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The explanation is that there isn't enough housing to meet demand. That's it. Until there is, prices will keep going up even when building more units. Landlord

The explanation is that there isn't enough housing to meet demand. That's it. Until there is, prices will keep going up even when building more units. Landlords wouldn't be buying up a ton of units and renting them out at a profit if there was a glut of inventory, because it would be a terrible investment.

ethbr1 2y ago
Or, accounting and tax law makes it less painful to keep units vacant than reprice them at lower rents. Which is a thing we could change via something like Vancouver's vacancy tax. Make it more in landlords' interest to reprice units lower, if the market has excess inventory.
- ProfessorLayton 2y ago
  The market will dictate lower prices if there's excess inventory. If landlords are hoarding units and keeping them empty instead of lowering rental prices, that indicates a lack of available inventory.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    That's not how repricing works. If a landlord is unable to rent a unit at a desired price, because the rental market has moved lower, then they have two options. They can decrease the price. Or they can not offer the unit for rent (or continue listing it at the higher price). The second option's cost to landlords is largely defined by accounting/tax rules, in regards to how painful the vacancy will be to them. Thus, vacancy can be made more or less painful by changing accounting/tax rules.
    - ProfessorLayton 2y ago
      I'm not talking about repricing specifically? I'm talking about how differently the housing market would behave if there was enough housing to go around. Landlords have a 3rd option: They can sell the unit, because their unit no longer commands high prices due to housing supply meeting demand, and their capital is best used elsewhere. If they are underwater and cannot sell above break-even, their bank will eventually do it for them.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        As a commercial property, both their loan and sale price are contingent on the rental price. So again, a disincentive to ever decrease rent (and thus demonstrate the market is softer and therefore you property is worth less). Versus claiming it still commands higher rent (and is temporarily unrented) and thus more valuable.
        ProfessorLayton 2y ago
        What you're saying is true because the market is severely distorted, and a very large part of that is due to zoning restrictions. Zoning restrictions are severely constraining supply, and enabling those with capital to hoard property as an investment vehicle, rather than use it to buy a basic necessity. This scarcity allows landlords to keep a property empty rather than sell or rent at a lower rate, which would not be possible if buyers/renters had ample choice. Not all rental properties are bought using a commercial loan, many are simply conventional loans where the owner decided to rent out their property rather than sell it. At least in the US, properties purchased with conventional loans can be rented out after the owner has lived in them after a few years. No commercial loan required. The tax/accounting schemes you mentioned earlier would simply distort the market further without addressing the root problem: There's not enough housing for people that want it. Relaxing zoning rules would allow more housing to be built, and if there was enough of it, it would cease to be an "investment" rather than what they were built to be in the first place: Homes. As a concrete example, I live in the SFBAY which has an extreme housing shortage. Yet my house is built on an unnecessarily big lot (required via zoning) and any structure built on it cannot be more than 27 feet tall. These are the kinds of rules that are severely distorting the market. I can't build a fourplex on the lot if I wanted to even if I have the space for it, and the demand is there. My next best option is to rent it out for way more than I otherwise could if there was a bunch more housing (Selling isn't really an option either because my mortgage rate is lower than what I could get in a HYSA; I'm basically being paid to borrow an appreciating asset).
        ethbr1 2y ago
        All wholeheartedly agreed, but why shoot one arrow when you can shoot a whole quiver? In addition to mandating upzoning (without allowing local municipalities to overrule or delay), increasing the cost of hoarding property without use would also help, by incentivizing selling or lowering rents. And because it would be a punitive tax (primary good created simply by existing), there's no reason you couldn't roll the proceeds into programs to facilitate densification. E.g. tax credits for rebuilding existing properties with more units
    - SideQuark 2y ago
      > The second option's cost to landlords is largely defined by accounting/tax rules The cost is having empty properties, which require insurance, maintenance costs, property taxes, likely mortgages of their own to pay, all of which cost money and which are by far the biggest costs to letting things sit unused. And the fact in this case is there simply isn’t all these mythical properties sitting unused; simply look at current housing and rental stats.
benreesman 2y ago
This meme has got to go: there is little if any evidence to suggest that markets are functioning either in the specific case of housing in high COL areas in the United States or frankly most times anyone trots out the Milton Friedman trope on HN. Markets fail, they get captured, they get distorted by accounting treatments, they generate cartels. They get technologically disrupted by new forms of cartel pricing that blow past existing regulations(e.g. TFA). Capitalism sounds dope, I hope I live to see it. But the idea that supply and demand in the Econ 101 formulation is anything to do with the lot of say a person renting a flat in 2024 is silly and borders on insulting.
- zeroCalories 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 2y ago
    Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- tptacek 2y ago
  Capitalism sounds dope, I hope I live to see it. But the idea that supply and demand in the Econ 101 formulation is anything to do with the lot of say a person renting a flat in 2024 is silly and borders on insulting. It's really unclear to me why you think this is the case. The median cost of a house in the Chicagoland suburb I live in is north of $470k, and that's not because of technological disruption or cartel pricing, but rather because we've outlawed anything but single-family housing on lots, something we did deliberately back in 1923 and 1947 with the express purpose of preserving and increasing home values for people who lived there at the time and keeping Black families out. "Markets" didn't "fail" or "get captured" and no hedge fund engineered this situation; people who lived here voted for this outcome.
7e 2y ago
There is never enough housing to meet demand. Once people have housing they breed, that drives up the population and housing prices once more: only now the world is more crowded and shittier. Without habitat control, it will always be this way.

ethbr1 2y ago

Or, accounting and tax law makes it less painful to keep units vacant than reprice them at lower rents. Which is a thing we could change via something like Vancouver's vacancy tax. Make it more in landlords' interest to reprice units lower, if the market has excess inventory.

ProfessorLayton 2y ago
The market will dictate lower prices if there's excess inventory. If landlords are hoarding units and keeping them empty instead of lowering rental prices, that indicates a lack of available inventory.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  That's not how repricing works. If a landlord is unable to rent a unit at a desired price, because the rental market has moved lower, then they have two options. They can decrease the price. Or they can not offer the unit for rent (or continue listing it at the higher price). The second option's cost to landlords is largely defined by accounting/tax rules, in regards to how painful the vacancy will be to them. Thus, vacancy can be made more or less painful by changing accounting/tax rules.
  - ProfessorLayton 2y ago
    I'm not talking about repricing specifically? I'm talking about how differently the housing market would behave if there was enough housing to go around. Landlords have a 3rd option: They can sell the unit, because their unit no longer commands high prices due to housing supply meeting demand, and their capital is best used elsewhere. If they are underwater and cannot sell above break-even, their bank will eventually do it for them.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      As a commercial property, both their loan and sale price are contingent on the rental price. So again, a disincentive to ever decrease rent (and thus demonstrate the market is softer and therefore you property is worth less). Versus claiming it still commands higher rent (and is temporarily unrented) and thus more valuable.
      - ProfessorLayton 2y ago
        What you're saying is true because the market is severely distorted, and a very large part of that is due to zoning restrictions. Zoning restrictions are severely constraining supply, and enabling those with capital to hoard property as an investment vehicle, rather than use it to buy a basic necessity. This scarcity allows landlords to keep a property empty rather than sell or rent at a lower rate, which would not be possible if buyers/renters had ample choice. Not all rental properties are bought using a commercial loan, many are simply conventional loans where the owner decided to rent out their property rather than sell it. At least in the US, properties purchased with conventional loans can be rented out after the owner has lived in them after a few years. No commercial loan required. The tax/accounting schemes you mentioned earlier would simply distort the market further without addressing the root problem: There's not enough housing for people that want it. Relaxing zoning rules would allow more housing to be built, and if there was enough of it, it would cease to be an "investment" rather than what they were built to be in the first place: Homes. As a concrete example, I live in the SFBAY which has an extreme housing shortage. Yet my house is built on an unnecessarily big lot (required via zoning) and any structure built on it cannot be more than 27 feet tall. These are the kinds of rules that are severely distorting the market. I can't build a fourplex on the lot if I wanted to even if I have the space for it, and the demand is there. My next best option is to rent it out for way more than I otherwise could if there was a bunch more housing (Selling isn't really an option either because my mortgage rate is lower than what I could get in a HYSA; I'm basically being paid to borrow an appreciating asset).
        ethbr1 2y ago
        All wholeheartedly agreed, but why shoot one arrow when you can shoot a whole quiver? In addition to mandating upzoning (without allowing local municipalities to overrule or delay), increasing the cost of hoarding property without use would also help, by incentivizing selling or lowering rents. And because it would be a punitive tax (primary good created simply by existing), there's no reason you couldn't roll the proceeds into programs to facilitate densification. E.g. tax credits for rebuilding existing properties with more units
  - SideQuark 2y ago
    > The second option's cost to landlords is largely defined by accounting/tax rules The cost is having empty properties, which require insurance, maintenance costs, property taxes, likely mortgages of their own to pay, all of which cost money and which are by far the biggest costs to letting things sit unused. And the fact in this case is there simply isn’t all these mythical properties sitting unused; simply look at current housing and rental stats.

benreesman 2y ago

This meme has got to go: there is little if any evidence to suggest that markets are functioning either in the specific case of housing in high COL areas in the United States or frankly most times anyone trots out the Milton Friedman trope on HN. Markets fail, they get captured, they get distorted by accounting treatments, they generate cartels. They get technologically disrupted by new forms of cartel pricing that blow past existing regulations(e.g. TFA). Capitalism sounds dope, I hope I live to see it. But the idea that supply and demand in the Econ 101 formulation is anything to do with the lot of say a person renting a flat in 2024 is silly and borders on insulting.

zeroCalories 2y ago
[flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
tptacek 2y ago
Capitalism sounds dope, I hope I live to see it. But the idea that supply and demand in the Econ 101 formulation is anything to do with the lot of say a person renting a flat in 2024 is silly and borders on insulting. It's really unclear to me why you think this is the case. The median cost of a house in the Chicagoland suburb I live in is north of $470k, and that's not because of technological disruption or cartel pricing, but rather because we've outlawed anything but single-family housing on lots, something we did deliberately back in 1923 and 1947 with the express purpose of preserving and increasing home values for people who lived there at the time and keeping Black families out. "Markets" didn't "fail" or "get captured" and no hedge fund engineered this situation; people who lived here voted for this outcome.

7e 2y ago

There is never enough housing to meet demand. Once people have housing they breed, that drives up the population and housing prices once more: only now the world is more crowded and shittier. Without habitat control, it will always be this way.