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Any way you look at it, the government has to kick existing owners in the teeth to fix this crisis. Housing prices need to return to a reasonable multiple of wa

Any way you look at it, the government has to kick existing owners in the teeth to fix this crisis. Housing prices need to return to a reasonable multiple of wages, and that can only be done with supply. Everyone is going to have to get over the idea that they are "building wealth" and "getting ahead" by merely owning a box.

grugagag 2y ago
But is it going to happen? In the next 10 to 20 years that I personally care about? And it’s not just supply, the housing market is rigged in various ways.
bachmeier 2y ago
> kick existing owners in the teeth to fix this crisis You're assuming a definition of "crisis". 2/3 of households own their own homes, and a big chunk of those that don't aren't looking to buy in any circumstances. As much as we hear about the high cost of housing, it's only an issue for an extremely vocal minority. That's not to say I don't view it as a problem (clearly it is) but I'm skeptical it's going to win any political battles.
- mistursinistur 2y ago
  > 2/3 of households own their own homes 1. "Household" is not the right unit of analysis, since a household is defined as the set of people in an existing home. Some of these include adults who would like to move out, creating a new household not accounted for in your denominator. 2. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average American moves approximately 11.7 times throughout their lifetime. In other words, current homeowners generate demand for housing just as non-homeowners do.
- brailsafe 2y ago
  It's only a political battle to win as long as the disenfranchised accept arguing about it is the only framework for dealing with it. People who consistently oppose change are lucky everyone else is relatively chill—so far—about losing access to a certain kind agency over one's future in their community. One could imagine a tipping point whereby the disenfranchised start approaching the situation more directly.
- maxerickson 2y ago
  I have a decent amount of equity in a house that didn't cost me a lot. Small town, housing supply is okay, market has been up in recent years. If I lost my job and was unable to find something reasonable in my relatively non-existent local job market, I would be looking to move to somewhere with a larger employer base and barely be able to make a down payment on entry level housing.
OxO4 2y ago
Great. Housing should not be an investment and chasing ever-increasing property values as a society is obviously unsustainable. If you own a house as your primary residence, then its market value shouldn't really matter, because the value has no impact on your quality of life.
- Sleaker 2y ago
  But it is valued based on its impact to your quality of life.
- bachmeier 2y ago
  If you buy a house and it appreciates 40%, you can borrow against that equity. You've got a heck of a cushion in the case of any negative event. Including losing your job.
  - rangestransform 2y ago
    Letting a majority of voters benefit from their home equity was a colossal mistake that will harm society for ages to come
zeroonetwothree 2y ago
The majority of voters are homeowners so that’s probably why it isn’t going to happen so dramatically.
- leereeves 2y ago
  Regular homeowners aren't benefiting much from high house prices. If they sell they just have to buy another, so it's a wash. If they borrow against it, they have to repay at currently high interest rates.
  - Supermancho 2y ago
    > If they sell they just have to buy another, so it's a wash. They have to buy another at a higher interest rate. It's not a wash, I think it's a loss for most. If I sold my house, then bought another at the same size, the gains would not cover the monthly mortgage increase for very long.
- brailsafe 2y ago
  I guess that'll naturally change when there's enough pissed younger millenials, zoomers, and whatever else who don't have boomer parents with money, in aggregate surpassing the soon to be diminishing demo who owns them all. Just the numbers of voters though, no legit policy improvements.
kylebenzle 2y ago
Governments will choose the path of least pain everytime and that means EVERY SINGLE TIME they will choose to hyperinflate the money supply rather than pay their debts. No one is going to purposfully crash the single largest market in the world. Hyperinflation is comming.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Been hearing that since the 1970s, with more reason. 1979 looked a lot more like hyperinflation than 2023 did, with 14% inflation. By the way, hyperinflation doesn't just mean "large inflation". It's defined as 50% increase in prices per month. Yes, governments often (not always) choose to inflate the money supply rather than pay their debts. No, nobody deliberately chooses hyperinflation. Mind you, you could be right this time. It could be that the next government will overspend enough (no matter who wins) and Congress will be irresponsible enough that we do in fact wind up in a hyperinflation. But so far, naysayers have predicted ten of the last zero hyperinflations.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    I agree, "The USD/American economy will crash!" and "China will implode!" are perhaps the two textbook examples of yokels yapping baselessly about doomsdays I've consistently heard and turn out wrong over my entire lifetime. Entire foreign countries (read: most of the world worth caring about) invest in and hold the US, whether that's stocks or bonds (Treasury bonds especially) or literal USD. The only way the US crashes at this point is if the entirety of humanity has shit the bed, it's otherwise a force of nature only going up up up.
    - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      Well, I'm not quite that optimistic. The only way the US crashes is if it stops being the best option out there. If the EU and the euro, or China and the yuan, or India and the rupee become better options than the US and the dollar, then people will stop holding so many dollars, and the US will be in trouble. That is a thing that can happen, even though it hasn't in 80 years.
the_gipsy 2y ago
Increasing supply in population centers also raises demand. Think about why it's in demand in the first place: it's because there is high density (and more opportunities).
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Barring unlimited immigration, we could build enough high-density housing in cities to meet demand. (At least, we could if we fixed zoning.) (Or, we could in most cities. A few, like New York and San Francisco, are very limited in terms of available land.)
  - wussboy 2y ago
    Zoning and parking minimums are the real problem. Ensure houses are safe (fire, collapse, etc.) and let the market decide where, when and what should be built.
    - infotainment 2y ago
      Exactly -- Tokyo has kept housing costs under control for this reason. There are zoning codes in Tokyo, but they're quite flexible compared to what people in the US are used to. In addition, perhaps most importantly, it's not possible to oppose construction, as opposed to the the US, where literally anyone can halt a construction project indefinitely for literally any bogus reason. "It might cast shade on 1 square foot of the street!"
      - brailsafe 2y ago
        It was a sad day when I learned there exist actual shade inspections as part of the development approval process in some places. I legit thought it was just a way to mock NIMBYs who say that stuff. It was on that day I kind of just stopped hoping for a better future in terms of housing.
    - mattmcknight 2y ago
      parking minimums are a red herring. zoning, absolutely. however, in a lot of places we have homeowners' associations as well. random density doesn't help much, need to build density near existing and planned infrastructure.
carom 2y ago
As someone who wants higher density, I see very little progress of this happening. Voters consistently vote against it. The one exception is California state has passed some good laws around ADUs and parking minimums. People will keep voting for rent control and affordable units to prevent construction. The other side of the equation is that wages could increase relative to the price of housing.
- brailsafe 2y ago
  Rent control is absolutely important; although it does probably have a measurable effect on how quickly things get built, I don't think it's near the top of the list of bottlenecks. > The other side of the equation is that wages could increase relative to the price of housing. It's a system problem with various feedback loops, and people absolutely aren't getting paid enough and don't appreciate how little money they're making relative to what it can buy. In my city we're at a point where a new studio condo with no walls along a major thoroughfare outside the downtown area starts at ~$600k CAD, and older one bedrooms in the same range will still have asbestos and coin-op laundry in the basement. My landlords recently moved out and our living circumstances long-term are being considered. I had a conversation with one of them and she was seemingly clueless about how vulnerable it might have made us, and that's a bit humiliating; "but you guys have been here a while and surely you're making good money since moving in 5 years ago", to which I actually laughed and didn't elaborate, since we now depend on them putting in a good worth with our new overlords. We don't have the job security, we don't have the proportional increase in earning potential. Any decent money made gets erased in the next round of layoffs. Burn it all down.
- consteval 2y ago
  Kamala has some plans to federally incentive home supply. Some subsidies and goals. Here in Texas, Austin has had great success with pushing supply and now rents actually went down since last year. So based on that I think voters are changing their minds.
  - carom 2y ago
    What is weird to me about her proposal is that they talk about 3m homes but that is the normal number of housing starts in 4 years. Do they mean they will double it or are they just giving tax incentives for the expected home construction so they can point to it and get credit?
ta_1138 2y ago
If you can avoid population loss, it's still going to work out, because a great approach to increasing housing supply is more density. Grab 3 adjacent houses, demolish, turn them into 24 condos that are only a little bit cheaper, and once you account for the costs of construction, it still works out for everyone. So what happened to the owners of those three houses? Well, their land, which before could only had 3 dwellings, has 24. So while the value of the built houses they had dropped to zero, the value of the land they were built on went up spectacularly, so their investment paid off anyway. Barring the craziest of regulatory situations, no house is ever a good investment. They degrade and get worse! But most homeowners end up ahead, because they own the land, and it appreciated faster than the house depreciated. And as a city gets bigger and more prosperous all land near it gets more valuable. So all in all, in cities that aren't shinking, it's likely most homeowners end up way ahead, and the closer to downtown, the more they gain. It's only when a city shrinks that the homeowner really loses money.
- packetlost 2y ago
  "bUt thE nEiGhbOrHoOd'S cHarAcTeR"

grugagag 2y ago

But is it going to happen? In the next 10 to 20 years that I personally care about? And it’s not just supply, the housing market is rigged in various ways.

bachmeier 2y ago

> kick existing owners in the teeth to fix this crisis You're assuming a definition of "crisis". 2/3 of households own their own homes, and a big chunk of those that don't aren't looking to buy in any circumstances. As much as we hear about the high cost of housing, it's only an issue for an extremely vocal minority. That's not to say I don't view it as a problem (clearly it is) but I'm skeptical it's going to win any political battles.

mistursinistur 2y ago
> 2/3 of households own their own homes 1. "Household" is not the right unit of analysis, since a household is defined as the set of people in an existing home. Some of these include adults who would like to move out, creating a new household not accounted for in your denominator. 2. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average American moves approximately 11.7 times throughout their lifetime. In other words, current homeowners generate demand for housing just as non-homeowners do.
brailsafe 2y ago
It's only a political battle to win as long as the disenfranchised accept arguing about it is the only framework for dealing with it. People who consistently oppose change are lucky everyone else is relatively chill—so far—about losing access to a certain kind agency over one's future in their community. One could imagine a tipping point whereby the disenfranchised start approaching the situation more directly.
maxerickson 2y ago
I have a decent amount of equity in a house that didn't cost me a lot. Small town, housing supply is okay, market has been up in recent years. If I lost my job and was unable to find something reasonable in my relatively non-existent local job market, I would be looking to move to somewhere with a larger employer base and barely be able to make a down payment on entry level housing.

OxO4 2y ago

Great. Housing should not be an investment and chasing ever-increasing property values as a society is obviously unsustainable. If you own a house as your primary residence, then its market value shouldn't really matter, because the value has no impact on your quality of life.

Sleaker 2y ago
But it is valued based on its impact to your quality of life.
bachmeier 2y ago
If you buy a house and it appreciates 40%, you can borrow against that equity. You've got a heck of a cushion in the case of any negative event. Including losing your job.
- rangestransform 2y ago
  Letting a majority of voters benefit from their home equity was a colossal mistake that will harm society for ages to come

zeroonetwothree 2y ago

The majority of voters are homeowners so that’s probably why it isn’t going to happen so dramatically.

leereeves 2y ago
Regular homeowners aren't benefiting much from high house prices. If they sell they just have to buy another, so it's a wash. If they borrow against it, they have to repay at currently high interest rates.
- Supermancho 2y ago
  > If they sell they just have to buy another, so it's a wash. They have to buy another at a higher interest rate. It's not a wash, I think it's a loss for most. If I sold my house, then bought another at the same size, the gains would not cover the monthly mortgage increase for very long.
brailsafe 2y ago
I guess that'll naturally change when there's enough pissed younger millenials, zoomers, and whatever else who don't have boomer parents with money, in aggregate surpassing the soon to be diminishing demo who owns them all. Just the numbers of voters though, no legit policy improvements.

kylebenzle 2y ago

Governments will choose the path of least pain everytime and that means EVERY SINGLE TIME they will choose to hyperinflate the money supply rather than pay their debts. No one is going to purposfully crash the single largest market in the world. Hyperinflation is comming.

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
Been hearing that since the 1970s, with more reason. 1979 looked a lot more like hyperinflation than 2023 did, with 14% inflation. By the way, hyperinflation doesn't just mean "large inflation". It's defined as 50% increase in prices per month. Yes, governments often (not always) choose to inflate the money supply rather than pay their debts. No, nobody deliberately chooses hyperinflation. Mind you, you could be right this time. It could be that the next government will overspend enough (no matter who wins) and Congress will be irresponsible enough that we do in fact wind up in a hyperinflation. But so far, naysayers have predicted ten of the last zero hyperinflations.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  I agree, "The USD/American economy will crash!" and "China will implode!" are perhaps the two textbook examples of yokels yapping baselessly about doomsdays I've consistently heard and turn out wrong over my entire lifetime. Entire foreign countries (read: most of the world worth caring about) invest in and hold the US, whether that's stocks or bonds (Treasury bonds especially) or literal USD. The only way the US crashes at this point is if the entirety of humanity has shit the bed, it's otherwise a force of nature only going up up up.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Well, I'm not quite that optimistic. The only way the US crashes is if it stops being the best option out there. If the EU and the euro, or China and the yuan, or India and the rupee become better options than the US and the dollar, then people will stop holding so many dollars, and the US will be in trouble. That is a thing that can happen, even though it hasn't in 80 years.

the_gipsy 2y ago

Increasing supply in population centers also raises demand. Think about why it's in demand in the first place: it's because there is high density (and more opportunities).

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
Barring unlimited immigration, we could build enough high-density housing in cities to meet demand. (At least, we could if we fixed zoning.) (Or, we could in most cities. A few, like New York and San Francisco, are very limited in terms of available land.)
- wussboy 2y ago
  Zoning and parking minimums are the real problem. Ensure houses are safe (fire, collapse, etc.) and let the market decide where, when and what should be built.
  - infotainment 2y ago
    Exactly -- Tokyo has kept housing costs under control for this reason. There are zoning codes in Tokyo, but they're quite flexible compared to what people in the US are used to. In addition, perhaps most importantly, it's not possible to oppose construction, as opposed to the the US, where literally anyone can halt a construction project indefinitely for literally any bogus reason. "It might cast shade on 1 square foot of the street!"
    - brailsafe 2y ago
      It was a sad day when I learned there exist actual shade inspections as part of the development approval process in some places. I legit thought it was just a way to mock NIMBYs who say that stuff. It was on that day I kind of just stopped hoping for a better future in terms of housing.
  - mattmcknight 2y ago
    parking minimums are a red herring. zoning, absolutely. however, in a lot of places we have homeowners' associations as well. random density doesn't help much, need to build density near existing and planned infrastructure.

carom 2y ago

As someone who wants higher density, I see very little progress of this happening. Voters consistently vote against it. The one exception is California state has passed some good laws around ADUs and parking minimums. People will keep voting for rent control and affordable units to prevent construction. The other side of the equation is that wages could increase relative to the price of housing.

brailsafe 2y ago
Rent control is absolutely important; although it does probably have a measurable effect on how quickly things get built, I don't think it's near the top of the list of bottlenecks. > The other side of the equation is that wages could increase relative to the price of housing. It's a system problem with various feedback loops, and people absolutely aren't getting paid enough and don't appreciate how little money they're making relative to what it can buy. In my city we're at a point where a new studio condo with no walls along a major thoroughfare outside the downtown area starts at ~$600k CAD, and older one bedrooms in the same range will still have asbestos and coin-op laundry in the basement. My landlords recently moved out and our living circumstances long-term are being considered. I had a conversation with one of them and she was seemingly clueless about how vulnerable it might have made us, and that's a bit humiliating; "but you guys have been here a while and surely you're making good money since moving in 5 years ago", to which I actually laughed and didn't elaborate, since we now depend on them putting in a good worth with our new overlords. We don't have the job security, we don't have the proportional increase in earning potential. Any decent money made gets erased in the next round of layoffs. Burn it all down.
consteval 2y ago
Kamala has some plans to federally incentive home supply. Some subsidies and goals. Here in Texas, Austin has had great success with pushing supply and now rents actually went down since last year. So based on that I think voters are changing their minds.
- carom 2y ago
  What is weird to me about her proposal is that they talk about 3m homes but that is the normal number of housing starts in 4 years. Do they mean they will double it or are they just giving tax incentives for the expected home construction so they can point to it and get credit?

ta_1138 2y ago

If you can avoid population loss, it's still going to work out, because a great approach to increasing housing supply is more density. Grab 3 adjacent houses, demolish, turn them into 24 condos that are only a little bit cheaper, and once you account for the costs of construction, it still works out for everyone. So what happened to the owners of those three houses? Well, their land, which before could only had 3 dwellings, has 24. So while the value of the built houses they had dropped to zero, the value of the land they were built on went up spectacularly, so their investment paid off anyway. Barring the craziest of regulatory situations, no house is ever a good investment. They degrade and get worse! But most homeowners end up ahead, because they own the land, and it appreciated faster than the house depreciated. And as a city gets bigger and more prosperous all land near it gets more valuable. So all in all, in cities that aren't shinking, it's likely most homeowners end up way ahead, and the closer to downtown, the more they gain. It's only when a city shrinks that the homeowner really loses money.

packetlost 2y ago
"bUt thE nEiGhbOrHoOd'S cHarAcTeR"