4 ms·

Okay, if that’s the case - why isn’t that happening, and what should be done to make it happen?

gwright 4y ago
You need competition, which means you need developers to add more housing units, which means you need to change the regulations that prevent that from happening. Problems in real-estate are almost always government created IMHO and not "capitalism".
- User23 4y ago
  There are plenty of housing units in the USA. Housing is extremely affordable in parts of many major American cities such as Detroit and Baltimore to name just a couple. For example you can buy a house in lovely Baltimore for under $25,000 in a neighborhood with amenities like a walkable park, and tennis and basketball courts[1]. The complaint is never really "housing isn't affordable," it's more along the lines of "I can't afford to live in the most desirable coastal real estate in the entire world" or "I can't afford to live in a safe place with a good school district" (a classism/racism dog whistle if ever there was one). [1] https://livebaltimore.com/neighborhoods/madison-eastend/ https://livebaltimore.com/neighborhoods/madison-eastend/
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Ah, yes, I found that $25k house in Baltimore... https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2011-E-Lafayette-Ave-Baltimore-MD-21213/36453994_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2011-E-Lafayette-Ave-Balt... I see some 'houses' in the area that you're looking at for $130k, built in WWII and likely have heating bills high enough to bankrupt the wealthy unless the place is ripped apart and modern insulation is put in.
  - mathgorges 4y ago
    As a native Detroiter I can confidently tell you that any house you can get for $25,000 will come with externalities that will make the house undesirable on balance. Large back tax bill, lack of city services (e.g. if live in Springwells, good luck getting a reasonable response time from Detroit PD if you're being burgled) and an unsafe transit situation are the most common ones I can think of. The houses are cheap for a reason. Its not as though Detroit is filled with provincial oafs that don't know what they're selling.
- arrosenberg 4y ago
  What stops the new units from being added to the cartel? Cartel members would be the best positioned to acquire them. The government enforces capitalism laws (rather than socialist or chartalist) so how do you distinguish?
  - gwright 4y ago
    What are "capitalism laws"? My point is that the government is preventing the transactions. Doesn't matter if we are talking about a republic, a parliamentary system, a monarchy, a socialist country, authoritarian, feudal, local gangs, organized crime, etc. It requires power to prevent voluntary transactions and that comes in lots of flavors.
    - arrosenberg 4y ago
      I misspelled capitalist - defined as laws that benefit those with capital. My point is you are distinguishing between government and capitalism - capitalism is an attribute of the government and power structure. The people with capital are the ones preventing the transactions (to their own benefit of course).
      - gwright 4y ago
        > capitalism is an attribute of the government and power structure I don't think that is a common formulation of the idea of "capitalism".
        arrosenberg 4y ago
        Enlighten us then? What is the common formulation according to you?
        topaz0 4y ago
        Marxist analysis isn't that rare in my experience.
  - scatters 4y ago
- skrtskrt 4y ago
  the end state of capitalism is just companies big enough to regulate competition out of existence. Capitalism does not mean free market.
- drewcoo 4y ago
  > Problems in real-estate are almost always government created IMHO and not "capitalism". But who buys the government?
scatters 4y ago
NIMBYs. Hopefully the Builder's Remedy upcoming in California will demonstrate whether restrictive zoning is indeed to blame.
gwbrooks 4y ago
More than 40% (2022 data, NAHB research) of the cost of new multifamily development is tied to regulation/permitting/zoning. That number has climbed faster than inflation for some time and is the largest driver of increased multifamily development costs. Want cheaper housing? Make it easier to build housing.
- hakfoo 4y ago
  We have enough housing for the number of people we have. What we have is a complete lack of top-down management to allocate it efficiently. If we combined Soviet economics and modern Big Data, we could solve this easily-- mandate that economic engines are sited where housing gluts exist, and assign out housing to optimize things like average commute length.
  - gwbrooks 4y ago
    > If we combined Soviet economics <<snip>> I think I spotted the challenge.
    - gomizari 4y ago
      That is indeed a challenge, but not an unsolvable one.
- modriano 4y ago
  From the linked curbed article: """One night, on my way home from work, I pushed the wrong elevator button and got out on the floor below mine without realizing it. My key wouldn’t fit the lock to what I had assumed was my door, so I turned the knob and stepped, to my astonishment, into a completely empty, totally untouched one-bedroom. I turned around and beelined to the elevator, worried that I’d get busted for trespassing, when I noticed strips of masking tape covering the door frames on all of the other (presumably empty) apartments on the floor. This was how I became aware of “warehousing,” the practice by which landlords keep unrented apartments off the market to create artificial scarcity. Building owners have always done this, especially in new constructions with lots of virgin inventory, because why give renters the upper hand if they don’t have to? But they really started doing it during the pandemic. On a 2022 episode of the real-estate-industry podcast Talking Manhattan, Gary Malin, COO of the Corcoran Group, made a surprising claim: “At one point during the downturn, the vacancy rate in the city was close to 25 percent,” he said. “You had owners who were sitting on hundreds if not thousands of empty apartments.”""" If there are extremely wealthy entities that can afford to soak up enough supply to meaningfully impact market prices, making it easier to build new housing is likely part of the equation, but it may not be the silver bullet. I don't know how many units are held unoccupied, but as someone from Detroit, I'd advise against letting supply get too far ahead of demand (Context: a major housing surplus developed in Detroit as the population dropped from ~2M in 1960 to ~0.6M today, and this surplus destroyed the value of homeowner's equity and lead to abandonment, blight, and massive arson rates).

You need competition, which means you need developers to add more housing units, which means you need to change the regulations that prevent that from happening. Problems in real-estate are almost always government created IMHO and not "capitalism".

User23 4y ago
There are plenty of housing units in the USA. Housing is extremely affordable in parts of many major American cities such as Detroit and Baltimore to name just a couple. For example you can buy a house in lovely Baltimore for under $25,000 in a neighborhood with amenities like a walkable park, and tennis and basketball courts[1]. The complaint is never really "housing isn't affordable," it's more along the lines of "I can't afford to live in the most desirable coastal real estate in the entire world" or "I can't afford to live in a safe place with a good school district" (a classism/racism dog whistle if ever there was one). [1] https://livebaltimore.com/neighborhoods/madison-eastend/ https://livebaltimore.com/neighborhoods/madison-eastend/
- pixl97 4y ago
  Ah, yes, I found that $25k house in Baltimore... https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2011-E-Lafayette-Ave-Baltimore-MD-21213/36453994_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2011-E-Lafayette-Ave-Balt... I see some 'houses' in the area that you're looking at for $130k, built in WWII and likely have heating bills high enough to bankrupt the wealthy unless the place is ripped apart and modern insulation is put in.
- mathgorges 4y ago
  As a native Detroiter I can confidently tell you that any house you can get for $25,000 will come with externalities that will make the house undesirable on balance. Large back tax bill, lack of city services (e.g. if live in Springwells, good luck getting a reasonable response time from Detroit PD if you're being burgled) and an unsafe transit situation are the most common ones I can think of. The houses are cheap for a reason. Its not as though Detroit is filled with provincial oafs that don't know what they're selling.
arrosenberg 4y ago
What stops the new units from being added to the cartel? Cartel members would be the best positioned to acquire them. The government enforces capitalism laws (rather than socialist or chartalist) so how do you distinguish?
- gwright 4y ago
  What are "capitalism laws"? My point is that the government is preventing the transactions. Doesn't matter if we are talking about a republic, a parliamentary system, a monarchy, a socialist country, authoritarian, feudal, local gangs, organized crime, etc. It requires power to prevent voluntary transactions and that comes in lots of flavors.
  - arrosenberg 4y ago
    I misspelled capitalist - defined as laws that benefit those with capital. My point is you are distinguishing between government and capitalism - capitalism is an attribute of the government and power structure. The people with capital are the ones preventing the transactions (to their own benefit of course).
    - gwright 4y ago
      > capitalism is an attribute of the government and power structure I don't think that is a common formulation of the idea of "capitalism".
      - arrosenberg 4y ago
        Enlighten us then? What is the common formulation according to you?
      - topaz0 4y ago
        Marxist analysis isn't that rare in my experience.
- scatters 4y ago
skrtskrt 4y ago
the end state of capitalism is just companies big enough to regulate competition out of existence. Capitalism does not mean free market.
drewcoo 4y ago
> Problems in real-estate are almost always government created IMHO and not "capitalism". But who buys the government?

scatters 4y ago

NIMBYs. Hopefully the Builder's Remedy upcoming in California will demonstrate whether restrictive zoning is indeed to blame.

gwbrooks 4y ago

More than 40% (2022 data, NAHB research) of the cost of new multifamily development is tied to regulation/permitting/zoning. That number has climbed faster than inflation for some time and is the largest driver of increased multifamily development costs. Want cheaper housing? Make it easier to build housing.

hakfoo 4y ago
We have enough housing for the number of people we have. What we have is a complete lack of top-down management to allocate it efficiently. If we combined Soviet economics and modern Big Data, we could solve this easily-- mandate that economic engines are sited where housing gluts exist, and assign out housing to optimize things like average commute length.
- gwbrooks 4y ago
  > If we combined Soviet economics <<snip>> I think I spotted the challenge.
  - gomizari 4y ago
    That is indeed a challenge, but not an unsolvable one.
modriano 4y ago
From the linked curbed article: """One night, on my way home from work, I pushed the wrong elevator button and got out on the floor below mine without realizing it. My key wouldn’t fit the lock to what I had assumed was my door, so I turned the knob and stepped, to my astonishment, into a completely empty, totally untouched one-bedroom. I turned around and beelined to the elevator, worried that I’d get busted for trespassing, when I noticed strips of masking tape covering the door frames on all of the other (presumably empty) apartments on the floor. This was how I became aware of “warehousing,” the practice by which landlords keep unrented apartments off the market to create artificial scarcity. Building owners have always done this, especially in new constructions with lots of virgin inventory, because why give renters the upper hand if they don’t have to? But they really started doing it during the pandemic. On a 2022 episode of the real-estate-industry podcast Talking Manhattan, Gary Malin, COO of the Corcoran Group, made a surprising claim: “At one point during the downturn, the vacancy rate in the city was close to 25 percent,” he said. “You had owners who were sitting on hundreds if not thousands of empty apartments.”""" If there are extremely wealthy entities that can afford to soak up enough supply to meaningfully impact market prices, making it easier to build new housing is likely part of the equation, but it may not be the silver bullet. I don't know how many units are held unoccupied, but as someone from Detroit, I'd advise against letting supply get too far ahead of demand (Context: a major housing surplus developed in Detroit as the population dropped from ~2M in 1960 to ~0.6M today, and this surplus destroyed the value of homeowner's equity and lead to abandonment, blight, and massive arson rates).