3 ms·
The price of a house in the middle of nowhere is labor + materials. The closer you get to a population center (where people want to be) it becomes labor + mater
by afpx 4y ago
The price of a house in the middle of nowhere is labor + materials. The closer you get to a population center (where people want to be) it becomes labor + materials + property value, where property value increases non-linearly. At the center it becomes labor + materials + property value + zoning overhead. Zoning overhead grows as more people are involved in the process.
I don't think you'll ever get much cheap housing, unless you build a ton along the periphery of a population center (which people don't want). You'd have to build at least 20% more housing for the price to drop 10%, and most of that housing will be where people don't want to live.
- lazide 4y agoIt’s the freeway fallacy though. Zoning ‘overhead’ is people trying to control perceived negative effects and assert boundaries on what they will and will not accept. Building more freeways doesn’t result in lower traffic for any length of time, because traffic increases based on available capacity in high demand areas. If we put a billion houses on Manhattan (somehow), there would still be ‘in’ and ‘out’ areas with high prices and restrictions, with those high prices driven by managed scarcity. Because being selective is a large part of HOW an area becomes and stays desirable. It’s not possible for one to stay that way for long without some attempt to defend itself, in my experience. Saying ‘prices wouldn’t be high and we could all have what we want if we just got rid of zoning’ doesn’t reflect what is really going on. Now, busting the worst offenders with artificial scarcity, like monopoly/trust busting, could easily have a lot of value as it has gotten over the top in a lot of areas. But frankly, remote work and increasing costs of funding should do a lot of that anyway here soon.