensive than Romania across the board. Some areas (like Big Sky) are on par with other luxury resort areas like Vail or Tahoe. But I see the posters point, the US is larger and more diverse than one European nation.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      Is it more expensive comparing median income to median house price? I doubt it, Romanians don’t make very much.
ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>Housing is already affordable in the United States compared to other countries when you compare median house price to median income. Ditto. As an European I envy how affordable real estate is in the US compared to Germany for example. My US boss at the time had bought a nice big house with a garden in the suburbs of the Dallas-FW area, way cheaper than something similar would have cost in the suburbs of Munich, where our office was. Case in point, most of our US colleagues had big houses in Texas which they owned, while most of the Munich team lived in small apartments which they had to rent. Quality of life is nice in Munich, but the real estate market there is crazy compared how good the US has it.
- razoroccam 5y ago
  You're missing that houses in USA are basically built with wood whereas in EU its bricks and concrete, that makes a huge difference in price.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    The insane real estate prices in some parts of Europe are mostly due (besides the monetary policies, NIMBYsm, regulations, and inherited wealth) to the scarcity of land in that desirable location, and less about the quality of what's built on it. And I'm not even talking about beach front properties in the south of France. Ive seen many old houses for sale in Germany for ludicrous money, that you'd basically have to tear down and build something livable.
  - tormeh 5y ago
    Construction costs are negligible compared to land costs in urban areas. And the cost of land is set by demand.
  - jazzyk 5y ago
    Construction costs have very little to do with current asking prices. It is all about what the market can bear (and it can bear a lot these days, thanks to incessant money printing)
  - missedthecue 5y ago
mcv 5y ago
> Housing is already very cheap in places no one wants to live in. Maybe make those places more attractive to live, to take the pressure off the high-demand places.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >Maybe make those places more attractive to live, to take the pressure off the high-demand places. How? This is a catch-22 that every run down city is trying to solve and can't. People don't move in because the places have no good jobs, investments, infrastructure, teachers and doctors, while the investments, jobs, doctors and teachers don't come there because there's nothing waiting for them there. I've seen the same in Europe. Most good jobs, schools, doctors, etc, are all coming only in the big cities where all the talent is, and all the young talent is moving into the big cities, where all the good opportunities are. Catch-22.
  - mcv 5y ago
    Both sides would have to believe that the other side will show up too. There probably needs to be some sort of guarantee that they will.
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      >Both sides would have to believe that the other side will show up too. The "build it and they will come" fallacy has failed way more times than it has succeeded. Companies know it and employees know it. Only governments and politicians seem to think otherwise when their election is on the line. I've seen it numerous times in my city. Every now and then there's big PR from the mayor and the university rector about how they'll turn $SMALL_EUROPEAN_COLLEGETOWN into a major tech hub, and years later down the line, no major tech companies have shown up. Rinse and repeat every ~4 years, while most grads and companies are moving to the capital city. >There probably needs to be some sort of guarantee that they will. Nobody can guarantee you anything for the future, neither governments nor companies. The only truth is the present we live in and that's why most migration, public and private investments mostly happen in big cities that were already popular and wealthy, while the smaller cities with no investments are dying a long and slow death. It's a rampant and often unfair inequality but that's the sad reality.
scythe 5y ago
>Housing is already very cheap in places no one wants to live in. But this isn't a solution, it's a tautology. If people started moving there, they'd become expensive, too. The population level interpretation is that inflows should equal outflows everywhere, which is statistically impossible unless the government decides where you can live. Who wants that?
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  The increase in prices depends on the amount of demand relative to supply. If all the demand for land in coastal California was redirected to the land in rural Midwest/Northeast, there is so much supply that it would cause a much smaller increase in price. And it very well maybe that there is no solution to the problem of people having to scrimp due to high real estate prices. People may inherently want to compete with each other and agglomerate into highly desirable areas.
  - mrkstu 5y ago
    That would be true if the lot size were the same as the high cost locations and home inventory could be created overnight. In reality, as we are seeing in Idaho, despite large swaths of undeveloped land available, the homes are still skyrocketing in price due to lack of inventory.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      The popular areas of Idaho are tiny compared to vast regions of flat land available in the middle. Of course all of the demand directed all at once without adequate supply will result in price increases. But people incorporate the fact that some places will never have enough supply simply due to lack of sufficient land. In that sense, a house in a popular part of Idaho will always be more than a house in Iowa.
      - scythe 5y ago
        > The popular areas of Idaho are tiny compared to vast regions of flat land available in the middle. This isn't a solution to the cost of living, and in fact it would make it much worse. If people were spread out evenly over Idaho, the cost of shipping goods and driving to work would explode, not to mention power transmission, broadband, sewers, etc. Ascribing the current situation to some "desire to be competitive" which somehow appeared in the past three decades and was absent in 1900, is not compatible with comparisons to our past or other countries' present. Paris has roughly five times the population density of Washington, DC. We're not out of space. We're using it badly. Meanwhile, there are parts of coastal California that aren't even expensive: https://www.zillow.com/homes/Eureka,-CA_rb/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/Eureka,-CA_rb/
harambae 5y ago
>As urbanization in the United States accelerates for many reasons, including climate change Studies actually show the exact opposite. "Rapid urbanization is making people more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, according to a new UN report" [0][1] [0] https://unfccc.int/news/rapid-urbanization-increases-climate-risk-for-billions-of-people https://unfccc.int/news/rapid-urbanization-increases-climate... [1] https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2017/sbsta/eng/inf03.pdf https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2017/sbsta/eng/inf03.pdf
- endisneigh 5y ago
  I’m not seeing the contradiction between your link and what I stated. Your link says more people will go to cities, which will increase demand and subsequently prices. Which is also what I said
  - harambae 5y ago
    According to the link it's because people have moved into cities that they are most at risk for climate-change-based disruption to their lives. "The frequency of torrential rain and storm surges is on the rise in big, densely populated cities like New York, Mumbai and Jakarta, hitting those living in marginalised, informal settlements like slums the hardest." Also, large cities tend to be on the coastal regions -- that's how they first became large cities, by being accessible to ports in many cases. Why would climate change force people out of the Omaha suburbs to Manhattan? I just don't understand the logic here at all, but maybe I'm missing something.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      I’m not claiming climate change will force people to cities, I’m saying climate change will reduce the amount of available places to live, resulting in urbanization of the remaining locales from migrants/refugees of climate change.
      - harambae 5y ago
        Ok, could be. Predicting the future is difficult, though. On most real-estate forums I followed in early 2020 the prediction was that Covid would cause real-estate prices to nosedive and the exact opposite ultimately occurred.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

nikanj 5y ago

If you want to look at US you should look at EU. Don't compare US to France, compare California to France and Montana to Romania.

endisneigh 5y ago
Even if you do like for like the United States is much cheaper than Europe when comparing median income to median house price. Add in the highly subsidized mortgages and it’s a slam dunk in favor of the United States. The housing crisis is a meme basically centered around 15 locales in the states.
- nikanj 5y ago
  > The housing crisis is a meme basically centered around 15 locales in the states. Yes, because that's where the people are. The housing crisis heatmap is pretty much the US population heatmap ( https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/ ). Houses are cheap in the vast emptiness of the rural US. The EU doesn't really have similar unpopulated areas.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    Ok, compare urban areas then. USA is still cheaper.
    - bradlys 5y ago
      Compare places with equal density is likely a better way to go about it.
      - endisneigh 5y ago
        OK, USA is cheaper still. Manhattan, density of 70K per square mile. Levallois-Perret, density of 67K per square mile. Manhattan, $1.5K/sqft median price L-P, $1,177/sqft median price Manhattan median household income - $118,161 L-P median household income - $59,758.46 It's not even close...
        bradlys 5y ago
        Compare those who actually buy though. Comparing raw incomes and real estate prices doesn't make any sense either. Again - a bad comparison. There are many parts of the world that have highly inflated real estate prices compared to average incomes but no one in the median income buys them at those prices. Places like Taiwan and Singapore are even worse by those measures but clearly people can live there... Do you think people in Manhattan on a $118k/yr income are buying real estate? (They're not)
        endisneigh 5y ago
        Ok, use rent, it’s still more expensive. United states is cheaper compared to other countries no matter how you slice it. Why don’t you just accept facts lol. People in other countries have to spend more of their income for housing. Feel free to post data showing how affordable other countries are for their citizens
        naveen99 5y ago
        Are you taking into account property taxes ?
lotsofpulp 5y ago
Maybe eastern half of Montana compares to Romania.
- harambae 5y ago
  Yeah Montana is actually wildly more expensive than Romania across the board. Some areas (like Big Sky) are on par with other luxury resort areas like Vail or Tahoe. But I see the posters point, the US is larger and more diverse than one European nation.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    Is it more expensive comparing median income to median house price? I doubt it, Romanians don’t make very much.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago

>Housing is already affordable in the United States compared to other countries when you compare median house price to median income. Ditto. As an European I envy how affordable real estate is in the US compared to Germany for example. My US boss at the time had bought a nice big house with a garden in the suburbs of the Dallas-FW area, way cheaper than something similar would have cost in the suburbs of Munich, where our office was. Case in point, most of our US colleagues had big houses in Texas which they owned, while most of the Munich team lived in small apartments which they had to rent. Quality of life is nice in Munich, but the real estate market there is crazy compared how good the US has it.

razoroccam 5y ago
You're missing that houses in USA are basically built with wood whereas in EU its bricks and concrete, that makes a huge difference in price.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  The insane real estate prices in some parts of Europe are mostly due (besides the monetary policies, NIMBYsm, regulations, and inherited wealth) to the scarcity of land in that desirable location, and less about the quality of what's built on it. And I'm not even talking about beach front properties in the south of France. Ive seen many old houses for sale in Germany for ludicrous money, that you'd basically have to tear down and build something livable.
- tormeh 5y ago
  Construction costs are negligible compared to land costs in urban areas. And the cost of land is set by demand.
- jazzyk 5y ago
  Construction costs have very little to do with current asking prices. It is all about what the market can bear (and it can bear a lot these days, thanks to incessant money printing)
- missedthecue 5y ago

mcv 5y ago

> Housing is already very cheap in places no one wants to live in. Maybe make those places more attractive to live, to take the pressure off the high-demand places.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>Maybe make those places more attractive to live, to take the pressure off the high-demand places. How? This is a catch-22 that every run down city is trying to solve and can't. People don't move in because the places have no good jobs, investments, infrastructure, teachers and doctors, while the investments, jobs, doctors and teachers don't come there because there's nothing waiting for them there. I've seen the same in Europe. Most good jobs, schools, doctors, etc, are all coming only in the big cities where all the talent is, and all the young talent is moving into the big cities, where all the good opportunities are. Catch-22.
- mcv 5y ago
  Both sides would have to believe that the other side will show up too. There probably needs to be some sort of guarantee that they will.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    >Both sides would have to believe that the other side will show up too. The "build it and they will come" fallacy has failed way more times than it has succeeded. Companies know it and employees know it. Only governments and politicians seem to think otherwise when their election is on the line. I've seen it numerous times in my city. Every now and then there's big PR from the mayor and the university rector about how they'll turn $SMALL_EUROPEAN_COLLEGETOWN into a major tech hub, and years later down the line, no major tech companies have shown up. Rinse and repeat every ~4 years, while most grads and companies are moving to the capital city. >There probably needs to be some sort of guarantee that they will. Nobody can guarantee you anything for the future, neither governments nor companies. The only truth is the present we live in and that's why most migration, public and private investments mostly happen in big cities that were already popular and wealthy, while the smaller cities with no investments are dying a long and slow death. It's a rampant and often unfair inequality but that's the sad reality.

scythe 5y ago

>Housing is already very cheap in places no one wants to live in. But this isn't a solution, it's a tautology. If people started moving there, they'd become expensive, too. The population level interpretation is that inflows should equal outflows everywhere, which is statistically impossible unless the government decides where you can live. Who wants that?

lotsofpulp 5y ago
The increase in prices depends on the amount of demand relative to supply. If all the demand for land in coastal California was redirected to the land in rural Midwest/Northeast, there is so much supply that it would cause a much smaller increase in price. And it very well maybe that there is no solution to the problem of people having to scrimp due to high real estate prices. People may inherently want to compete with each other and agglomerate into highly desirable areas.
- mrkstu 5y ago
  That would be true if the lot size were the same as the high cost locations and home inventory could be created overnight. In reality, as we are seeing in Idaho, despite large swaths of undeveloped land available, the homes are still skyrocketing in price due to lack of inventory.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    The popular areas of Idaho are tiny compared to vast regions of flat land available in the middle. Of course all of the demand directed all at once without adequate supply will result in price increases. But people incorporate the fact that some places will never have enough supply simply due to lack of sufficient land. In that sense, a house in a popular part of Idaho will always be more than a house in Iowa.
    - scythe 5y ago
      > The popular areas of Idaho are tiny compared to vast regions of flat land available in the middle. This isn't a solution to the cost of living, and in fact it would make it much worse. If people were spread out evenly over Idaho, the cost of shipping goods and driving to work would explode, not to mention power transmission, broadband, sewers, etc. Ascribing the current situation to some "desire to be competitive" which somehow appeared in the past three decades and was absent in 1900, is not compatible with comparisons to our past or other countries' present. Paris has roughly five times the population density of Washington, DC. We're not out of space. We're using it badly. Meanwhile, there are parts of coastal California that aren't even expensive: https://www.zillow.com/homes/Eureka,-CA_rb/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/Eureka,-CA_rb/

harambae 5y ago

>As urbanization in the United States accelerates for many reasons, including climate change Studies actually show the exact opposite. "Rapid urbanization is making people more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, according to a new UN report" [0][1] [0] https://unfccc.int/news/rapid-urbanization-increases-climate-risk-for-billions-of-people https://unfccc.int/news/rapid-urbanization-increases-climate... [1] https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2017/sbsta/eng/inf03.pdf https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2017/sbsta/eng/inf03.pdf

endisneigh 5y ago
I’m not seeing the contradiction between your link and what I stated. Your link says more people will go to cities, which will increase demand and subsequently prices. Which is also what I said
- harambae 5y ago
  According to the link it's because people have moved into cities that they are most at risk for climate-change-based disruption to their lives. "The frequency of torrential rain and storm surges is on the rise in big, densely populated cities like New York, Mumbai and Jakarta, hitting those living in marginalised, informal settlements like slums the hardest." Also, large cities tend to be on the coastal regions -- that's how they first became large cities, by being accessible to ports in many cases. Why would climate change force people out of the Omaha suburbs to Manhattan? I just don't understand the logic here at all, but maybe I'm missing something.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    I’m not claiming climate change will force people to cities, I’m saying climate change will reduce the amount of available places to live, resulting in urbanization of the remaining locales from migrants/refugees of climate change.
    - harambae 5y ago
      Ok, could be. Predicting the future is difficult, though. On most real-estate forums I followed in early 2020 the prediction was that Covid would cause real-estate prices to nosedive and the exact opposite ultimately occurred.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]