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The reasons we don’t have enough homes is because governments have made it illegal to build enough new homes to meet demand. You are essentially say that the p

The reasons we don’t have enough homes is because governments have made it illegal to build enough new homes to meet demand. You are essentially say that the presence of car collectors leads to car shortages.

firecall 4y ago
Those things are not the same though! Cars and Houses do not perform in the same way financially. Houses tend to increase in value, Cars tend to decline in value. There are, of course, outliers in both markets.
- imtringued 4y ago
  Houses wear down just like cars. They behave exactly the same way.
- dgoldstein0 4y ago
  > Houses tend to increase in value, Cars tend to decline in value. this is an observation that may be mostly supported by data right now, but also is not super meaningful. WHY do houses appreciate? why do cars depreciate? The answer is supply and demand: supply of housing is far more regulated than supply of cars - height limits and zoning are frequent reasons, but any sort of building approval process with unnecessary hurdles can increase supplier risk and cost. Most of these processes aren't set up with demand in mind. whereas if you are an automaker and want to churn out another 10000 cars, there's no laws stopping you (fuel efficiency / emissions requirements notwithstanding). The problem with houses is that since a large portion of the population thinks they are investments, anything that would increase supply would devalue their investment, so fixing the regulations around them is a political quagmire. I suppose cars, as machines, also have increasing maintenance costs over time. the same is true of houses, just over a much longer timescale... if houses depreciated instead of appreciated, we might see more torn down after 30-50 years rather than always repairing everything. Certainly the tradeoffs would start to look different.
  - dboreham 4y ago
    Houses are basically NFTs <ducks>
    - endgame 4y ago
      In what way? The public registry of who owns what? The long transaction times? The high transaction fees? The rampant speculation beyond any sensible value? The "buy now or be forever poor" messaging?
- QIYGT 4y ago
  > Houses tend to increase in value They don't have to. This happens when an area gets popular and zoning regulations don't allow enough new supply to meet the demand.
- BenFranklin100 4y ago
  Sorry, but no. Land sometimes appreciate in value. The homes built on the land nearly always depreciate in value. And when land appreciates in value (aka by being near schools, hospitals, and well-paying jobs), we distribute the higher cost of the land among multiple homes by building taller, denser types of housing. This is presently illegal in much of the US however.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    Many SFH's here in Seattle are being torn down to build multiple 3 story town homes with no yards and rooftop decks (I live in one). They still go for a million, but there are plenty of people here with that purchasing power to buy them. Still cheaper than a 2 bedroom apartment in Beijing.
    - BenFranklin100 4y ago
      Yep, tell me about. Part of the reason is that the market is still out of whack from decades of under-building. However, the bigger reason is that new homes have always been relatively expensive. The construction costs have to be immediately recouped for one thing, and they’re often located in more desirable areas. The beauty of new homes is that they give the Amazon tech bro something to buy instead of coming into your neighborhood and bidding up the price of the older homes. That’s the good things about new homes: They help keep old homes cheaper.
      - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
        > Part of the reason is that the market is still out of whack from decades of under-building. In the USA, anyways, many people left the home construction industry after the 2008 crash, and didn't come back when things picked up again. That means...no apprentices were trained up, experience was lost, etc...so labor costs have shot through the roof because experience is quite limited. And try even renovating an old home! You get quotes of like $150k just to do a kitchen.
- alvah 4y ago
  Land in desirable areas with permission to build houses on it tends to increase in value. In most cases the house itself is a depreciating asset.
killjoywashere 4y ago
If there was a car-note interest deduction like there is a mortgage interest deduction, you can bet that every car owner would apply pressure to shutter car factories, effectively shifting value to the spare parts market to remain sustainable.
philliphaydon 4y ago
> The reasons we don’t have enough homes is because governments have made it illegal to build enough new homes to meet demand. > You are essentially say that the presence of car collectors leads to car shortages. The price of a old car, a new car, a cheap car, and an expensive luxuary car, all vary greatly. Cars are more or less open for purchase by everyone. Houses a fixed in a location, you cannot pick it up and move it. Let's look at each point. 1) If a house in a street costs $200,000. And you have a ton of money and go online and find the house and for you it doesn't even tickle your bank account. But you want to get some money out of your own country and into another country as a safty net or investment. Or maybe you move to said country and your buying power is much greater than the locals. "Oh, its ONLY 200k? Heres cash" The house next door is like "huh, the market value of this street is 170k and he sold his house for 200k? I'm gonna list mine for 220k" "Oh, it's ONLY 220k? Heres cash" The house next door is like "huh, the market value of this street is 170k and he sold his house for 220k? I'm gonna list mine for 300k" "Oh, it's ONLY 300k? Heres cash" Mean while the locals are like "oh I only needed a 20k deposit, now I need 30, 40... 100... 200k deposit" Locals are getting priced out of their own country. This happened in NZ and Australia. 2) This I don't know how you can dispute. It's a fact that 100 years ago, houses were an asset, not an investment. Why do people need to own more than 2 houses? There are people who own, 5, 10, 30, and even more. There are businsses setup around buying property to rent it out. What has happened is people got into the market early, with houses that cost 100k, 200k, maybe even close to 1 million dollars. And each time they buy and remortgage the house to leverage buying another property, to rent it out, use that to pay the mortgage payments, which in alot of cases rent is MORE than the mortgage. Yet the people PAYING Rent are not in a position to get a loan to buy the same house. You often here "oh just buy a house, because renting you're paying someone elses mortgage". How to you do that when you cannot get a loan to buy the same house? How is it fair? 3) Housing Shortage. 100 years ago, people would buy property, and pay a builder to build a house on it. At some point this more or less got flipped and its builders and property developers who buy property, build a house, then sell it. You do not need governments to build houses to solve the problem. People are simply priced out of being able to build houses. It's MUCH harder to buy an empty lot, and get a loan from a bank to build a house on that lot now. Can governments assist with housing shortages, ABSOLUTELY. But you cannot simply blame the government on the housing shortage aspect because they aren't building enough. There are much bigger issues causing the problem.
lazide 4y ago
Car collectors don’t turn around and rent cars. Thought car rental companies do - and they definitely impact prices for vehicles.
- snerbles 4y ago
  Some car collectors absolutely do rent out their vintage cars, for a variety of purposes including film, ad shoots, events, etc.
  - lazide 4y ago
    And an occasional mansion owner rents out a mansion for everything from movies to porn shoots. That doesn’t impact the normal market though.
- cpufry 4y ago
  it's tough to engage with this kinda stuff i feel like, its either disingenuous or delusional. the brain rot is somewhere else, this is just a symptom.
qualudeheart 4y ago
Care are not investments, however classic cars can fetch high prices with collectors. Housing has become an investment as many of us have discovered the hard way. The government can address the housing crisis by building new housing at scale together with regulations to prevent speculation.
dang 4y ago
Please eliminate swipes and/or name-calling from your HN posts. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Your comment would be ok without that first bit.
- BenFranklin100 4y ago
  Apologies
  - dang 4y ago
    Appreciated! I've followed philliphaydon's suggestion and edited that bit out of both your comments. This way I can mark the moderation scolding off topic and collapse it. Normally I'd never do that without getting your permission first, so if you object, please let me know and I'll put it back forthwith!
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  Can you edit out the nonsense bit from both our comments? I didn’t think there was anything wrong with his comment and think it prompted good conversation.
  - dang 4y ago
    Ok, I've done that. Thanks for the suggestion.

firecall 4y ago

Those things are not the same though! Cars and Houses do not perform in the same way financially. Houses tend to increase in value, Cars tend to decline in value. There are, of course, outliers in both markets.

imtringued 4y ago
Houses wear down just like cars. They behave exactly the same way.
dgoldstein0 4y ago
> Houses tend to increase in value, Cars tend to decline in value. this is an observation that may be mostly supported by data right now, but also is not super meaningful. WHY do houses appreciate? why do cars depreciate? The answer is supply and demand: supply of housing is far more regulated than supply of cars - height limits and zoning are frequent reasons, but any sort of building approval process with unnecessary hurdles can increase supplier risk and cost. Most of these processes aren't set up with demand in mind. whereas if you are an automaker and want to churn out another 10000 cars, there's no laws stopping you (fuel efficiency / emissions requirements notwithstanding). The problem with houses is that since a large portion of the population thinks they are investments, anything that would increase supply would devalue their investment, so fixing the regulations around them is a political quagmire. I suppose cars, as machines, also have increasing maintenance costs over time. the same is true of houses, just over a much longer timescale... if houses depreciated instead of appreciated, we might see more torn down after 30-50 years rather than always repairing everything. Certainly the tradeoffs would start to look different.
- dboreham 4y ago
  Houses are basically NFTs <ducks>
  - endgame 4y ago
    In what way? The public registry of who owns what? The long transaction times? The high transaction fees? The rampant speculation beyond any sensible value? The "buy now or be forever poor" messaging?
QIYGT 4y ago
> Houses tend to increase in value They don't have to. This happens when an area gets popular and zoning regulations don't allow enough new supply to meet the demand.
BenFranklin100 4y ago
Sorry, but no. Land sometimes appreciate in value. The homes built on the land nearly always depreciate in value. And when land appreciates in value (aka by being near schools, hospitals, and well-paying jobs), we distribute the higher cost of the land among multiple homes by building taller, denser types of housing. This is presently illegal in much of the US however.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  Many SFH's here in Seattle are being torn down to build multiple 3 story town homes with no yards and rooftop decks (I live in one). They still go for a million, but there are plenty of people here with that purchasing power to buy them. Still cheaper than a 2 bedroom apartment in Beijing.
  - BenFranklin100 4y ago
    Yep, tell me about. Part of the reason is that the market is still out of whack from decades of under-building. However, the bigger reason is that new homes have always been relatively expensive. The construction costs have to be immediately recouped for one thing, and they’re often located in more desirable areas. The beauty of new homes is that they give the Amazon tech bro something to buy instead of coming into your neighborhood and bidding up the price of the older homes. That’s the good things about new homes: They help keep old homes cheaper.
    - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
      > Part of the reason is that the market is still out of whack from decades of under-building. In the USA, anyways, many people left the home construction industry after the 2008 crash, and didn't come back when things picked up again. That means...no apprentices were trained up, experience was lost, etc...so labor costs have shot through the roof because experience is quite limited. And try even renovating an old home! You get quotes of like $150k just to do a kitchen.
alvah 4y ago
Land in desirable areas with permission to build houses on it tends to increase in value. In most cases the house itself is a depreciating asset.

killjoywashere 4y ago

If there was a car-note interest deduction like there is a mortgage interest deduction, you can bet that every car owner would apply pressure to shutter car factories, effectively shifting value to the spare parts market to remain sustainable.

philliphaydon 4y ago

> The reasons we don’t have enough homes is because governments have made it illegal to build enough new homes to meet demand. > You are essentially say that the presence of car collectors leads to car shortages. The price of a old car, a new car, a cheap car, and an expensive luxuary car, all vary greatly. Cars are more or less open for purchase by everyone. Houses a fixed in a location, you cannot pick it up and move it. Let's look at each point. 1) If a house in a street costs $200,000. And you have a ton of money and go online and find the house and for you it doesn't even tickle your bank account. But you want to get some money out of your own country and into another country as a safty net or investment. Or maybe you move to said country and your buying power is much greater than the locals. "Oh, its ONLY 200k? Heres cash" The house next door is like "huh, the market value of this street is 170k and he sold his house for 200k? I'm gonna list mine for 220k" "Oh, it's ONLY 220k? Heres cash" The house next door is like "huh, the market value of this street is 170k and he sold his house for 220k? I'm gonna list mine for 300k" "Oh, it's ONLY 300k? Heres cash" Mean while the locals are like "oh I only needed a 20k deposit, now I need 30, 40... 100... 200k deposit" Locals are getting priced out of their own country. This happened in NZ and Australia. 2) This I don't know how you can dispute. It's a fact that 100 years ago, houses were an asset, not an investment. Why do people need to own more than 2 houses? There are people who own, 5, 10, 30, and even more. There are businsses setup around buying property to rent it out. What has happened is people got into the market early, with houses that cost 100k, 200k, maybe even close to 1 million dollars. And each time they buy and remortgage the house to leverage buying another property, to rent it out, use that to pay the mortgage payments, which in alot of cases rent is MORE than the mortgage. Yet the people PAYING Rent are not in a position to get a loan to buy the same house. You often here "oh just buy a house, because renting you're paying someone elses mortgage". How to you do that when you cannot get a loan to buy the same house? How is it fair? 3) Housing Shortage. 100 years ago, people would buy property, and pay a builder to build a house on it. At some point this more or less got flipped and its builders and property developers who buy property, build a house, then sell it. You do not need governments to build houses to solve the problem. People are simply priced out of being able to build houses. It's MUCH harder to buy an empty lot, and get a loan from a bank to build a house on that lot now. Can governments assist with housing shortages, ABSOLUTELY. But you cannot simply blame the government on the housing shortage aspect because they aren't building enough. There are much bigger issues causing the problem.

lazide 4y ago

Car collectors don’t turn around and rent cars. Thought car rental companies do - and they definitely impact prices for vehicles.

snerbles 4y ago
Some car collectors absolutely do rent out their vintage cars, for a variety of purposes including film, ad shoots, events, etc.
- lazide 4y ago
  And an occasional mansion owner rents out a mansion for everything from movies to porn shoots. That doesn’t impact the normal market though.
cpufry 4y ago
it's tough to engage with this kinda stuff i feel like, its either disingenuous or delusional. the brain rot is somewhere else, this is just a symptom.

qualudeheart 4y ago

Care are not investments, however classic cars can fetch high prices with collectors. Housing has become an investment as many of us have discovered the hard way. The government can address the housing crisis by building new housing at scale together with regulations to prevent speculation.

dang 4y ago

Please eliminate swipes and/or name-calling from your HN posts. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Your comment would be ok without that first bit.

BenFranklin100 4y ago
Apologies
- dang 4y ago
  Appreciated! I've followed philliphaydon's suggestion and edited that bit out of both your comments. This way I can mark the moderation scolding off topic and collapse it. Normally I'd never do that without getting your permission first, so if you object, please let me know and I'll put it back forthwith!
philliphaydon 4y ago
Can you edit out the nonsense bit from both our comments? I didn’t think there was anything wrong with his comment and think it prompted good conversation.
- dang 4y ago
  Ok, I've done that. Thanks for the suggestion.