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> not living in the counterfactual reality where there are millions of new apartments that are inexpensive, tiny, safe, quiet, modern, clean, dignified, and wel

> not living in the counterfactual reality where there are millions of new apartments that are inexpensive, tiny, safe, quiet, modern, clean, dignified, and well-located. China serves as this counter factual and it's facing an even larger housing crisis. Massive building of houses lead to many people buying up property for investment reasons and now there is a pretty clear oversupply while plenty of people still struggle to find housing. I don't really understand why HN is obsessed with building unlimited housing as though this will fix the problem. For years people clamored that this was the solution to all of SFs problems, but as SF starts to shrink it already looks deserted, I can't image what happen if the HN fantasy of building unlimited massive apartment housing had materialized.

wyager 3y ago
Monetization of real estate in china is exacerbated by the fact that A) there aren't a lot of great investment opportunities available to most chinese people B) the chinese government has a history of propping up property values, so there's a perception that housing is a safe investment. The situation for non-housing assets is not quite as bad in the US.
shiftpgdn 3y ago
People wouldn’t have left and could have steered the political situation to something less insane.
thatfrenchguy 3y ago
> SF starts to shrink it already looks deserted I don't think we've been to the same city, vacancy rate is around 7%.
dghlsakjg 3y ago
China is especially interesting since it appears that much of the housing stock was built purely to be a financial instrument, and was never occupied. There are entire towers that were never used as residences, but just used as investment vehicles based on faith rather than any sort of realized value. This is really a story about the dangers of using housing stock as an investment vehicle. North America has a related problem of financialization, but is complicated by rules constraining stock in the places where people would like to live. I would argue that you need rules around financialization (punitive capital gains taxes on market based gains for non primary residence), as well as rules around allowing people to do reasonable things with their property (infill, single family zoning, etc) to increase the amount of allowable stock.
pokerface_86 3y ago
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wyager 3y ago

Monetization of real estate in china is exacerbated by the fact that A) there aren't a lot of great investment opportunities available to most chinese people B) the chinese government has a history of propping up property values, so there's a perception that housing is a safe investment. The situation for non-housing assets is not quite as bad in the US.

shiftpgdn 3y ago

People wouldn’t have left and could have steered the political situation to something less insane.

thatfrenchguy 3y ago

> SF starts to shrink it already looks deserted I don't think we've been to the same city, vacancy rate is around 7%.

dghlsakjg 3y ago

China is especially interesting since it appears that much of the housing stock was built purely to be a financial instrument, and was never occupied. There are entire towers that were never used as residences, but just used as investment vehicles based on faith rather than any sort of realized value. This is really a story about the dangers of using housing stock as an investment vehicle. North America has a related problem of financialization, but is complicated by rules constraining stock in the places where people would like to live. I would argue that you need rules around financialization (punitive capital gains taxes on market based gains for non primary residence), as well as rules around allowing people to do reasonable things with their property (infill, single family zoning, etc) to increase the amount of allowable stock.

pokerface_86 3y ago

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