3 ms·
The comparison between the Bay Area and Atlanta is interesting. “There is essentially zero correlation - the metros with the largest rent increases had added po
by s1mon 4y ago
The comparison between the Bay Area and Atlanta is interesting. “There is essentially zero correlation - the metros with the largest rent increases had added population / added housing ratios no different than metros with smaller rent increases.”
What this seems to be leaving out is the lack of much of an escape valve in the Bay Area. Where there’s density, there could be more - with zoning changes and years of red tape. Where there’s little density, geography is against much of anything. You have serious hills/mountains, the bay and the ocean dividing things up. Where there’s land with little or no housing, there’s no drinking water and/or regulations against building and/or those areas aren’t very well connected.
Atlanta seems to be one gigantic sprawl that steadily transitions from relatively low density urban to suburban. If you can’t afford/find housing in the metro proper, just go a few miles further out.
- ceeplusplus 4y agoHalf the peninsula is forests and grass fields with nothing there. You can't be serious? There's huge NIMBYism preventing those areas from being developed.
- tjr225 4y agoNothing but pristine natural beauty? Did you think this comment through?
- stevenwoo 4y agoSomeone owns that open space land. It cannot be developed unless one buys out the owners like San Francisco Water District (most of the open space visible on 280 for a long stretch is Crystal Springs Reservoir and the drainage into it even though a lot of the water comes from far away like Hetchy Hetch.) or the Mid Peninsula Open Space District or Santa Clara Water District (several large reservoirs and the drainage into them are only for recharging the underwater aquifers - if one builds over it, the reservoirs do not recharge and subsidence will be much worse like the Central Valley) or park land. The NIMBYism is people preventing high density development in places like Palo Alto.
- asdff 4y agoIMO why is the author leaving out the elephant in the room which is jobs? Who rents these apartments that go higher and higher in SF? people with jobs who can afford them. All of it is dependent on jobs. Prices are as high as what the wages of the local job market may bear. If houses cost a lot, its because there are a lot of high earners in the local economy buying them and affording to put in offers at these prices. Likewise with rent. When you compare these metros and see similar growth but dramatically different prices, it does seem perplexing, until you consider the jobs. Median income is twice as high in SF than atlanta. That means there are more workers who are paid high enough wages to afford higher rents in SF, and landlords are pricing accordingly. In Atlanta there are fewer of these workers, and at a certain point it becomes difficult to price an apartment so high and still pull in prospective tenants as quickly as you'd like. As atlanta adds more high income jobs and fewer units of housing though, expect prices to rise in response and the low income workers more commonly pushed to the fringes or on top of eachother in overcrowded conditions.
- LegionMammal978 4y agoThe last big section of the article is dedicated specifically to this idea: > But there are other economic relationships that might have similar effects. One of these is income level - as incomes rise, demand curves shift to the right, which (all else being equal) should also cause an increase in prices. So we should expect an increase in housing prices to be partly driven by rising incomes, especially when the supply is fairly inelastic (as it is for housing.)