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We need to build more homes. When we do that, buying and holding homes ceases to become an interesting investment, and private equity gets out of it, just like
by davidw 3y ago
We need to build more homes. When we do that, buying and holding homes ceases to become an interesting investment, and private equity gets out of it, just like private equity does not buy and hold used Toyota Corollas.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/housing-crisis-hedge-funds-private-equity-scapegoat/672839/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/housing-cr...
- locacorten 3y agoI wonder what would be a really effective incentive to the construction industry to build more homes. Something like -- no tax on any homes construction for the next 5 years. Wouldn't that create a construction boom?
- davidw 3y agoThe first step is to legalize a much broader array of housing types. Apartments, condos, small lots, townhomes, cottage clusters... all of it. I'm involved in housing advocacy locally, and a huge impediment to building more is zoning and NIMBYism.
- rpmisms 3y agoZoning should be used to keep factories out of neighborhoods, nothing more. Also, building code is making houses boring. Should be a third-party standard, like UL.
- zbrozek 3y agoIt kind of is. Most places just adopt the IBC and make a few amendments.
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- alephnerd 3y agoYou can't build if you don't have the labor. There are half a million open construction jobs [0]. People forget that most construction companies went bankrupt in the aftermath of 2008. [0] - https://www.abc.org/News-Media/News-Releases/construction-workforce-shortage-tops-half-a-million-in-2023-says-abc https://www.abc.org/News-Media/News-Releases/construction-wo...
- bluGill 3y agoThe limits are: Getting people willing to work in the industry (a lot of it is hard labor for okay but not great pay). Zoning which doesn't allow you to build at all in high demand places. Building codes that sometimes require things that don't make sense. Places where builders can get permits "by right" tend to have a lot more building and thus much lower housing prices.
- JohnFen 3y agoIf that created a construction boom, then it would be a boom of constructing very expensive housing, not affordable housing. At least, that's what would happen if recent history is anything to go by.
- quonn 3y agoExcept that houses last much longer and there won‘t be an newer more attractive version 5 years later. And in many places the value is the land not the house.
- davidw 3y agoI would agree that treating the taxation of land differently than that of housing would be a sensible idea. Newer housing is quite often much nicer than older housing, truth be told. More energy efficient, for instance.
- rpmisms 3y ago> Newer housing is quite often much nicer than older housing I would disagree very strongly. Stronger building codes and rising material costs have made everything look very samey. I really wish people would/could build more houses that were interesting.
- davidw 3y agoYou're discussing aesthetics, not the actual quality of the housing: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/stop-fetishizing-old-homes-new-construction-nice/621012/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/stop-fetis...
- rpmisms 3y agoAnecdotally, housing quality has gone way down, but that's probably due to quality of labor.
- JohnFen 3y ago> Newer housing is quite often much nicer than older housing, truth be told. I haven't seen this in the real world. Newer housing tends to be of much lower quality than older housing, even when we're talking about high-end housing.