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The Fed cannot fix this. It is illegal to build dense housing. Car-centric suburbia is fiscally unsustainable and people are feeling the effects via rent. Se

The Fed cannot fix this. It is illegal to build dense housing. Car-centric suburbia is fiscally unsustainable and people are feeling the effects via rent. See San Fran and Miami for ground zero.

davidw 2y ago
Agree about dense housing, but a lot of that means more expensive builds: if you want to build a 5-over-1 with commercial on the ground floor, that's great, but the construction loan you need to do that is going to be $$$$ right now.
- alistairSH 2y ago
  We don’t (only) need 5:1 builds. You can fit smaller 2-6 unit builds on many SFH plots. Either via small apartments or small THs/triplexes.
  - davidw 2y ago
    I agree completely. Legalize it all and see what works out. Still though, the loans are more expensive right now, and that is a Fed thing. Perhaps they affect that kind of housing you're describing a bit less in some cases, but it's still a problem there for some developers.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      It's partially a Fed thing. Higher interest rates in general lead to higher interest rates for construction loans. But if you're trying to spur housing construction without causing general inflation, maybe offer lower interest loans only for housing construction?
      - davidw 2y ago
        I'm not sure how you get that without getting the government involved in providing those lower rates. I'm not opposed to that, but it makes everything a bit trickier...
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        Offer a tax credit for a percentage of interest paid on construction loans. Then you still get them from a bank but pay less interest.
  - koolba 2y ago
    You’re forgetting that the people living in those towns don’t want you to suddenly increase the housing stock by 5x and with it the class sizes. Why should a minority of people, especially those that don’t even live in these towns, dictate how the town will be changing? If dense housing is the bees knees, make people want to live in cities.
    - redserk 2y ago
      Everyone was new to their town at some point.
    - davidw 2y ago
      This attitude is why we have a housing crisis. Not banks or Blackstone, not RealPage, not foreign buyers, not short term rentals. Those things may not help, but the lid on the housing supply are people in your city who, ironically, generally are a small but involved minority who show up to say NO to housing and NO to a diversity of housing types.
    - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
      increasing housing stock doesn't increase class size. some of the extra people you get are teachers and so the school hires more teachers and runs more classes.
    - dghlsakjg 2y ago
      Conversely: why should my neighbor get to dictate if I get to build a duplex on my property.
      - koolba 2y ago
        Same reason you have a say in whether there’s a strip mine or a landfill across the street from your property. The residents come together and decide on the rules by which they will be governed. Just because they don’t jive with exactly how you’d want things doesn’t mean the system is not working as it’s intended.
        2y ago
- wmf 2y ago
  This is why it's a bit late to start building. A decade of ZIRP was the perfect time to build housing but we squandered it.
  - jjav 2y ago
    > This is why it's a bit late to start building. The best time to plant a tree (or build a house) was yesterday. Second best is today.
TacticalCoder 2y ago
> Car-centric suburbia is fiscally unsustainable ... For whom? Many people love the suburbs and hate cities. I know many people who know work 3 days from home and only commute to work 2 days per week. If the suburbs are fiscally unsustainable, what about rural? What's your plan? Pack people in high-rises? Even if they don't want that?
- stetrain 2y ago
  It's fiscally unsustainable if more people want to live there than there are housing units, and prices climb forever. Having denser housing in some places does not mean replacing all housing with high density. There are a lot of density options between single-family home suburbs and high-rise towers. Look up "missing middle" housing. The biggest offenders are actual urban areas that should be cities but try to act like suburbs. Let cities be dense, and it will actually take some pressure off of the suburbs. People who work in cities end up living in suburbs even if they don't want to, and then commute in every day and clog up the roads. Most US major cities are still well below major European cities on residential density. If you want rural to remain rural and suburbs to remain suburbs, then let town centers and metro cities fill in density for those who want to live there.
  - lotsoweiners 2y ago
    > The biggest offenders are actual urban areas that should be cities but try to act like suburbs. Got an example?
    - stetrain 2y ago
      https://www.stockingblue.com/article/1008/eu-and-us-cities-by-population-density-of-urban-area/ https://www.stockingblue.com/article/1008/eu-and-us-cities-b... US cities are generally fairly low density. That pushes more people to the suburbs, or low density suburb-like development at the edge of the city, driving up prices there and adding commuter traffic that the city pays to handle. If people want to live in the suburbs that's fine, but given housing prices in most cities I think there is greater demand than supply for residential there.
jseliger 2y ago
"The housing theory of everything" is relevant here: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every... Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28531025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28531025
jjav 2y ago
> It is illegal to build dense housing. This is an oversimplification that gets repeated too often. It is not illegal to build dense housing. There are suburban areas where zoning doesn't allow you to build a high-rise apartment building. That is true. But why would you build a high-rise apartment building out in the suburbs anyway? Here (in the outskirts of silicon valley) high-rise apartment buildings near downtown are popping up like mushrooms, there are perpetually at least a couple in construction as soon as others are completed. Lots of dense housing being built, nothing illegal about it.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > This is an oversimplification that gets repeated too often. It is not illegal to build dense housing. It is illegal to build dense housing in most of the land area where it would be useful. Naturally the few exceptions will cause it to be built there, but that doesn't make for a solution. Since there are so few such areas, the price of land zoned for density skyrockets and that gets added to the cost of the new units, making construction uneconomical well before the units become affordable to ordinary people. An a plot of land where it's legal to build a 10-story building doesn't really allow you to increase the housing supply when it has had a 10-story building already on it since 1965. > But why would you build a high-rise apartment building out in the suburbs anyway? Because that's where the land that doesn't already have a high-rise on it is.
  - jjav 2y ago
    > Because that's where the land that doesn't already have a high-rise on it is. True, but the people who want to live in a highrise also want to live in a city, not out in the suburbs. Who are you (as the builder) selling these units to? Can you do so profitably if there's not that much demand for highrise living in the suburbs?
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      Suppose the price of a house in the suburbs is $400,000. Developer buys one, pays $5M more to build a building with 20 condos in it, sells them each for $350,000 and nets $1.6M. Why would somebody buy one of those instead of a house? Because they're $350,000 instead of $400,000.
HDThoreaun 2y ago
Yep, monetary policy can not fix supply problems. Housing prices will go down when supply expands meaningfully, end of story.

The Fed cannot fix this. It is illegal to build dense housing. Car-centric suburbia is fiscally unsustainable and people are feeling the effects via rent. See San Fran and Miami for ground zero.

davidw 2y ago

Agree about dense housing, but a lot of that means more expensive builds: if you want to build a 5-over-1 with commercial on the ground floor, that's great, but the construction loan you need to do that is going to be $$$$ right now.

alistairSH 2y ago
We don’t (only) need 5:1 builds. You can fit smaller 2-6 unit builds on many SFH plots. Either via small apartments or small THs/triplexes.
- davidw 2y ago
  I agree completely. Legalize it all and see what works out. Still though, the loans are more expensive right now, and that is a Fed thing. Perhaps they affect that kind of housing you're describing a bit less in some cases, but it's still a problem there for some developers.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    It's partially a Fed thing. Higher interest rates in general lead to higher interest rates for construction loans. But if you're trying to spur housing construction without causing general inflation, maybe offer lower interest loans only for housing construction?
    - davidw 2y ago
      I'm not sure how you get that without getting the government involved in providing those lower rates. I'm not opposed to that, but it makes everything a bit trickier...
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        Offer a tax credit for a percentage of interest paid on construction loans. Then you still get them from a bank but pay less interest.
- koolba 2y ago
  You’re forgetting that the people living in those towns don’t want you to suddenly increase the housing stock by 5x and with it the class sizes. Why should a minority of people, especially those that don’t even live in these towns, dictate how the town will be changing? If dense housing is the bees knees, make people want to live in cities.
  - redserk 2y ago
    Everyone was new to their town at some point.
  - davidw 2y ago
    This attitude is why we have a housing crisis. Not banks or Blackstone, not RealPage, not foreign buyers, not short term rentals. Those things may not help, but the lid on the housing supply are people in your city who, ironically, generally are a small but involved minority who show up to say NO to housing and NO to a diversity of housing types.
  - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
    increasing housing stock doesn't increase class size. some of the extra people you get are teachers and so the school hires more teachers and runs more classes.
  - dghlsakjg 2y ago
    Conversely: why should my neighbor get to dictate if I get to build a duplex on my property.
    - koolba 2y ago
      Same reason you have a say in whether there’s a strip mine or a landfill across the street from your property. The residents come together and decide on the rules by which they will be governed. Just because they don’t jive with exactly how you’d want things doesn’t mean the system is not working as it’s intended.
      - 2y ago
wmf 2y ago
This is why it's a bit late to start building. A decade of ZIRP was the perfect time to build housing but we squandered it.
- jjav 2y ago
  > This is why it's a bit late to start building. The best time to plant a tree (or build a house) was yesterday. Second best is today.

TacticalCoder 2y ago

> Car-centric suburbia is fiscally unsustainable ... For whom? Many people love the suburbs and hate cities. I know many people who know work 3 days from home and only commute to work 2 days per week. If the suburbs are fiscally unsustainable, what about rural? What's your plan? Pack people in high-rises? Even if they don't want that?

stetrain 2y ago
It's fiscally unsustainable if more people want to live there than there are housing units, and prices climb forever. Having denser housing in some places does not mean replacing all housing with high density. There are a lot of density options between single-family home suburbs and high-rise towers. Look up "missing middle" housing. The biggest offenders are actual urban areas that should be cities but try to act like suburbs. Let cities be dense, and it will actually take some pressure off of the suburbs. People who work in cities end up living in suburbs even if they don't want to, and then commute in every day and clog up the roads. Most US major cities are still well below major European cities on residential density. If you want rural to remain rural and suburbs to remain suburbs, then let town centers and metro cities fill in density for those who want to live there.
- lotsoweiners 2y ago
  > The biggest offenders are actual urban areas that should be cities but try to act like suburbs. Got an example?
  - stetrain 2y ago
    https://www.stockingblue.com/article/1008/eu-and-us-cities-by-population-density-of-urban-area/ https://www.stockingblue.com/article/1008/eu-and-us-cities-b... US cities are generally fairly low density. That pushes more people to the suburbs, or low density suburb-like development at the edge of the city, driving up prices there and adding commuter traffic that the city pays to handle. If people want to live in the suburbs that's fine, but given housing prices in most cities I think there is greater demand than supply for residential there.

jseliger 2y ago

"The housing theory of everything" is relevant here: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every... Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28531025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28531025

jjav 2y ago

> It is illegal to build dense housing. This is an oversimplification that gets repeated too often. It is not illegal to build dense housing. There are suburban areas where zoning doesn't allow you to build a high-rise apartment building. That is true. But why would you build a high-rise apartment building out in the suburbs anyway? Here (in the outskirts of silicon valley) high-rise apartment buildings near downtown are popping up like mushrooms, there are perpetually at least a couple in construction as soon as others are completed. Lots of dense housing being built, nothing illegal about it.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> This is an oversimplification that gets repeated too often. It is not illegal to build dense housing. It is illegal to build dense housing in most of the land area where it would be useful. Naturally the few exceptions will cause it to be built there, but that doesn't make for a solution. Since there are so few such areas, the price of land zoned for density skyrockets and that gets added to the cost of the new units, making construction uneconomical well before the units become affordable to ordinary people. An a plot of land where it's legal to build a 10-story building doesn't really allow you to increase the housing supply when it has had a 10-story building already on it since 1965. > But why would you build a high-rise apartment building out in the suburbs anyway? Because that's where the land that doesn't already have a high-rise on it is.
- jjav 2y ago
  > Because that's where the land that doesn't already have a high-rise on it is. True, but the people who want to live in a highrise also want to live in a city, not out in the suburbs. Who are you (as the builder) selling these units to? Can you do so profitably if there's not that much demand for highrise living in the suburbs?
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    Suppose the price of a house in the suburbs is $400,000. Developer buys one, pays $5M more to build a building with 20 condos in it, sells them each for $350,000 and nets $1.6M. Why would somebody buy one of those instead of a house? Because they're $350,000 instead of $400,000.

HDThoreaun 2y ago

Yep, monetary policy can not fix supply problems. Housing prices will go down when supply expands meaningfully, end of story.