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Great! Maybe home prices will become affordable for folks looking to enter the market. Although the U.S. needs to get its act together and enable the developmen

Great! Maybe home prices will become affordable for folks looking to enter the market. Although the U.S. needs to get its act together and enable the development of much more housing and automation in the market to make homes actually affordable to folks. I don't want to get too philosophical but I think a big part of the American dream was being able to own a home for you and your family and that is out of reach for so many people right now, in no small part due to NIMBY regulations but also overregulation of processes that prevent automation and more in the industry (among many other factors).

cratermoon 4y ago
What does automation have to do with building more affordable housing?
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  Labor inputs make up a portion of a homes cost, so working to automate pieces of the homebuilding process that would lower that cost would lead to decreased prices
  - 20after4 4y ago
    But couldn't it just as easily lead to increased profits instead of decreased prices?
    - whimsicalism 4y ago
      Not in a competitive market. Small and medium scale development is usually pretty competitive.
- iav 4y ago
  For a typical suburban American home, 80% of the cost is labor and 20% is materials. This rule of thumb even applies in small cases - replacing the floor will likely cost you 5x more to have it done for you vs what the materials cost at Home Depot
tus666 4y ago
> Great! Maybe home prices will become affordable for folks looking to enter the market Well the problem with that is that housing busts are usually associated with rescission (can't buy a house without a job) and rising interest rates (can't borrow the money anymore).
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  Yes, indeed--although weirdly the jobs report out today was quite good (372,000 over the expected 250,000) so this might be a somewhat different type of recession if there is one. But yes, interest rates will rise and make long-term mortgages much more expensive for new borrowers. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/08/jobs-report-june-2022-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/08/jobs-report-june-2022-.html
  - rejor121 4y ago
    I think we might need to rethink what a recession is. AFAIK, we have been in a recession since 2008. IMO we never really got out of it. We will either bust hard and go into an actual depression, or we will forever stave off a true depression by… Working for the same wage for years and years while costs go up and raises only happen to slightly offset cost of living. We’ve been doing that for about 8 years now
    - aetherson 4y ago
      That's crazy talk. It would've been arguably true in 2015 or so. But then we had years of high job growth, high median wage growth, and generally great economic conditions, right up until COVID, and then we actually recovered very quickly from COVID. Like, is inflation high? You bet. Could we go into recession? We absolutely could. Did we have the last 8 years of costs going up and raises only happen to slightly offset cost of living? Absolutely not.
      - rejor121 4y ago
        For all job markets? Or just tech?
WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
Yes, but get ready to go in if that's the case. People waste the opportunity to get in at a lower price since they think it will go down even more when it's going back up. Just remember that you'll be unlikely to buy at the bottom. Just buy when you need to buy and hope for the best.
jseliger 4y ago
There are people working on the automation part—e.g. https://www.buildcover.com/ https://www.buildcover.com/
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  Yeah absolutely! But even people like cover have to work around ridiculous regulations for the type of homes they can create and where they're allowed to put them. If you look at one of the main callouts for benefits, one is "We take care of zoning research, design, permitting, manufacturing, project management, and installation." So 2/6 of these are regulatory related benefits (zoning research, permitting) even for a relatively simple structure that will go in a backyard. Govs need to do much more to enable automation at scale for all parts of the construction process and for all types of dwellings
stjohnswarts 4y ago
I don't think housing prices in popular cities will crash but they might at least flatline

cratermoon 4y ago

What does automation have to do with building more affordable housing?

atlasunshrugged 4y ago
Labor inputs make up a portion of a homes cost, so working to automate pieces of the homebuilding process that would lower that cost would lead to decreased prices
- 20after4 4y ago
  But couldn't it just as easily lead to increased profits instead of decreased prices?
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    Not in a competitive market. Small and medium scale development is usually pretty competitive.
iav 4y ago
For a typical suburban American home, 80% of the cost is labor and 20% is materials. This rule of thumb even applies in small cases - replacing the floor will likely cost you 5x more to have it done for you vs what the materials cost at Home Depot

tus666 4y ago

> Great! Maybe home prices will become affordable for folks looking to enter the market Well the problem with that is that housing busts are usually associated with rescission (can't buy a house without a job) and rising interest rates (can't borrow the money anymore).

atlasunshrugged 4y ago
Yes, indeed--although weirdly the jobs report out today was quite good (372,000 over the expected 250,000) so this might be a somewhat different type of recession if there is one. But yes, interest rates will rise and make long-term mortgages much more expensive for new borrowers. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/08/jobs-report-june-2022-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/08/jobs-report-june-2022-.html
- rejor121 4y ago
  I think we might need to rethink what a recession is. AFAIK, we have been in a recession since 2008. IMO we never really got out of it. We will either bust hard and go into an actual depression, or we will forever stave off a true depression by… Working for the same wage for years and years while costs go up and raises only happen to slightly offset cost of living. We’ve been doing that for about 8 years now
  - aetherson 4y ago
    That's crazy talk. It would've been arguably true in 2015 or so. But then we had years of high job growth, high median wage growth, and generally great economic conditions, right up until COVID, and then we actually recovered very quickly from COVID. Like, is inflation high? You bet. Could we go into recession? We absolutely could. Did we have the last 8 years of costs going up and raises only happen to slightly offset cost of living? Absolutely not.
    - rejor121 4y ago
      For all job markets? Or just tech?

WheelsAtLarge 4y ago

Yes, but get ready to go in if that's the case. People waste the opportunity to get in at a lower price since they think it will go down even more when it's going back up. Just remember that you'll be unlikely to buy at the bottom. Just buy when you need to buy and hope for the best.

jseliger 4y ago

There are people working on the automation part—e.g. https://www.buildcover.com/ https://www.buildcover.com/

atlasunshrugged 4y ago
Yeah absolutely! But even people like cover have to work around ridiculous regulations for the type of homes they can create and where they're allowed to put them. If you look at one of the main callouts for benefits, one is "We take care of zoning research, design, permitting, manufacturing, project management, and installation." So 2/6 of these are regulatory related benefits (zoning research, permitting) even for a relatively simple structure that will go in a backyard. Govs need to do much more to enable automation at scale for all parts of the construction process and for all types of dwellings

stjohnswarts 4y ago

I don't think housing prices in popular cities will crash but they might at least flatline