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Except that's not true, is it? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ACTLISCOU12420 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ACTLISCOU12420 With the exception of 2021 a

by kodah 3y ago

Except that's not true, is it? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ACTLISCOU12420 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ACTLISCOU12420 With the exception of 2021 and part of 2022 Austin has had plenty of inventory. Texas A&M actually has really good research data on this: https://www.recenter.tamu.edu/data/housing-activity/#!/activity/MSA/Austin-Round_Rock https://www.recenter.tamu.edu/data/housing-activity/#!/activ... For context, I'm from Dallas. The same thing happened there. What were affordable apartments and starter homes went up in price as businesses consolidated there with high paid workers. The metroplex has worked to expand to all available land and yet they still struggle to make houses and apartments affordable.

davidw 3y ago
Those data don't show that there's "enough", just that there are some listings in Austin. Extraordinary claims like "supply and demand don't actually apply to housing" require extraordinary proof.
- kodah 3y ago
  Extraordinary claims like putting something in air quotes that I didn't say are just flat out ignorant. If you look at the table the cost of homes quadrupled over a period where inventory rose substantially. There are incentive systems at play with residences and those incentive systems go far beyond just inventory counts and density is my point.
  - kortilla 3y ago
    Inventory didn’t raise substantially. Adjust it to per capita and you’ll see what it was really like.
zjp 3y ago
7000 listings seems small for a place that has nearly 1 million people in it.
Swizec 3y ago
> With the exception of 2021 and part of 2022 Austin has had plenty of inventory. About 54,000 people have moved to Austin (or been newly born) in 2023. https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/22926/austin/population https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/22926/austin/population ~7000 available listings for 54,000 new residents doesn’t exactly sound like “plenty of inventory”. Do people usually live 7-up in Austin? That’s a lot of roommates …
kortilla 3y ago
This is a terrible analysis. As long as houses are still selling for above the cost of materials and construction, there is not enough housing supply. There aren’t enough tech workers to buy 500,000 $1m homes. So keep building homes until the prices drop to $200k and then maybe there is enough supply. Anytime people have to “compete” for housing, there isn’t enough.
- jjav 3y ago
  > So keep building homes until the prices drop to $200k It is difficult to build a house for less than 200K these days in any dense urban area, so expecting prices to drop to that level is fairly unrealistic unless you're way out in the boonies. > Anytime people have to “compete” for housing, there isn’t enough. Builders don't build houses for fun, they do it as a for-profit business. If there is not enough demand for housing in a given area to drive prices up to a sufficient profit, they just won't build anything there. Builders have no motivation to keep building until prices drop. They want to build wherever prices remain high enough to make a decent profit.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Based on housing prices in rural areas (where land is effectively free, $10k or less for a buildable plot with power and sewage access) the cost to build a detached single-family home is somewhere around 350k. Could you build something cheaper? Almost certainly, but the people who can afford to buy a new home don't want something that is bare-minimum contractor-grade. In the past this was naturally handled by older housing being "handed down" to people as starter homes, etc; but that cycle has been disrupted in many areas.
  - davidw 3y ago
    > that cycle has been disrupted in many areas That cycle is what urban economists call 'filtering'. It's like used cars that lose value over time. The disruption is a severe housing shortage so that even older housing starts getting more expensive and sometimes quite rapidly.

by kodah 3y ago

davidw 3y ago

Those data don't show that there's "enough", just that there are some listings in Austin. Extraordinary claims like "supply and demand don't actually apply to housing" require extraordinary proof.

kodah 3y ago
Extraordinary claims like putting something in air quotes that I didn't say are just flat out ignorant. If you look at the table the cost of homes quadrupled over a period where inventory rose substantially. There are incentive systems at play with residences and those incentive systems go far beyond just inventory counts and density is my point.
- kortilla 3y ago
  Inventory didn’t raise substantially. Adjust it to per capita and you’ll see what it was really like.

zjp 3y ago

7000 listings seems small for a place that has nearly 1 million people in it.

Swizec 3y ago

> With the exception of 2021 and part of 2022 Austin has had plenty of inventory. About 54,000 people have moved to Austin (or been newly born) in 2023. https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/22926/austin/population https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/22926/austin/population ~7000 available listings for 54,000 new residents doesn’t exactly sound like “plenty of inventory”. Do people usually live 7-up in Austin? That’s a lot of roommates …

kortilla 3y ago

This is a terrible analysis. As long as houses are still selling for above the cost of materials and construction, there is not enough housing supply. There aren’t enough tech workers to buy 500,000 $1m homes. So keep building homes until the prices drop to $200k and then maybe there is enough supply. Anytime people have to “compete” for housing, there isn’t enough.

jjav 3y ago
> So keep building homes until the prices drop to $200k It is difficult to build a house for less than 200K these days in any dense urban area, so expecting prices to drop to that level is fairly unrealistic unless you're way out in the boonies. > Anytime people have to “compete” for housing, there isn’t enough. Builders don't build houses for fun, they do it as a for-profit business. If there is not enough demand for housing in a given area to drive prices up to a sufficient profit, they just won't build anything there. Builders have no motivation to keep building until prices drop. They want to build wherever prices remain high enough to make a decent profit.
bombcar 3y ago
Based on housing prices in rural areas (where land is effectively free, $10k or less for a buildable plot with power and sewage access) the cost to build a detached single-family home is somewhere around 350k. Could you build something cheaper? Almost certainly, but the people who can afford to buy a new home don't want something that is bare-minimum contractor-grade. In the past this was naturally handled by older housing being "handed down" to people as starter homes, etc; but that cycle has been disrupted in many areas.
- davidw 3y ago
  > that cycle has been disrupted in many areas That cycle is what urban economists call 'filtering'. It's like used cars that lose value over time. The disruption is a severe housing shortage so that even older housing starts getting more expensive and sometimes quite rapidly.