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From the article: "Building enough houses in the right place is the single biggest action governments can take to restore the link between work and wealth" No g

From the article: "Building enough houses in the right place is the single biggest action governments can take to restore the link between work and wealth" No greater truth can can be spoken about what's wrong with the economy in rich countries today.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
I think Austin, TX is just a great proof point for this over the past 5 or so years. We built a ton of housing over the past 5 years, and last I read rents have fallen 22% and house prices have also gone down considerably (though they were so insane during the pandemic I still think they've got a way to go). I may consider myself liberal, but general housing policy by most liberal leaders has been a total disaster and should be recognized as such.
- pinkmuffinere 2y ago
  Looking at the Case-Shiller index for Austin[1], Dallas[2], NYC[3], SF[4], and LA[5], it doesn’t seem like Austin’s prices have grown any less in the last five years. They’ve basically all nearly doubled in that time. If there is any improvement it’s too small for my eyes to see. In fact, SF seems to have had the lowest price growth (perhaps due to fears about crime?). [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS12420Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS12420Q [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DAXRNSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DAXRNSA [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYXRSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYXRSA [4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SFXRSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SFXRSA [5] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LXXRSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LXXRSA
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    I’d wager sf had the lowest price growth due to having the lowest job growth in that time more than anything.
  - Nimitz14 2y ago
    NYC keeps going up while Austin has clearly reversed the upward trend. It seems you may have not looked at the graphs you linked.
    - pinkmuffinere 2y ago
      You're reading a lot into the wobbles in the plot, when you probably want to be looking at the total change over the last 5 years. Here's the change by city, Q4 2019 - Q4 2024: Austin: 346 -> 510. 510/346 = 1.47 Dallas: 192-> 295. 295/192= 1.53 NYC: 203-> 318. 510/346 = 1.56 SF: 271-> 361. 510/346 = 1.33 LA: 291-> 443. 510/346 = 1.52 These numbers are all pretty close imo, clustered around 50% growth in the last 5 years. Austin in particular grew 47% over the last 5 years, for a annualized growth rate of ~8% -- that is some _crazy_ growth for real estate, when the long term average in the US is about 3% annualized. IMO SF is the only remarkable datapoint, with 33% growth -> ~6% annualized growth. Even that is still high though. It would be easier to visualize if we can plot them all on top of each other, but I didn't find an easy way to do that.
      - Nimitz14 2y ago
        You're looking at the start and the end of the plots and totally ignoring what happens in between. If Austin had followed the linear trendline from Q4 2019 to Q2 2022 (increase of 22.7/Q) then it would have been at 800 in Q4 2024. 800/346=2.3 2.3 >> 1.47 That's not a wobble in the plot.
      - em500 2y ago
        The problem with such calculations is that they're very sensitive to the chosen starting point: compare the growths in the most recent 3 instead of 5 years: Austin: 502-> 510 growth: 1.6% Dallas: 263-> 295 growth: 12.2% NYC: 255-> 318 growth: 24.7% SF: 349-> 361 growth: 3.4% LA: 384-> 443 growth: 15.4%
        pinkmuffinere 2y ago
        If we're looking for a trend that follows a specific city instead of specific year and city, then I agree. For that purpose I think I'd like to run this same calculation for the 5 year interval 2019-2024, and 2018-2023, and 2017-2022, etc, to see if there is a trend that is unique to the cities, as opposed to the cities in a certain year. However, my interpretation of the original claim about Austin is "Austin house prices have grown less in the last 5 years than other places". That claim is pretty specific, and can be examined by looking at just the start and end points. Looking at the end points, it seems incorrect.
  - pinkmuffinere 2y ago
    I can't edit this comment, so instead I'm replying. >They’ve basically all nearly doubled in that time This statement is incorrect. In another comment I did the math, and most of them had about 50% growth in the last 5 years, with SF being the outlier with 33% growth. Sorry for the mistake, my eyeballs are not as good as my math.
    - dgfitz 2y ago
      The amusing part is people arguing with your math rather than your point, which is very valid.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    Austin had a big run-up at the beginning of COVID, but a ton of inventory came online in late 21, 22, and 23. The linked article below has more details. Austin has had the largest declines in rents compared to the peak of any metro in the country: https://nypost.com/2025/02/27/real-estate/austin-is-seeing-the-biggest-decline-in-rents-in-the-us/ https://nypost.com/2025/02/27/real-estate/austin-is-seeing-t...
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  I don’t understand how rents actually go down in a market. My landlord has raised rent every year save for when covid laws prevented that. It is their incentive to always raise rent even when articles about my city claim “rents went down 5%” or whatever this past year. Whose rent? Expensive commercial landlord new construction rents where they try and hide the price anyhow with two months free on the first year? The rent that therefore only matters for the bank to put a valuation on that property because people move in year 2 at these sort of properties to avoid paying that full rent? Maybe that is what they are referring to. No one I know has ever had a call from their landlord telling them to pay less money next month due to the declining value of their asset.
  - erikerikson 2y ago
    We reduced rent during COVID both for a present tenant and for the following tenant. Generally those statistics are across all units while individual experiences can be wildly different. [Edit] FWIW that was based on the rental market rather than anything related to asset value.
    - iknowSFR 2y ago
      SFR had no decreases during those years in the US. Markets like the Southeast had 7-14% increases every year. SFR companies were doing “cash for keys” because rates were increasing so quickly that it was better business to buyout a lease from the current tenant and bring in a new one at a 14% increase.
      - erikerikson 2y ago
        It's not clear what you're trying to say. The GP said they weren't sure how rents went down. As an at-the-time-I-referenced landlord we reduced rents. Or tenants may have been privileged people who didn't need it but it seemed like the right thing at the time. Mostly because the impartial rent statistics source we repeatedly used indicated rents had gone down for the market local to the unit we offered. Maybe this is why we got out, because we weren't practicing exuberant total maximization of what we could extract. We got in because my partner was sentimental about the unit and felt we could hold aside a small part of the market to be a little kinder and more human. What triggered us getting out, in fact, was hostile policy enacted by Seattle that frequently poisoned the relationships with our tenants. That is, with the same behaviors we began being treated very poorly. I'm off the opinion that Sawant was in the pocket of large corporate holders given what I understand of the effectiveness with which she had consolidated the Seattle rental markets into a smaller set of hands.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  > We built a ton of housing over the past 5 years, and last I read rents have fallen 22% and house prices have also gone down considerably You mean 22% in the last year? Definitely not 22% compared to 5 years ago.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    22% compared to the peak. https://nypost.com/2025/02/27/real-estate/austin-is-seeing-the-biggest-decline-in-rents-in-the-us/ https://nypost.com/2025/02/27/real-estate/austin-is-seeing-t...
    - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
      That means that over the last five years, Austin real estate prices could still be up more than other cities. It looks like they went from $400K average prices in 2020 March to $600K now, but the peak is $680k. Is that because it took builders a while to catch up with a sharp increase in 2020, and now they "caught up"?
- ForTheKidz 2y ago
  > I may consider myself liberal, but general housing policy by most liberal leaders has been a total disaster and should be recognized as such. ? Private development is the heart of liberalism. We haven't had anyone but liberal leadership since, like, LBJ I think? And he was also a liberal acting out of character. Any alternative would surely imply public investment in housing. No, re-zoning is not going to make a dent in homelessness. I'm aware that you're referring to liberal in the sense of "loyalist democrat" or whatever, but the reality is that both parties have virtually the same policy when it comes to housing: blame the market, act as though the market will still answer our problems even though it hasn't in the past, and feign helplessness that the government can directly influence housing in the first place outside of zoning. I.e., liberalism.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
BurningFrog 2y ago
It's simpler than that. Government just has to legalize building housing, and the people will make it happen.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  “The people” (local voters in the places that have the lomits in place) are the ones who want rules against building housing, not some external-to-the-people government.
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    This is what the internet urbanists don’t get. Government is a mirror on its electorate. You want urbanist principles it starts by educating this electorate directly, not waiting for the government to do something to get itself unseated by that angry electorate the next cycle.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      Well, or you change the level of government you target to one whose constituency is less invested in the policies causing the problem and more concerned with solving the problem, e.g., over the last several years the California State government restricting the practical ability of local governments to restrict housing.
      - c22 2y ago
        This kind of thinking is why we're advancing significantly down the road to authoritarianism.
        dragonwriter 2y ago
        I don't think that when higher levels of government make it harder for lower levels to restrict individual freedom that is “the road to authoritarianism”. In fact, I’d argue its exactly the opposite.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

I think Austin, TX is just a great proof point for this over the past 5 or so years. We built a ton of housing over the past 5 years, and last I read rents have fallen 22% and house prices have also gone down considerably (though they were so insane during the pandemic I still think they've got a way to go). I may consider myself liberal, but general housing policy by most liberal leaders has been a total disaster and should be recognized as such.

pinkmuffinere 2y ago
Looking at the Case-Shiller index for Austin[1], Dallas[2], NYC[3], SF[4], and LA[5], it doesn’t seem like Austin’s prices have grown any less in the last five years. They’ve basically all nearly doubled in that time. If there is any improvement it’s too small for my eyes to see. In fact, SF seems to have had the lowest price growth (perhaps due to fears about crime?). [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS12420Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS12420Q [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DAXRNSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DAXRNSA [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYXRSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYXRSA [4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SFXRSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SFXRSA [5] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LXXRSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LXXRSA
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  I’d wager sf had the lowest price growth due to having the lowest job growth in that time more than anything.
- Nimitz14 2y ago
  NYC keeps going up while Austin has clearly reversed the upward trend. It seems you may have not looked at the graphs you linked.
  - pinkmuffinere 2y ago
    You're reading a lot into the wobbles in the plot, when you probably want to be looking at the total change over the last 5 years. Here's the change by city, Q4 2019 - Q4 2024: Austin: 346 -> 510. 510/346 = 1.47 Dallas: 192-> 295. 295/192= 1.53 NYC: 203-> 318. 510/346 = 1.56 SF: 271-> 361. 510/346 = 1.33 LA: 291-> 443. 510/346 = 1.52 These numbers are all pretty close imo, clustered around 50% growth in the last 5 years. Austin in particular grew 47% over the last 5 years, for a annualized growth rate of ~8% -- that is some _crazy_ growth for real estate, when the long term average in the US is about 3% annualized. IMO SF is the only remarkable datapoint, with 33% growth -> ~6% annualized growth. Even that is still high though. It would be easier to visualize if we can plot them all on top of each other, but I didn't find an easy way to do that.
    - Nimitz14 2y ago
      You're looking at the start and the end of the plots and totally ignoring what happens in between. If Austin had followed the linear trendline from Q4 2019 to Q2 2022 (increase of 22.7/Q) then it would have been at 800 in Q4 2024. 800/346=2.3 2.3 >> 1.47 That's not a wobble in the plot.
    - em500 2y ago
      The problem with such calculations is that they're very sensitive to the chosen starting point: compare the growths in the most recent 3 instead of 5 years: Austin: 502-> 510 growth: 1.6% Dallas: 263-> 295 growth: 12.2% NYC: 255-> 318 growth: 24.7% SF: 349-> 361 growth: 3.4% LA: 384-> 443 growth: 15.4%
      - pinkmuffinere 2y ago
        If we're looking for a trend that follows a specific city instead of specific year and city, then I agree. For that purpose I think I'd like to run this same calculation for the 5 year interval 2019-2024, and 2018-2023, and 2017-2022, etc, to see if there is a trend that is unique to the cities, as opposed to the cities in a certain year. However, my interpretation of the original claim about Austin is "Austin house prices have grown less in the last 5 years than other places". That claim is pretty specific, and can be examined by looking at just the start and end points. Looking at the end points, it seems incorrect.
- pinkmuffinere 2y ago
  I can't edit this comment, so instead I'm replying. >They’ve basically all nearly doubled in that time This statement is incorrect. In another comment I did the math, and most of them had about 50% growth in the last 5 years, with SF being the outlier with 33% growth. Sorry for the mistake, my eyeballs are not as good as my math.
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    The amusing part is people arguing with your math rather than your point, which is very valid.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  Austin had a big run-up at the beginning of COVID, but a ton of inventory came online in late 21, 22, and 23. The linked article below has more details. Austin has had the largest declines in rents compared to the peak of any metro in the country: https://nypost.com/2025/02/27/real-estate/austin-is-seeing-the-biggest-decline-in-rents-in-the-us/ https://nypost.com/2025/02/27/real-estate/austin-is-seeing-t...
kjkjadksj 2y ago
I don’t understand how rents actually go down in a market. My landlord has raised rent every year save for when covid laws prevented that. It is their incentive to always raise rent even when articles about my city claim “rents went down 5%” or whatever this past year. Whose rent? Expensive commercial landlord new construction rents where they try and hide the price anyhow with two months free on the first year? The rent that therefore only matters for the bank to put a valuation on that property because people move in year 2 at these sort of properties to avoid paying that full rent? Maybe that is what they are referring to. No one I know has ever had a call from their landlord telling them to pay less money next month due to the declining value of their asset.
- erikerikson 2y ago
  We reduced rent during COVID both for a present tenant and for the following tenant. Generally those statistics are across all units while individual experiences can be wildly different. [Edit] FWIW that was based on the rental market rather than anything related to asset value.
  - iknowSFR 2y ago
    SFR had no decreases during those years in the US. Markets like the Southeast had 7-14% increases every year. SFR companies were doing “cash for keys” because rates were increasing so quickly that it was better business to buyout a lease from the current tenant and bring in a new one at a 14% increase.
    - erikerikson 2y ago
      It's not clear what you're trying to say. The GP said they weren't sure how rents went down. As an at-the-time-I-referenced landlord we reduced rents. Or tenants may have been privileged people who didn't need it but it seemed like the right thing at the time. Mostly because the impartial rent statistics source we repeatedly used indicated rents had gone down for the market local to the unit we offered. Maybe this is why we got out, because we weren't practicing exuberant total maximization of what we could extract. We got in because my partner was sentimental about the unit and felt we could hold aside a small part of the market to be a little kinder and more human. What triggered us getting out, in fact, was hostile policy enacted by Seattle that frequently poisoned the relationships with our tenants. That is, with the same behaviors we began being treated very poorly. I'm off the opinion that Sawant was in the pocket of large corporate holders given what I understand of the effectiveness with which she had consolidated the Seattle rental markets into a smaller set of hands.
seanmcdirmid 2y ago
> We built a ton of housing over the past 5 years, and last I read rents have fallen 22% and house prices have also gone down considerably You mean 22% in the last year? Definitely not 22% compared to 5 years ago.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  22% compared to the peak. https://nypost.com/2025/02/27/real-estate/austin-is-seeing-the-biggest-decline-in-rents-in-the-us/ https://nypost.com/2025/02/27/real-estate/austin-is-seeing-t...
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    That means that over the last five years, Austin real estate prices could still be up more than other cities. It looks like they went from $400K average prices in 2020 March to $600K now, but the peak is $680k. Is that because it took builders a while to catch up with a sharp increase in 2020, and now they "caught up"?
ForTheKidz 2y ago
> I may consider myself liberal, but general housing policy by most liberal leaders has been a total disaster and should be recognized as such. ? Private development is the heart of liberalism. We haven't had anyone but liberal leadership since, like, LBJ I think? And he was also a liberal acting out of character. Any alternative would surely imply public investment in housing. No, re-zoning is not going to make a dent in homelessness. I'm aware that you're referring to liberal in the sense of "loyalist democrat" or whatever, but the reality is that both parties have virtually the same policy when it comes to housing: blame the market, act as though the market will still answer our problems even though it hasn't in the past, and feign helplessness that the government can directly influence housing in the first place outside of zoning. I.e., liberalism.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

BurningFrog 2y ago

It's simpler than that. Government just has to legalize building housing, and the people will make it happen.

dragonwriter 2y ago
“The people” (local voters in the places that have the lomits in place) are the ones who want rules against building housing, not some external-to-the-people government.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  This is what the internet urbanists don’t get. Government is a mirror on its electorate. You want urbanist principles it starts by educating this electorate directly, not waiting for the government to do something to get itself unseated by that angry electorate the next cycle.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    Well, or you change the level of government you target to one whose constituency is less invested in the policies causing the problem and more concerned with solving the problem, e.g., over the last several years the California State government restricting the practical ability of local governments to restrict housing.
    - c22 2y ago
      This kind of thinking is why we're advancing significantly down the road to authoritarianism.
      - dragonwriter 2y ago
        I don't think that when higher levels of government make it harder for lower levels to restrict individual freedom that is “the road to authoritarianism”. In fact, I’d argue its exactly the opposite.