3 ms·

There are many regulations that effectively act as zoning. How's the permitting process look like? Is there a property tax (or land value tax) incentivizing peo

by pas 3y ago

There are many regulations that effectively act as zoning. How's the permitting process look like? Is there a property tax (or land value tax) incentivizing people to sell so developers can actually build where people want to live? Is there infrastructure coupled with developments? Is there a balance of protections between tenants and owners? (No squatting, no surprise evictions, ie. 5-7 year contracts, some cap on rent increase, but no forever rent control.) The big problems with housing - and with any kind of construction nowadays - is that volume is too darn low. No economies of scale, everything is slow, made by small crews, on-site by hand basically. (With tools not much different from a 100 years ago.) It doesn't matter who owns and lives in them, as long as the usual incentives have a way to shape the market.

atoav 3y ago
As I said: Zoning is not the problem. The problem isn't that people aren't allowed to build things in certain areas. In fact if I look at my place (bigger city in Germany) it is the opposite. Investors mainly build houses for investment, that means "luxurious mini flats", so something that no normal person can afford to live in and no rich person actually wants to live in — but rich people that think this is a good use of their wealth can buy it to park their money there. If we had laws preventing them from doing that things would be better, not worse. Those luxury mini flats thus aren't making perfect use of the area and driving the prices up in the surrounding area, which is a feature not a bug if you are a investor with property in the area. And thus the cycle continues. You can also replace "luxurious mini flats" with "shiny office building for which no demand exists", half of the office space in the city is obviously empty, which makes a lack of affordable living space even more of an issue. So the problem isn't that investors can't build what people searching a place to live want — the problem is that investors found better ways of turning the limited space in a city to money and these ways don't serve that market or benefit society. As this is Europe, infrastructure isn't the issue and renters have rights. But renters can't play the long game, while investors can.
- pas 3y ago
  Are these mini-flats empty? If not they are soaking up demand. (If they are they are losing money to investors.) Sure, there are definitely buyers/owners of housing units who end up leaving said units empty, but it's the extreme exception to the brutal trend of putting everything on the market because prices are so high: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1270344/vacancy-rate-development-housing-market-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1270344/vacancy-rate-dev... (I tried to find the dataset on destatis.de, but no luck, and the ones I found were not year-by-year. Which makes me question here Statista got their data.) Let me spam this link here too https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/market-rate-housing-will-make-your https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/market-rate-housing-will-make-... , Noah does a literature review and goes through very solid studies (strong methodology, realistic effect size) ... supply and demand works. > ... Germany. Famous wild west of construction! :D People can build whatever wherever! I think you drastically underestimate the process problems plaguing construction. Laws that mandate bigger projects with taller (and more) buildings at the same time (so more efficient construction) would be very useful. Cities ought to shepherd these redevelopments, but they are captured and paralyzed by various 'special interests'. (Usual tragedy of the anticommons.)

by pas 3y ago

atoav 3y ago

As I said: Zoning is not the problem. The problem isn't that people aren't allowed to build things in certain areas. In fact if I look at my place (bigger city in Germany) it is the opposite. Investors mainly build houses for investment, that means "luxurious mini flats", so something that no normal person can afford to live in and no rich person actually wants to live in — but rich people that think this is a good use of their wealth can buy it to park their money there. If we had laws preventing them from doing that things would be better, not worse. Those luxury mini flats thus aren't making perfect use of the area and driving the prices up in the surrounding area, which is a feature not a bug if you are a investor with property in the area. And thus the cycle continues. You can also replace "luxurious mini flats" with "shiny office building for which no demand exists", half of the office space in the city is obviously empty, which makes a lack of affordable living space even more of an issue. So the problem isn't that investors can't build what people searching a place to live want — the problem is that investors found better ways of turning the limited space in a city to money and these ways don't serve that market or benefit society. As this is Europe, infrastructure isn't the issue and renters have rights. But renters can't play the long game, while investors can.

pas 3y ago
Are these mini-flats empty? If not they are soaking up demand. (If they are they are losing money to investors.) Sure, there are definitely buyers/owners of housing units who end up leaving said units empty, but it's the extreme exception to the brutal trend of putting everything on the market because prices are so high: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1270344/vacancy-rate-development-housing-market-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1270344/vacancy-rate-dev... (I tried to find the dataset on destatis.de, but no luck, and the ones I found were not year-by-year. Which makes me question here Statista got their data.) Let me spam this link here too https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/market-rate-housing-will-make-your https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/market-rate-housing-will-make-... , Noah does a literature review and goes through very solid studies (strong methodology, realistic effect size) ... supply and demand works. > ... Germany. Famous wild west of construction! :D People can build whatever wherever! I think you drastically underestimate the process problems plaguing construction. Laws that mandate bigger projects with taller (and more) buildings at the same time (so more efficient construction) would be very useful. Cities ought to shepherd these redevelopments, but they are captured and paralyzed by various 'special interests'. (Usual tragedy of the anticommons.)