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https://archive.ph/QNRlh https://archive.ph/QNRlh For anyone who just reads the headline, and doesn't get to the first paragraph: Yes, if the new housing you a

https://archive.ph/QNRlh https://archive.ph/QNRlh For anyone who just reads the headline, and doesn't get to the first paragraph: Yes, if the new housing you are building is an increase in total stock. (I doubt that it's very often not the case, but still an important caveat). If you tear down a high rise to build a mansion, no that won't decrease prices just because you built something new. Again, I realize that this probably almost never happens, but it's important to point out that the thing that matters is the change in stock, not the newness.

aranw 3y ago
I don't know if it's just me but for some strange reason I can never get past the captcha on archive.ph. It just refreshes the page and I can never access the archived version
- archo 3y ago
  Change your DNS - Cloudflare and archive.today do not play nice - (think, David vs Goliath) Search; 2023:'public-dns' Take Control of your DNS - You may also try an archive.today mirror; https://archive.vn/QNRlh https://archive.vn/QNRlh - https://archive.li/QNRlh https://archive.li/QNRlh - https://archive.md/QNRlh https://archive.md/QNRlh - https://archive.is/QNRlh https://archive.is/QNRlh https://archive.fo/QNRlh https://archive.fo/QNRlh - https://archive.today/QNRlh https://archive.today/QNRlh - However, changing your DNS is the answer to this problem.
dangus 3y ago
Yes, great point here. Build all the luxury housing you want. My first cheap slumlord apartment started its life as a luxury building in the 1930s. The problem is when someone knocks down a 3-flat row house and builds a single family home in the same plot of land. Unless we have negative population growth that should never happen (and usually the places where knocking down a house and building an entirely new one makes sense are growing and desirable).
- zbrozek 3y ago
  More often than not this happens because the denser housing predates zoning restrictions. When that building reaches end of life and needs to be replaced, there's little economic choice but to build the single-family home.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    In many (most?) places, you can replace an existing non-conforming/grandfathered use with a new building that's no more non-conforming than the current situation.
    - amluto 3y ago
      As far as I know, where I live, you can do this if the old non-conforming use was destroyed due to a disaster. Otherwise maybe you can ask nicely and get lucky.
aae42 3y ago
Living in a crusty old part of NY, I would argue replacing old appt buildings with new ones, even perhaps with a slight reduction in number of units, could still reduce housing costs....
- joelhoffman 3y ago
  Is there really a significant number of apartments that are vacant due to habitability reasons? I believe there are a lot of vacant units out there even in hot markets, for various reasons, but mostly perfectly livable.
PaulHoule 3y ago
I dunno. When they built a bunch of cottages that rented for $1300 a month down the road from me that made me reconsider the $750 /month that I rent a unit in my other house for. That is, I think seeing high prices for new developments being advertised on signs all over the place has a powerful psychological effect of creating a "level set" and even if it doesn't really drive prices up, I think many people believe that it drives prices up through that mechanism. It might be the triumph of pataphysics (e.g. in my mind the "physics" of the imagination) over economics but in the hyperreal world, pataphysics wins.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  And, while supply is still constraining, landlords can get away with that. But the closer supply gets to being "not constraining", the less ability they have to do that. But, as long as supply is constrained, that will happen no matter what. While a new expensive development can be a trigger, in the absense of that trigger, someone else will realize that they can just raise prices and the market will bear it, so something else will serve as the trigger. The only way to break out of it is build enough that the power to do this goes away. Unfortunately, that is, in many of the most supply constrained areas, a huge, daunting task that will probably take years of dramatically increased development.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    It's not just "get away" with that. I own a farm which has two houses on it. I didn't decide to get in the landlord business, I got into it because the person I bought my farm from built a house for his retired mom. He rented out two units out in it after she passed away and so do I. I am not always thinking "how do I maximize the value of my rental property?" instead it is something that comes to my mind because some kind of event happened. For instance I had a tenant who for some perverse reason didn't want to pay his well-below-market rate (because I hadn't been raising it all this time) and as a result of that we all found out what a great deal he was getting -- only after we got a lawyer involved did this guy realize he's about to paying a lot more to a slumlord for a much worse place. There are a lot of people renting a granny flat or half a duplex or otherwise are not economically maximizing who are very much affected when they see prices advertised that are close to twice what they are renting at. Those people are side-by-side on the market with people who are using software to absolutely maximize what they can charge. But as you point out, for market forces to overcome pataphysical forces (maybe what Thiel calls mimetic?) it will take a big change in conditions. In Ithaca, NY we are building huge amounts of both market rate and affordable housing, enough that the skylines of downtown and Collegetown are completely transformed but it hasn't make a dent in the homeless colony despite a strong effort to get people into shelters and into housing and they are still saying it is the most expensive small city in the US, but for all I know we could be building much more.
pydry 3y ago
It wont increase stock if you tear down a block of public housing that housed 180 and build an apartment block with 160 investments for Arab sheikh portfolios and 40 middle income apartments with a poor door. Until land or property is taxed high enough to discourage hoarding the shortage will only get worse, even if supply trickles up. Housing is supply constrained. As rents and prices go up the incentive to use politics to inhibit further construction also goes up. This is how a hundred residents can turn up to a city meeting in SF and demand that a launderette be declared historic.
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  Housing as investment only makes sense in a supply constrained environment, and, as far as I've seen, the evidence that significant amounts of housing is being held empty for investments (foreign or otherwise) is pretty scarce. It's a popular narrative that doesn't seem to be supported by the data. Build enough, and housing wont' be an investment anymore. As it shouldn't be. That being said, I'm definitely also in favor of an LVT
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
There was an article in NYT (I think) recently that talked about how over the past 50 years or so that there was a reduction in something like 50k apartments in NYC because of people buying neighboring apartments and combining them.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Can't NYC just start rebuilding all the old 1890s tenements and squeezing families of 12 into small apartments without bathrooms or proper kitchens? People need to live smaller.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    Yeah, because of course I was referring to tenement conditions and families of twelve, as opposed to people building 10k sq ft mansions in the city. For reference, this is the article I was referring to: https://www.thecity.nyc/housing/2023/8/24/23843686/100k-apartments-lost-to-house-conversions https://www.thecity.nyc/housing/2023/8/24/23843686/100k-apar...
everybodyknows 3y ago
Another way it won't is if the new stock happen to be upscale vacation condos, ending up occupied only one month a year.
rhino369 3y ago
>>I doubt that it's very often not the case In my UMC area that was formerly MC there are a lot of tear-down rebuilds that trade one single family home for another. They barely increase stock ( though the houses probably have more bedrooms).

aranw 3y ago

I don't know if it's just me but for some strange reason I can never get past the captcha on archive.ph. It just refreshes the page and I can never access the archived version

archo 3y ago
Change your DNS - Cloudflare and archive.today do not play nice - (think, David vs Goliath) Search; 2023:'public-dns' Take Control of your DNS - You may also try an archive.today mirror; https://archive.vn/QNRlh https://archive.vn/QNRlh - https://archive.li/QNRlh https://archive.li/QNRlh - https://archive.md/QNRlh https://archive.md/QNRlh - https://archive.is/QNRlh https://archive.is/QNRlh https://archive.fo/QNRlh https://archive.fo/QNRlh - https://archive.today/QNRlh https://archive.today/QNRlh - However, changing your DNS is the answer to this problem.

dangus 3y ago

Yes, great point here. Build all the luxury housing you want. My first cheap slumlord apartment started its life as a luxury building in the 1930s. The problem is when someone knocks down a 3-flat row house and builds a single family home in the same plot of land. Unless we have negative population growth that should never happen (and usually the places where knocking down a house and building an entirely new one makes sense are growing and desirable).

zbrozek 3y ago
More often than not this happens because the denser housing predates zoning restrictions. When that building reaches end of life and needs to be replaced, there's little economic choice but to build the single-family home.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  In many (most?) places, you can replace an existing non-conforming/grandfathered use with a new building that's no more non-conforming than the current situation.
  - amluto 3y ago
    As far as I know, where I live, you can do this if the old non-conforming use was destroyed due to a disaster. Otherwise maybe you can ask nicely and get lucky.

aae42 3y ago

Living in a crusty old part of NY, I would argue replacing old appt buildings with new ones, even perhaps with a slight reduction in number of units, could still reduce housing costs....

joelhoffman 3y ago
Is there really a significant number of apartments that are vacant due to habitability reasons? I believe there are a lot of vacant units out there even in hot markets, for various reasons, but mostly perfectly livable.

PaulHoule 3y ago

I dunno. When they built a bunch of cottages that rented for $1300 a month down the road from me that made me reconsider the $750 /month that I rent a unit in my other house for. That is, I think seeing high prices for new developments being advertised on signs all over the place has a powerful psychological effect of creating a "level set" and even if it doesn't really drive prices up, I think many people believe that it drives prices up through that mechanism. It might be the triumph of pataphysics (e.g. in my mind the "physics" of the imagination) over economics but in the hyperreal world, pataphysics wins.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
MostlyStable 3y ago
And, while supply is still constraining, landlords can get away with that. But the closer supply gets to being "not constraining", the less ability they have to do that. But, as long as supply is constrained, that will happen no matter what. While a new expensive development can be a trigger, in the absense of that trigger, someone else will realize that they can just raise prices and the market will bear it, so something else will serve as the trigger. The only way to break out of it is build enough that the power to do this goes away. Unfortunately, that is, in many of the most supply constrained areas, a huge, daunting task that will probably take years of dramatically increased development.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  It's not just "get away" with that. I own a farm which has two houses on it. I didn't decide to get in the landlord business, I got into it because the person I bought my farm from built a house for his retired mom. He rented out two units out in it after she passed away and so do I. I am not always thinking "how do I maximize the value of my rental property?" instead it is something that comes to my mind because some kind of event happened. For instance I had a tenant who for some perverse reason didn't want to pay his well-below-market rate (because I hadn't been raising it all this time) and as a result of that we all found out what a great deal he was getting -- only after we got a lawyer involved did this guy realize he's about to paying a lot more to a slumlord for a much worse place. There are a lot of people renting a granny flat or half a duplex or otherwise are not economically maximizing who are very much affected when they see prices advertised that are close to twice what they are renting at. Those people are side-by-side on the market with people who are using software to absolutely maximize what they can charge. But as you point out, for market forces to overcome pataphysical forces (maybe what Thiel calls mimetic?) it will take a big change in conditions. In Ithaca, NY we are building huge amounts of both market rate and affordable housing, enough that the skylines of downtown and Collegetown are completely transformed but it hasn't make a dent in the homeless colony despite a strong effort to get people into shelters and into housing and they are still saying it is the most expensive small city in the US, but for all I know we could be building much more.

pydry 3y ago

It wont increase stock if you tear down a block of public housing that housed 180 and build an apartment block with 160 investments for Arab sheikh portfolios and 40 middle income apartments with a poor door. Until land or property is taxed high enough to discourage hoarding the shortage will only get worse, even if supply trickles up. Housing is supply constrained. As rents and prices go up the incentive to use politics to inhibit further construction also goes up. This is how a hundred residents can turn up to a city meeting in SF and demand that a launderette be declared historic.

MostlyStable 3y ago
Housing as investment only makes sense in a supply constrained environment, and, as far as I've seen, the evidence that significant amounts of housing is being held empty for investments (foreign or otherwise) is pretty scarce. It's a popular narrative that doesn't seem to be supported by the data. Build enough, and housing wont' be an investment anymore. As it shouldn't be. That being said, I'm definitely also in favor of an LVT

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

There was an article in NYT (I think) recently that talked about how over the past 50 years or so that there was a reduction in something like 50k apartments in NYC because of people buying neighboring apartments and combining them.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Can't NYC just start rebuilding all the old 1890s tenements and squeezing families of 12 into small apartments without bathrooms or proper kitchens? People need to live smaller.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Yeah, because of course I was referring to tenement conditions and families of twelve, as opposed to people building 10k sq ft mansions in the city. For reference, this is the article I was referring to: https://www.thecity.nyc/housing/2023/8/24/23843686/100k-apartments-lost-to-house-conversions https://www.thecity.nyc/housing/2023/8/24/23843686/100k-apar...

everybodyknows 3y ago

Another way it won't is if the new stock happen to be upscale vacation condos, ending up occupied only one month a year.

rhino369 3y ago

>>I doubt that it's very often not the case In my UMC area that was formerly MC there are a lot of tear-down rebuilds that trade one single family home for another. They barely increase stock ( though the houses probably have more bedrooms).