11 ms·

Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

311 points by matthest 1y ago

matthest 1y ago
Supply and demand 101 continues to work.
- ChuckMcM 1y ago
  So funny that. Weirdly even if you build nothing but market rate housing, housing gets more affordable. :-)
- koolba 1y ago
  Someone should try this with medicine. Instead of subsidizing insurance (demand side), let’s spend the money to bring doctors to the USA from all over the world and have them work in free clinics (supply side).
  - adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
    we also could just stop having the federal government limit the number of residency slots so we could have enough doctors trained in the US.
    - yablak 1y ago
      And by not limit you mean fund. And I agree.
    - ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y ago
      https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/hospital-physician-relationships/residency-programs-4-things-to-know/ https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/hospital-physi... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8370355/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8370355/
    - jmye 1y ago
      Not just residency. Fix the cost (and capacity) of the education system as a whole, especially for mid-levels. There’s no reason this country should have such a chronic NP shortage, and you don’t need MD/DOs for most of the healthcare gaps we have. You also make rural care viable when you don’t have folks who need to pay off astronomical loans.
      - kgwgk 1y ago
        > you don’t need MD/DOs for most of the healthcare gaps we have Or maybe you do! It’s for your own good. https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/scope-practice/ama-successfully-fights-scope-practice-expansions-threaten https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/scope-practice/...
      - mindslight 1y ago
        How are NPs not just the trend of enshittification? Most doctors already aren't very engaged in the tiny 15 minute slices of appointments, and now we're supposed to be happy that they'll be even less educated? The most straightforward way to address the doctor shortage is to make it so doctors are spending most of their time on healthcare, rather than appeasing "insurance" company bureaucrats with onerous paperwork.
        jmye 1y ago
        What a weird comment. What do you think you need an MD for, in your primary care visit, that an NP can’t do? What do you actually know about their education? What do you actually know about licensing? How much time, in a day, do you think doctors are spending on “insurance”, and what specific experience leads you to believe that? (Because the actual answer is “near zero for literally any provider who isn’t completely independent, and almost none of them are, anymore”.) Or was this just a way to memetically add “enshittification” to a conversation it doesn’t even slightly apply to, but you think that’s currently trendy?
        FireBeyond 1y ago
        You can be an NP in as few as 4-5 years out of high school with some courses. That’s to me the definition of not knowing what you don’t know. I’m a critical care paramedic who has corrected many NPs on fairly fundamental learning. I’ve found that nurses with significant field experience do very well, but there are plenty of courses who will “zero to hero” you fresh out of high school. Meanwhile, PAs go through a program near as rigorous as medical school and have to have physician supervision while NPs are not subject to oversight.
    - kgwgk 1y ago
      Good luck getting the federal government to stop doing what the unio..., I mean, what the American Medical Association and representatives of the nation's medical schools ask for. https://web.archive.org/web/20200501175120/https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1997-03-01-1997060012-story.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200501175120/https://www.balti...
  - madars 1y ago
    You don't even need to import foreign doctors: just increase the number of residency slots.
  - ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y ago
    We already do that? I mean, minus the free clinic thing.
  - hangonhn 1y ago
    You basically can’t or it won't have the same effects because medicine doesn’t really follow the same dynamics as most other markets: the supplier (doctor) has an information asymmetry and thus makes most of the decisions, while the buyer (patient) is not usually the payer (insurance) so aren’t really incentivized to save. Kenneth Arrow famously analyzed the healthcare market and made the above insight: https://assets.aeaweb.org/asset-server/files/9442.pdf https://assets.aeaweb.org/asset-server/files/9442.pdf I know he was a Nobel Laureate but not sure if this is the work that won him the Nobel. Updated: I should qualify my statement by pointing out this is for the US healthcare system.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > the supplier (doctor) has an information asymmetry and thus makes most of the decisions, while the buyer (patient) is not usually the payer (insurance) so aren’t really incentivized to save Counterfactual: patients in India routinely shop around for second opinions and negotiate fees.
      - hangonhn 1y ago
        Completely fair point. I should have prefaced my statement with US based healthcare system is structured this way. I don't know how the dynamics are in other countries -- though I do suspect it's similar in term of information asymmetry. I imagine doctors everywhere have some pretty advanced and specialized knowledge. I don't know enough about India to know how they overcome this issue or if they do or not.
    - elictronic 1y ago
      He said free clinics.
      - hangonhn 1y ago
        But then you're just shifting the cost somewhere else. The doctors aren't working for free. Someone is paying them. It's just not the patients in the case of free clinics. In addition, doctors aren't the only cost centers in health care either. Even if they're free, which is sort of already the case or fairly inexpensive for the insured in the US, the overall cost of healthcare will still be high. Plus if you want completely free clinics (everything from doctors to medicine, etc), then you're not talking about a market solution to the issue, which is completely fair too. No one said you have to use a free market solution for this problem. My point is that we can't expect a free market to solve this issue. It isn't as simple as supply and demand.
DaveZale 1y ago
Living in So CO, I smh at what's going on up there. The cost of living elsewhere in the state can be 1/3 to 1/2 the price. The govt and corporate employers could easily decentralize and stay in CO.
- at-fates-hands 1y ago
  How far south are you? I lived in Colorado Springs for a few years as a ski bum and all my friends in Denver used to mock me driving back and forth, but my rent was almost $500 cheaper living in Springs. You're 100% right though.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - scblock 1y ago
    Commuting from the Springs to Denver every day, so 22-23 days a month, 60-70 miles one way... Is that worth $500? Quick math: $4/gallon, 35 mpg, 120 miles a day, so $14/day in gas, plus extra maintenance, and the 3 hours a day of your life you'll never get back. Couldn't claim with a straight face myself that the math works.
    - throaway920181 1y ago
      If he was a "ski bum" I'm guessing he wasn't commuting to Denver, but to get to the mountains up there he'd have to drive the extra distance sometimes.
    - at-fates-hands 1y ago
      For me, I just saw it as disposable income. I was making good money at the time and it never really occurred to me it might not be a great deal. I just figured I had $500 more to do what I wanted. And caveat, I wasn't going every day, A lot of the back and forth was variable depending on weather and conditions. The sad part is you can't either these days thanks to Vail. Also, gas was a LOT cheaper back then - it was hovering around $1.75 if I remember correctly so the math works a little better, but not really ideal.
lenerdenator 1y ago
Now do KC.
- belmead 1y ago
  Howdy, fellow KC resident. They are still building apartment complexes in Lenexa, but they are all near the Public Market, so. Not exactly the cheaper side of things. South KC is growing, but mostly higher-end homes it seems.
  - lenerdenator 1y ago
    I was thinking KCMO proper, I'd do about anything for a safe, affordable place near the state line in Jackson County.
deadbabe 1y ago
Um the rent is still insanely unaffordable?
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Um the rent is still insanely unaffordable You have to pass 1st Street to get to 5th.
  - selimthegrim 1y ago
    Unless you go to jail.
no_wizard 1y ago
Lets keep the trend going. Lets get them back to 2019 levels! It would be a real feat if they can keep the cost going down instead of up.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- mixdup 1y ago
  that's unlikely. the pipeline of new units will be slowing, it's just that a bunch of projects that got spun up at the peak are finally delivering, but new starts have been down so we're probably approaching the bottom of a trough
  - no_wizard 1y ago
    So this is at best a temporary fix not a long term solution
    - sagarm 1y ago
      New starts are down across the board because interest rates are up, making construction harder to finance.
MangoToupe 1y ago
It's a nice victory story for the YIMBYs hoping to win over the upper-/middle class trying to retain the narrative that the market will provide "affordable" housing (not what this even demonstrates, but anyway), but this isn't going to get people off the street. We need a public housing sector to appropriately meet everyone's needs. Otherwise this is just a game of justifying "who deserves housing", a discussion over which I'll never agree with the market.
- mgfist 1y ago
  0.2% of Americans are homeless. Why is housing always about the homeless? Yes, getting people off the street is important. But there's few other topics where a solution that helps 99.8% of people is dismissed because it doesn't help 0.2% of people (I don't even agree that it doesn't help them, but I'll be charitable for the sake of making my point).
  - MangoToupe 1y ago
    > Why is housing always about the homeless? To me, poverty is basically the only thing worth talking about when it comes to politics. Nothing else is going to get me to the voting box—to me, a platform that doesn't focus on poverty reduction doesn't even understand the point of government, the economy, or trying to work together. I suspect other folks who think this way are going to be disproportionately loud.
    - spankalee 1y ago
      People in poverty have to pay for housing. Reducing the price of housing helps them, and may even help them climb out of poverty. Building more housing reduces the price of housing.
      - MangoToupe 1y ago
        > People in poverty have to pay for housing. No, they don't have to. That's a decision our society has made, and in my opinion it was a horribly evil one.
throwmeaway222 1y ago
yeah well, the last time things were affordable the price was 1200. 71 dollars off 1850 isn't going to do anything
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > 71 dollars off 1850 isn't going to do anything The point is the modern urban economic illiteracy that pretends supply and demand don't exist in housing (except when it comes to short-term rental stock, in which case it magically reappears) is wrong. Our housing crisis is a supply-side problem.
  - tokioyoyo 1y ago
    It’s a supply-side problem, but with majority of people being either indifferent to the problem or against downward pressure on the housing prices (most people don’t rent). The prices have skyrocketed, and most people who bought in the last 5 years wouldn’t want their assets to depreciate, if they spent 500K+ on it.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > most people who bought in the last 5 years wouldn’t want their assets to depreciate, if they spent 500K+ on it If they spent any amount on it. The long-run equilibrium is managing housing prices like the Fed, with a commitment to building enough to keep median real home prices flat. (I'd argue for a one-time adustment to pre-Covid levels. But that's arguably an arbitrary threshold.)
      - tokioyoyo 1y ago
        Absolutely. I only pointed to the last 5 years, because there was an insane appreciation and a lot of people went the route of “becoming house-poor, but owning their homes”. Those people, who are on the younger side, won’t ever support depreciation of their assets. Honestly, I have no idea how a government can resolve it without a large scale intervention or centralized action a la China.
jameslk 1y ago
Doesn’t rent need to keep going up so the top-heavy segment of retirees can have a steady stream of inflation adjusted income and capital gains for their remaining years? This doesn’t seem sustainable, politically
- jldugger 1y ago
  Well, if they own their home and have a diversified portfolio, then they should be able to weather a small hit to income. If they rent, well, this directly helps their budget.
  - DaveZale 1y ago
    taxes and insurance are both much steeper than just a few years ago. Gov. Polis has forced lifting limits on occupancy to override local restrictions. It's just getting more crowded.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Doesn’t rent need to keep going up so the top-heavy segment of retirees can have a steady stream of inflation adjusted income No. Maybe 10% of retirees earn rental income [1]. > and capital gains for their remaining years? The value of the home should be plenty to live off, whether by sale or borrowing. [1] https://bradleyclark.com/blog/generating-retirement-income-with-real-estate-investing https://bradleyclark.com/blog/generating-retirement-income-w...
- pphysch 1y ago
  Doesn't seem sustainable civilizationally, either, if the young and poor are propping up the old and rich, rather than older generations nurturing the youth.
- ch4s3 1y ago
  Residential real estate is very rarely a large component of people’s retirement savings or income in the US, and equities historically outperform real estate.
Giorgi 1y ago
[flagged]
- yapyap 1y ago
  communism? was there lead in the paint they painted your walls with? no real argument was made for communism, however a housing / renting market controlled by the government with regulations instead of letting the “free market” (((oligopoly))) run it’s course screwing over the poor and middle class while the richest of the rich pool all these profits to build bunkers and do stupid shit. yeah, a regulated market is better. especially when and if the government regulating the market is sane. thats a requirement for laws and or institutions relying on regulation
  - calvinmorrison 1y ago
    > was there lead in the paint they painted your walls with? yes unfortunately as long as my landlord gave me the LEAD PAINT notice i didnt have any other options.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > a housing / renting market controlled by the government with regulations instead of letting the “free market” It's curious how the largest landowing families in New York and San Francisco are strong supporters of these anti-market policies.
- dang 1y 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. They include: "Don't be snarky." "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
- vlakreeh 1y ago
JKCalhoun 1y ago
Is it wrong of me to be sad that it's rent and not home prices?
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > wrong of me to be sad that it's rent and not home prices? Rents are higher frequency than home prices. Ceteris paribus, prices follow yields.
- jeffbee 1y ago
  Yes, it is in fact quite wrong and one of the biggest obstacles in American society is fetishization of homeownership.
  - unethical_ban 1y ago
    Why is it wrong to want to have equity in the place you live? "Ownership" could be a house, it could be a townhome, it could be flat. But in the US, "owning" an apartment is very rare, while real estate investors buy up all the valuable land in the urban cores of cities and rent it.
    - jeffbee 1y ago
      If you want equity in real estate nobody is stopping you. The problem is when people get this idea that we need to discourage investors from building very greatly desired rental housing.
      - chrsw 1y ago
        This is the big problem with treating your home as an investment. People who just want a place to live near where they work now have to play this game too. And it's not cheap game.
        JKCalhoun 1y ago
        That was what rentals were supposed to be. And then there was also such a thing as a "starter home". From what I see in Omaha, it's the developers that got greedy — figuring they could get more dosh turning a higher-end home than a starter home on the same lot.
righthand 1y ago
It will just go back up 3% next year to match inflation. 20k apartments and the rent only lowers 3%? What a joke. Only the real estate industry is celebrating this.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > 20k apartments and the rent only lowers 3%? 20k is about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Given the backlog of demand, you'd expect to see inelasticity at the entrance. [1] http://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0820000-denver-co/ http://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0820000-denver-co/
aynyc 1y ago
Just because this doesn’t magically solve the housing crisis, doesn’t mean it’s not a good start. We have to stop looking at magical solutions that will solve all our problems in one shot. We have to start somewhere.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > because this doesn’t magically solve the housing crisis It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) [1] http://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0820000-denver-co/ http://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0820000-denver-co/
  - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
    > It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) That is only if you believe that more capacity does not induce more demand, which really isn't true as long as the city remains popular for jobs/climate/nature/etc.... People not moving to Denver because the rent is too high will decide to move to Denver if rents decrease (and the demand they add will cause rents to increase, wash/rinse/repeat until an equilibrium is reached). You also have cases where a city becomes even more attractive because of growing density alone (NYC, Hong Kong, Tokyo).
    - hdgvhicv 1y ago
      Is you idea that people will be renting multiple units just for the fun of it? In large enough numbers to be impactful?
    - FredPret 1y ago
      That's why you have to allow large-scale building everywhere. Then the market will find its own level. The inverse of this situation is that everyone lives somewhere they consider unpleasant because the rent is affordable there. The megacities you mention are enormously economically productive per capita. All sorts of efficiencies pop up when a huge number of people live near one another.
bearcobra 1y ago
It's really encouraging to see these kinds of success stories. I really hope people who are concerned about affordability start to view things from more of a "yes and" point of view. We can work on reducing the barriers to building more housing of any kind while also advocating for more social housing development.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > We can work on reducing the barriers to building more housing of any kind while also advocating for more social housing development One of the NIMBY lobby's greatest wins was putting these options on the ends of a policy spectrum. They're not. They're complementary. If it's cheaper to build, it's cheaper to build social housing. And if you have a vibrant construction sector, you can build more public housing faster.
  - tptacek 1y ago
    They're not always complementary. For instance, IZOs are a social housing intervention, and work against the goal of increasing supply.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > IZOs This [1]? [1] https://dhcd.dc.gov/service/inclusionary-zoning-iz-affordable-housing-program https://dhcd.dc.gov/service/inclusionary-zoning-iz-affordabl...
      - tptacek 1y ago
        Sorry, yeah, IZO/IHO --- rules requiring some margin of AMI affordable units in new developments (which makes new development harder to pencil out, while giving warm fuzzies to locals who want to genuflect to affordability while still fencing out new neighbors).
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    Probably the best thing you could do in terms of social housing construction would be to have the government put up some capital to buy land and build new housing on that land, then immediately sell it and use the proceeds to do it again and again with exponential growth because it's actually profitable. But that's also what construction companies would be doing regardless except for the subsidy, at which point you might be better off doing something like exempting construction companies from property taxes for two years if they at least double the number of housing units on their land in that time.
srameshc 1y ago
With rents escalating notably from 2022, getting back to 2019 rates would provide substantial relief for numerous families, assuming that's the objective.
wagwang 1y ago
I just need to subsidize demand and then prices go up, people get angry, and I just need to subsidize demand and then...
raldi 1y ago
Even if the rents were merely unchanged, 20k new units means 20k new families that can move to Denver without displacing anybody.
scblock 1y ago
Funny, I just got a lease renewal email today and they want another 7%. Call me skeptical.
- Babkock 1y ago
  How dare your experience differ from mine on the internet. I demand you show me proof of your rent going up, Denver man!
1270018080 1y ago
Remember, this is a good thing. Property values should not outpace inflation.
- Marsymars 1y ago
  It's not terrible if property values fall somewhere between inflation and GDP growth.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    Presumably GDP growth per capita, but even then, why would that be any better than "not a cent more than inflation", or for that matter even for housing prices to decline over time (e.g. through increased automation in construction)?
    - Marsymars 1y ago
      Yes, of course, the cost of things decreasing (net of externalities) is good. (Was just making the distinction between inflation and purchasing power - things can have an inflation-adjusted rise in price while still becoming cheaper with respect to purchasing power.)
jmyeet 1y ago
Developers don't build units to lower prices. If prices go down, it's because developers overbuilt or there are other macro factors at play. I suspect it's a bit of both. A core tenet of capitalism and neoliberalism is private property. We're rapidly approaching a point of land reform. I think private property is a mistake. Note: this is distinct to personal property. You can own your own home, maybe even a second home. Anything beyond that should be outright disallowed or taxed into oblivion. We should simply not allow people to hoard property. It is state-sanctioned violence to deny people shelter by intentionally driving up the price of a basic need. Housing unaffordability is the number one contributor to homelessness, which I think is up 18% last year. I realize that's a pipe dream. What can we do instead? Do what Vienna does. Austria is a social democratic country that's still capitalist in nature. Yet ~60% of the housing stock is owned by the government. It is remarkably cheap to do so. Public-private partnerhips or simply looking to the private sector to solve these problems are nothing more than wealth transfer from the government to billionaires.
jt2190 1y ago
Source: https://www.aamdhq.org/news/vacancy-and-rent-report----july-28-2025 https://www.aamdhq.org/news/vacancy-and-rent-report----july-...
tristor 1y ago
I live in Denver, I don't believe this article is true. I just got a renewal offer where they wanted to raise my rent by 30%. I have generally negotiated this down with my landlord (Greystar), but I also am well aware and they're more blatant about the fact that they use RealPage ever since the courts gave them a pass for blatant price-fixing and collusion. Greystar and two other major REITs own nearly 60% of all rentable residential properties in the Denver metro area, so pardon my skepticism, but I call BS on the thought that rent has or will ever go down in Denver. Edit: The plural of anecdote /is/ data.
- chrisco255 1y ago
  What you've quoted here is anecdotal evidence: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anecdote https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anecdote Crime can trend down and yet there will still be victims of crime.
- angrydev 1y ago
  Greystar is a notoriously bad landlord and your personal anecdote does not change the data.
- matthest 1y ago
  Shop around and see what others are offering. I believe your anecdote, and I've also seen several other anecdotes about how rents have dropped - someone said as much as $1k. I'm sure it's a big mix right now.
Babkock 1y ago
[flagged]
typewithrhythm 1y ago
How is this measured? I've seen similar articles for Melbourne, where the average per dwelling is reducing, but the quality of the average dwelling is reduced faster; less bedrooms, low quality noisy single aspect apartments. But if you track the price of a pre-existing property it's growing just as fast.
mooreds 1y ago
The basic laws of supply and demand work!
- hnthrow90348765 1y ago
  "hey guys check this out i figured out people will pay anything to avoid dying on the streets haha supply demand number go up. what about if we do food and water next"
diogenescynic 1y ago
It's funny how for so long people fought the basic law of supply and demand and tried to force 'affordable housing' to be built exclusively, while the prices of homes skyrocketed. I think leaders knew better, but they just didn't care because they were making money on their property. It also seems like a form of generational theft from boomers to millennials. Housing supply was always being added until boomers got theirs, then they made it overly restrictive to choke supply and drive up prices.
graycat 1y ago
One, maybe not the only one, hands off, automatic, 100% "all-natural", do nothing solution to the "housing crisis": Hope the birth rate, i.e., on average the number of babies born per woman, stays significantly under 2.0 or even 2.1, maybe 2.2. So, the population will shrink but with some maintenance (roof, painting of exterior siding, kitchen/bath, HVAC, windows/doors) mostly the housing supply won't. The Internet may reduce the time and money commuting to work and/or the need to be in high density, expensive housing areas for a job.
- mritterhoff 1y ago
  A decreasing population has a lot of collateral damage economically. I'd rather lessen zoning restrictions and let the market build.
  - graycat 1y ago
    > collateral damage ... Right.
mathattack 1y ago
The last paragraph should temper our enthusiasm. Allowing people to build more when there is a shortage is the best way to have markets solve problems. —- “ Meanwhile, the pipeline of new apartment buildings is drying up. The number of properties under construction is down by roughly one-third from the peak in 2023, the report found. That likely means fewer units coming available in the months ahead, potentially giving landlords room to start raising rents again.”
reactordev 1y ago
Denver is a boom and bust town. Every once in a while, it thrives for a decade, then busts with an exodus of people (myself included). It will rebalance and boom again.
- throwawayq3423 1y ago
  Why do you say this and why did you leave? I'm curious.
  - reactordev 1y ago
    Because that’s Denver’s history. Founded by land speculators after beating Indians in the Colorado War of 1865, only to become a gold rush town, then go bust, become a gang haven, bust again, then boom again with Carnations, then bust again, then boom again with industrials and nuclear waste, to go bust again when nuclear power was divested, then to boom again in the 90s with more gangs, bust again, then boom again in the 2010s with the green rush. I left because I was sick of having to weather the storm of boom and busts, saw $250,000 homes become $950,000 homes (no change to the home itself) and prey upon the young people moving there to ensure they are financially burdened with Boulder Boomer retirement plans.
    - theoreticalmal 1y ago
      The Denver Metro Area has been booming for close to 20 years. It was one of the few localities that continued positive economic growth through the 2008 recession
      - reactordev 1y ago
        Yes, because just 4 years later, everyone was high. It was the precursor to the green rush. Denver weathered the storm because we had an economic tsunami on our hands and it was going to come crashing at the ballot box. Well, it broke through. There was a huge influx of people from more expensive metros coming to Denver at that time. Then the housing went through the roof. Statistically it happened everywhere but I was in Denver trying to buy and being outbid by people with cash buying their 4th home.
tamimio 1y ago
Rents are high because landlords are greedy and are paying already inflated house prices. Owning is expensive because banks are greedy, pumping out the created credit for mortgages, which is an imaginary number based on no actual value, because somehow banks are allowed to create money! Here's the plot twist: you spend 30 years or even more (in Canada that has reached 70 years!) to pay the mortgage only to find out that you actually don't own the house and you're on a perpetual rent called property taxes. And unless the root issue is resolved by banning banks' Ponzi fraudulent schemes, and implementing a policy to change housing into a depreciated asset just like Japan did, nothing will change substantially and will only change marginally to prevent people from going out rioting in the streets.
- teaearlgraycold 1y ago
  As someone that rents I have little sympathy for people paying property taxes annually that are less than what I have to pay in one month. There should of course be sanity in the system. If you’re retired and can’t the afford property taxes on your home it’s not okay to squeeze you for that little bit of money.
  - bufferoverflow 1y ago
    You're not making any sense. Someone paid for a house, they fully expect to pay a lot less than renters do. That's the point of buying a house.
    - ekelsen 1y ago
      The point of buying a primary house is to be able to do what you want with it. And to know you can live there as long as you want. Economics dictates how valuable those things are and what premium they have over renting.
    - Gibbon1 1y ago
      What I realized when I bought a house was for an owner occupier buying a house is the only way to 'invest' the money you'd otherwise spend on rent. You'd never make such a low return illiquid investment otherwise.
joshmlewis 1y ago
As a side note, if anyone here is in Denver and wants to grab a coffee or cowork sometime, hit me up.
Glyptodon 1y ago
It all just goes to show that government building, or creating some financing framework for building, very plain housing and selling for cost to keep supply ahead of demand would be an effective policy.
rossdavidh 1y ago
Not saying it's not noteworthy, but Austin rents have also been trending down lately. I just recently heard the term "accidental landlord", which is someone who can't (or won't) sell at a price low enough to actually get rid of their house, so they rent it out. I know that's a factor in Austin; I wonder if it's part of the story in Denver?
- ipnon 1y ago
  In a proper market economy there are many accidents in everyone’s career as they adapt to changing market conditions. Only in a planned economy do some market segments face no surprises.
Incipient 1y ago
>back to 2022 prices If we could be so lucky - out median rent it FIFTY PERCENT up over 2022 prices.
tlogan 1y ago
In other news, San Francisco rents are up $223 from a year ago, with median rent rising 11% year-over-year [1]. But hey, at least we’re safe from the dangers of gas stoves. /s [1] https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/san-francisco-ca/ https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/san-fran...
- CalRobert 1y ago
  Inhaling combustion products isn't great... not sure why you'd link those things? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9819315/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9819315/ "We found that 12.7% (95% CI = 6.3–19.3%) of current childhood asthma in the US is attributable to gas stove use. The proportion of childhood asthma that could be theoretically prevented if gas stove use was not present (e.g., state-specific PAFs) varied by state (Illinois = 21.1%; California = 20.1%; New York = 18.8%; Massachusetts = 15.4%; Pennsylvania = 13.5%). " Indoor combustion seems like a very good thing to eliminate.
  - tlogan 1y ago
    In San Francisco, the housing crisis poses a far greater and more immediate threat to children’s well-being than this issue. Lack of stable, affordable housing affects everything: education, health, safety, and long-term opportunity. We can debate other problems, but unless we address the fundamental need for proper housing, everything else should be secondary.
    - CalRobert 1y ago
      I agree, but it’s not like induction stoves are a huge expense
LoganDark 1y ago
Is $1800 per month supposed to be a normal or acceptable rent? Rent should be less than $1000 a month. And even that's only 30% if you're making over $50,000 a year.
jondwillis 1y ago
Let’s interview the people living in all of these high quality new builds and see how much they’re loving or not loving their new digs.
- theoreticalmal 1y ago
  Why?
WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago
back to 2022 rents! wow..yeah..., but why 2022? Feels like cherry picking the one year that makes today's numbers look okay run it against 2000-today, or even 2020, and the story probably gets way uglier

311 points by matthest 1y ago

matthest 1y ago

Supply and demand 101 continues to work.

ChuckMcM 1y ago
So funny that. Weirdly even if you build nothing but market rate housing, housing gets more affordable. :-)
koolba 1y ago
Someone should try this with medicine. Instead of subsidizing insurance (demand side), let’s spend the money to bring doctors to the USA from all over the world and have them work in free clinics (supply side).
- adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
  we also could just stop having the federal government limit the number of residency slots so we could have enough doctors trained in the US.
  - yablak 1y ago
    And by not limit you mean fund. And I agree.
  - ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y ago
    https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/hospital-physician-relationships/residency-programs-4-things-to-know/ https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/hospital-physi... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8370355/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8370355/
  - jmye 1y ago
    Not just residency. Fix the cost (and capacity) of the education system as a whole, especially for mid-levels. There’s no reason this country should have such a chronic NP shortage, and you don’t need MD/DOs for most of the healthcare gaps we have. You also make rural care viable when you don’t have folks who need to pay off astronomical loans.
    - kgwgk 1y ago
      > you don’t need MD/DOs for most of the healthcare gaps we have Or maybe you do! It’s for your own good. https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/scope-practice/ama-successfully-fights-scope-practice-expansions-threaten https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/scope-practice/...
    - mindslight 1y ago
      How are NPs not just the trend of enshittification? Most doctors already aren't very engaged in the tiny 15 minute slices of appointments, and now we're supposed to be happy that they'll be even less educated? The most straightforward way to address the doctor shortage is to make it so doctors are spending most of their time on healthcare, rather than appeasing "insurance" company bureaucrats with onerous paperwork.
      - jmye 1y ago
        What a weird comment. What do you think you need an MD for, in your primary care visit, that an NP can’t do? What do you actually know about their education? What do you actually know about licensing? How much time, in a day, do you think doctors are spending on “insurance”, and what specific experience leads you to believe that? (Because the actual answer is “near zero for literally any provider who isn’t completely independent, and almost none of them are, anymore”.) Or was this just a way to memetically add “enshittification” to a conversation it doesn’t even slightly apply to, but you think that’s currently trendy?
        FireBeyond 1y ago
        You can be an NP in as few as 4-5 years out of high school with some courses. That’s to me the definition of not knowing what you don’t know. I’m a critical care paramedic who has corrected many NPs on fairly fundamental learning. I’ve found that nurses with significant field experience do very well, but there are plenty of courses who will “zero to hero” you fresh out of high school. Meanwhile, PAs go through a program near as rigorous as medical school and have to have physician supervision while NPs are not subject to oversight.
  - kgwgk 1y ago
    Good luck getting the federal government to stop doing what the unio..., I mean, what the American Medical Association and representatives of the nation's medical schools ask for. https://web.archive.org/web/20200501175120/https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1997-03-01-1997060012-story.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200501175120/https://www.balti...
- madars 1y ago
  You don't even need to import foreign doctors: just increase the number of residency slots.
- ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y ago
  We already do that? I mean, minus the free clinic thing.
- hangonhn 1y ago
  You basically can’t or it won't have the same effects because medicine doesn’t really follow the same dynamics as most other markets: the supplier (doctor) has an information asymmetry and thus makes most of the decisions, while the buyer (patient) is not usually the payer (insurance) so aren’t really incentivized to save. Kenneth Arrow famously analyzed the healthcare market and made the above insight: https://assets.aeaweb.org/asset-server/files/9442.pdf https://assets.aeaweb.org/asset-server/files/9442.pdf I know he was a Nobel Laureate but not sure if this is the work that won him the Nobel. Updated: I should qualify my statement by pointing out this is for the US healthcare system.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > the supplier (doctor) has an information asymmetry and thus makes most of the decisions, while the buyer (patient) is not usually the payer (insurance) so aren’t really incentivized to save Counterfactual: patients in India routinely shop around for second opinions and negotiate fees.
    - hangonhn 1y ago
      Completely fair point. I should have prefaced my statement with US based healthcare system is structured this way. I don't know how the dynamics are in other countries -- though I do suspect it's similar in term of information asymmetry. I imagine doctors everywhere have some pretty advanced and specialized knowledge. I don't know enough about India to know how they overcome this issue or if they do or not.
  - elictronic 1y ago
    He said free clinics.
    - hangonhn 1y ago
      But then you're just shifting the cost somewhere else. The doctors aren't working for free. Someone is paying them. It's just not the patients in the case of free clinics. In addition, doctors aren't the only cost centers in health care either. Even if they're free, which is sort of already the case or fairly inexpensive for the insured in the US, the overall cost of healthcare will still be high. Plus if you want completely free clinics (everything from doctors to medicine, etc), then you're not talking about a market solution to the issue, which is completely fair too. No one said you have to use a free market solution for this problem. My point is that we can't expect a free market to solve this issue. It isn't as simple as supply and demand.

DaveZale 1y ago

Living in So CO, I smh at what's going on up there. The cost of living elsewhere in the state can be 1/3 to 1/2 the price. The govt and corporate employers could easily decentralize and stay in CO.

at-fates-hands 1y ago
How far south are you? I lived in Colorado Springs for a few years as a ski bum and all my friends in Denver used to mock me driving back and forth, but my rent was almost $500 cheaper living in Springs. You're 100% right though.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- scblock 1y ago
  Commuting from the Springs to Denver every day, so 22-23 days a month, 60-70 miles one way... Is that worth $500? Quick math: $4/gallon, 35 mpg, 120 miles a day, so $14/day in gas, plus extra maintenance, and the 3 hours a day of your life you'll never get back. Couldn't claim with a straight face myself that the math works.
  - throaway920181 1y ago
    If he was a "ski bum" I'm guessing he wasn't commuting to Denver, but to get to the mountains up there he'd have to drive the extra distance sometimes.
  - at-fates-hands 1y ago
    For me, I just saw it as disposable income. I was making good money at the time and it never really occurred to me it might not be a great deal. I just figured I had $500 more to do what I wanted. And caveat, I wasn't going every day, A lot of the back and forth was variable depending on weather and conditions. The sad part is you can't either these days thanks to Vail. Also, gas was a LOT cheaper back then - it was hovering around $1.75 if I remember correctly so the math works a little better, but not really ideal.

lenerdenator 1y ago

Now do KC.

belmead 1y ago
Howdy, fellow KC resident. They are still building apartment complexes in Lenexa, but they are all near the Public Market, so. Not exactly the cheaper side of things. South KC is growing, but mostly higher-end homes it seems.
- lenerdenator 1y ago
  I was thinking KCMO proper, I'd do about anything for a safe, affordable place near the state line in Jackson County.

deadbabe 1y ago

Um the rent is still insanely unaffordable?

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> Um the rent is still insanely unaffordable You have to pass 1st Street to get to 5th.
- selimthegrim 1y ago
  Unless you go to jail.

no_wizard 1y ago

Lets keep the trend going. Lets get them back to 2019 levels! It would be a real feat if they can keep the cost going down instead of up.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
mixdup 1y ago
that's unlikely. the pipeline of new units will be slowing, it's just that a bunch of projects that got spun up at the peak are finally delivering, but new starts have been down so we're probably approaching the bottom of a trough
- no_wizard 1y ago
  So this is at best a temporary fix not a long term solution
  - sagarm 1y ago
    New starts are down across the board because interest rates are up, making construction harder to finance.

MangoToupe 1y ago

It's a nice victory story for the YIMBYs hoping to win over the upper-/middle class trying to retain the narrative that the market will provide "affordable" housing (not what this even demonstrates, but anyway), but this isn't going to get people off the street. We need a public housing sector to appropriately meet everyone's needs. Otherwise this is just a game of justifying "who deserves housing", a discussion over which I'll never agree with the market.

mgfist 1y ago
0.2% of Americans are homeless. Why is housing always about the homeless? Yes, getting people off the street is important. But there's few other topics where a solution that helps 99.8% of people is dismissed because it doesn't help 0.2% of people (I don't even agree that it doesn't help them, but I'll be charitable for the sake of making my point).
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  > Why is housing always about the homeless? To me, poverty is basically the only thing worth talking about when it comes to politics. Nothing else is going to get me to the voting box—to me, a platform that doesn't focus on poverty reduction doesn't even understand the point of government, the economy, or trying to work together. I suspect other folks who think this way are going to be disproportionately loud.
  - spankalee 1y ago
    People in poverty have to pay for housing. Reducing the price of housing helps them, and may even help them climb out of poverty. Building more housing reduces the price of housing.
    - MangoToupe 1y ago
      > People in poverty have to pay for housing. No, they don't have to. That's a decision our society has made, and in my opinion it was a horribly evil one.

throwmeaway222 1y ago

yeah well, the last time things were affordable the price was 1200. 71 dollars off 1850 isn't going to do anything

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> 71 dollars off 1850 isn't going to do anything The point is the modern urban economic illiteracy that pretends supply and demand don't exist in housing (except when it comes to short-term rental stock, in which case it magically reappears) is wrong. Our housing crisis is a supply-side problem.
- tokioyoyo 1y ago
  It’s a supply-side problem, but with majority of people being either indifferent to the problem or against downward pressure on the housing prices (most people don’t rent). The prices have skyrocketed, and most people who bought in the last 5 years wouldn’t want their assets to depreciate, if they spent 500K+ on it.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > most people who bought in the last 5 years wouldn’t want their assets to depreciate, if they spent 500K+ on it If they spent any amount on it. The long-run equilibrium is managing housing prices like the Fed, with a commitment to building enough to keep median real home prices flat. (I'd argue for a one-time adustment to pre-Covid levels. But that's arguably an arbitrary threshold.)
    - tokioyoyo 1y ago
      Absolutely. I only pointed to the last 5 years, because there was an insane appreciation and a lot of people went the route of “becoming house-poor, but owning their homes”. Those people, who are on the younger side, won’t ever support depreciation of their assets. Honestly, I have no idea how a government can resolve it without a large scale intervention or centralized action a la China.

jameslk 1y ago

Doesn’t rent need to keep going up so the top-heavy segment of retirees can have a steady stream of inflation adjusted income and capital gains for their remaining years? This doesn’t seem sustainable, politically

jldugger 1y ago
Well, if they own their home and have a diversified portfolio, then they should be able to weather a small hit to income. If they rent, well, this directly helps their budget.
- DaveZale 1y ago
  taxes and insurance are both much steeper than just a few years ago. Gov. Polis has forced lifting limits on occupancy to override local restrictions. It's just getting more crowded.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> Doesn’t rent need to keep going up so the top-heavy segment of retirees can have a steady stream of inflation adjusted income No. Maybe 10% of retirees earn rental income [1]. > and capital gains for their remaining years? The value of the home should be plenty to live off, whether by sale or borrowing. [1] https://bradleyclark.com/blog/generating-retirement-income-with-real-estate-investing https://bradleyclark.com/blog/generating-retirement-income-w...
pphysch 1y ago
Doesn't seem sustainable civilizationally, either, if the young and poor are propping up the old and rich, rather than older generations nurturing the youth.
ch4s3 1y ago
Residential real estate is very rarely a large component of people’s retirement savings or income in the US, and equities historically outperform real estate.

Giorgi 1y ago

[flagged]

yapyap 1y ago
communism? was there lead in the paint they painted your walls with? no real argument was made for communism, however a housing / renting market controlled by the government with regulations instead of letting the “free market” (((oligopoly))) run it’s course screwing over the poor and middle class while the richest of the rich pool all these profits to build bunkers and do stupid shit. yeah, a regulated market is better. especially when and if the government regulating the market is sane. thats a requirement for laws and or institutions relying on regulation
- calvinmorrison 1y ago
  > was there lead in the paint they painted your walls with? yes unfortunately as long as my landlord gave me the LEAD PAINT notice i didnt have any other options.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > a housing / renting market controlled by the government with regulations instead of letting the “free market” It's curious how the largest landowing families in New York and San Francisco are strong supporters of these anti-market policies.
dang 1y 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. They include: "Don't be snarky." "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
vlakreeh 1y ago

JKCalhoun 1y ago

Is it wrong of me to be sad that it's rent and not home prices?

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> wrong of me to be sad that it's rent and not home prices? Rents are higher frequency than home prices. Ceteris paribus, prices follow yields.
jeffbee 1y ago
Yes, it is in fact quite wrong and one of the biggest obstacles in American society is fetishization of homeownership.
- unethical_ban 1y ago
  Why is it wrong to want to have equity in the place you live? "Ownership" could be a house, it could be a townhome, it could be flat. But in the US, "owning" an apartment is very rare, while real estate investors buy up all the valuable land in the urban cores of cities and rent it.
  - jeffbee 1y ago
    If you want equity in real estate nobody is stopping you. The problem is when people get this idea that we need to discourage investors from building very greatly desired rental housing.
    - chrsw 1y ago
      This is the big problem with treating your home as an investment. People who just want a place to live near where they work now have to play this game too. And it's not cheap game.
      - JKCalhoun 1y ago
        That was what rentals were supposed to be. And then there was also such a thing as a "starter home". From what I see in Omaha, it's the developers that got greedy — figuring they could get more dosh turning a higher-end home than a starter home on the same lot.

righthand 1y ago

It will just go back up 3% next year to match inflation. 20k apartments and the rent only lowers 3%? What a joke. Only the real estate industry is celebrating this.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> 20k apartments and the rent only lowers 3%? 20k is about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Given the backlog of demand, you'd expect to see inelasticity at the entrance. [1] http://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0820000-denver-co/ http://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0820000-denver-co/

aynyc 1y ago

Just because this doesn’t magically solve the housing crisis, doesn’t mean it’s not a good start. We have to stop looking at magical solutions that will solve all our problems in one shot. We have to start somewhere.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> because this doesn’t magically solve the housing crisis It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) [1] http://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0820000-denver-co/ http://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0820000-denver-co/
- seanmcdirmid 1y ago
  > It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) That is only if you believe that more capacity does not induce more demand, which really isn't true as long as the city remains popular for jobs/climate/nature/etc.... People not moving to Denver because the rent is too high will decide to move to Denver if rents decrease (and the demand they add will cause rents to increase, wash/rinse/repeat until an equilibrium is reached). You also have cases where a city becomes even more attractive because of growing density alone (NYC, Hong Kong, Tokyo).
  - hdgvhicv 1y ago
    Is you idea that people will be renting multiple units just for the fun of it? In large enough numbers to be impactful?
  - FredPret 1y ago
    That's why you have to allow large-scale building everywhere. Then the market will find its own level. The inverse of this situation is that everyone lives somewhere they consider unpleasant because the rent is affordable there. The megacities you mention are enormously economically productive per capita. All sorts of efficiencies pop up when a huge number of people live near one another.

bearcobra 1y ago

It's really encouraging to see these kinds of success stories. I really hope people who are concerned about affordability start to view things from more of a "yes and" point of view. We can work on reducing the barriers to building more housing of any kind while also advocating for more social housing development.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> We can work on reducing the barriers to building more housing of any kind while also advocating for more social housing development One of the NIMBY lobby's greatest wins was putting these options on the ends of a policy spectrum. They're not. They're complementary. If it's cheaper to build, it's cheaper to build social housing. And if you have a vibrant construction sector, you can build more public housing faster.
- tptacek 1y ago
  They're not always complementary. For instance, IZOs are a social housing intervention, and work against the goal of increasing supply.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > IZOs This [1]? [1] https://dhcd.dc.gov/service/inclusionary-zoning-iz-affordable-housing-program https://dhcd.dc.gov/service/inclusionary-zoning-iz-affordabl...
    - tptacek 1y ago
      Sorry, yeah, IZO/IHO --- rules requiring some margin of AMI affordable units in new developments (which makes new development harder to pencil out, while giving warm fuzzies to locals who want to genuflect to affordability while still fencing out new neighbors).
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  Probably the best thing you could do in terms of social housing construction would be to have the government put up some capital to buy land and build new housing on that land, then immediately sell it and use the proceeds to do it again and again with exponential growth because it's actually profitable. But that's also what construction companies would be doing regardless except for the subsidy, at which point you might be better off doing something like exempting construction companies from property taxes for two years if they at least double the number of housing units on their land in that time.

srameshc 1y ago

With rents escalating notably from 2022, getting back to 2019 rates would provide substantial relief for numerous families, assuming that's the objective.

wagwang 1y ago

I just need to subsidize demand and then prices go up, people get angry, and I just need to subsidize demand and then...

raldi 1y ago

Even if the rents were merely unchanged, 20k new units means 20k new families that can move to Denver without displacing anybody.

scblock 1y ago

Funny, I just got a lease renewal email today and they want another 7%. Call me skeptical.

Babkock 1y ago
How dare your experience differ from mine on the internet. I demand you show me proof of your rent going up, Denver man!

1270018080 1y ago

Remember, this is a good thing. Property values should not outpace inflation.

Marsymars 1y ago
It's not terrible if property values fall somewhere between inflation and GDP growth.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  Presumably GDP growth per capita, but even then, why would that be any better than "not a cent more than inflation", or for that matter even for housing prices to decline over time (e.g. through increased automation in construction)?
  - Marsymars 1y ago
    Yes, of course, the cost of things decreasing (net of externalities) is good. (Was just making the distinction between inflation and purchasing power - things can have an inflation-adjusted rise in price while still becoming cheaper with respect to purchasing power.)

jmyeet 1y ago

Developers don't build units to lower prices. If prices go down, it's because developers overbuilt or there are other macro factors at play. I suspect it's a bit of both. A core tenet of capitalism and neoliberalism is private property. We're rapidly approaching a point of land reform. I think private property is a mistake. Note: this is distinct to personal property. You can own your own home, maybe even a second home. Anything beyond that should be outright disallowed or taxed into oblivion. We should simply not allow people to hoard property. It is state-sanctioned violence to deny people shelter by intentionally driving up the price of a basic need. Housing unaffordability is the number one contributor to homelessness, which I think is up 18% last year. I realize that's a pipe dream. What can we do instead? Do what Vienna does. Austria is a social democratic country that's still capitalist in nature. Yet ~60% of the housing stock is owned by the government. It is remarkably cheap to do so. Public-private partnerhips or simply looking to the private sector to solve these problems are nothing more than wealth transfer from the government to billionaires.

jt2190 1y ago

Source: https://www.aamdhq.org/news/vacancy-and-rent-report----july-28-2025 https://www.aamdhq.org/news/vacancy-and-rent-report----july-...

tristor 1y ago

I live in Denver, I don't believe this article is true. I just got a renewal offer where they wanted to raise my rent by 30%. I have generally negotiated this down with my landlord (Greystar), but I also am well aware and they're more blatant about the fact that they use RealPage ever since the courts gave them a pass for blatant price-fixing and collusion. Greystar and two other major REITs own nearly 60% of all rentable residential properties in the Denver metro area, so pardon my skepticism, but I call BS on the thought that rent has or will ever go down in Denver. Edit: The plural of anecdote /is/ data.

chrisco255 1y ago
What you've quoted here is anecdotal evidence: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anecdote https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anecdote Crime can trend down and yet there will still be victims of crime.
angrydev 1y ago
Greystar is a notoriously bad landlord and your personal anecdote does not change the data.
matthest 1y ago
Shop around and see what others are offering. I believe your anecdote, and I've also seen several other anecdotes about how rents have dropped - someone said as much as $1k. I'm sure it's a big mix right now.

Babkock 1y ago

[flagged]

typewithrhythm 1y ago

How is this measured? I've seen similar articles for Melbourne, where the average per dwelling is reducing, but the quality of the average dwelling is reduced faster; less bedrooms, low quality noisy single aspect apartments. But if you track the price of a pre-existing property it's growing just as fast.

mooreds 1y ago

The basic laws of supply and demand work!

hnthrow90348765 1y ago
"hey guys check this out i figured out people will pay anything to avoid dying on the streets haha supply demand number go up. what about if we do food and water next"

diogenescynic 1y ago

It's funny how for so long people fought the basic law of supply and demand and tried to force 'affordable housing' to be built exclusively, while the prices of homes skyrocketed. I think leaders knew better, but they just didn't care because they were making money on their property. It also seems like a form of generational theft from boomers to millennials. Housing supply was always being added until boomers got theirs, then they made it overly restrictive to choke supply and drive up prices.

graycat 1y ago

One, maybe not the only one, hands off, automatic, 100% "all-natural", do nothing solution to the "housing crisis": Hope the birth rate, i.e., on average the number of babies born per woman, stays significantly under 2.0 or even 2.1, maybe 2.2. So, the population will shrink but with some maintenance (roof, painting of exterior siding, kitchen/bath, HVAC, windows/doors) mostly the housing supply won't. The Internet may reduce the time and money commuting to work and/or the need to be in high density, expensive housing areas for a job.

mritterhoff 1y ago
A decreasing population has a lot of collateral damage economically. I'd rather lessen zoning restrictions and let the market build.
- graycat 1y ago
  > collateral damage ... Right.

mathattack 1y ago

The last paragraph should temper our enthusiasm. Allowing people to build more when there is a shortage is the best way to have markets solve problems. —- “ Meanwhile, the pipeline of new apartment buildings is drying up. The number of properties under construction is down by roughly one-third from the peak in 2023, the report found. That likely means fewer units coming available in the months ahead, potentially giving landlords room to start raising rents again.”

reactordev 1y ago

Denver is a boom and bust town. Every once in a while, it thrives for a decade, then busts with an exodus of people (myself included). It will rebalance and boom again.

throwawayq3423 1y ago
Why do you say this and why did you leave? I'm curious.
- reactordev 1y ago
  Because that’s Denver’s history. Founded by land speculators after beating Indians in the Colorado War of 1865, only to become a gold rush town, then go bust, become a gang haven, bust again, then boom again with Carnations, then bust again, then boom again with industrials and nuclear waste, to go bust again when nuclear power was divested, then to boom again in the 90s with more gangs, bust again, then boom again in the 2010s with the green rush. I left because I was sick of having to weather the storm of boom and busts, saw $250,000 homes become $950,000 homes (no change to the home itself) and prey upon the young people moving there to ensure they are financially burdened with Boulder Boomer retirement plans.
  - theoreticalmal 1y ago
    The Denver Metro Area has been booming for close to 20 years. It was one of the few localities that continued positive economic growth through the 2008 recession
    - reactordev 1y ago
      Yes, because just 4 years later, everyone was high. It was the precursor to the green rush. Denver weathered the storm because we had an economic tsunami on our hands and it was going to come crashing at the ballot box. Well, it broke through. There was a huge influx of people from more expensive metros coming to Denver at that time. Then the housing went through the roof. Statistically it happened everywhere but I was in Denver trying to buy and being outbid by people with cash buying their 4th home.

tamimio 1y ago

Rents are high because landlords are greedy and are paying already inflated house prices. Owning is expensive because banks are greedy, pumping out the created credit for mortgages, which is an imaginary number based on no actual value, because somehow banks are allowed to create money! Here's the plot twist: you spend 30 years or even more (in Canada that has reached 70 years!) to pay the mortgage only to find out that you actually don't own the house and you're on a perpetual rent called property taxes. And unless the root issue is resolved by banning banks' Ponzi fraudulent schemes, and implementing a policy to change housing into a depreciated asset just like Japan did, nothing will change substantially and will only change marginally to prevent people from going out rioting in the streets.

teaearlgraycold 1y ago
As someone that rents I have little sympathy for people paying property taxes annually that are less than what I have to pay in one month. There should of course be sanity in the system. If you’re retired and can’t the afford property taxes on your home it’s not okay to squeeze you for that little bit of money.
- bufferoverflow 1y ago
  You're not making any sense. Someone paid for a house, they fully expect to pay a lot less than renters do. That's the point of buying a house.
  - ekelsen 1y ago
    The point of buying a primary house is to be able to do what you want with it. And to know you can live there as long as you want. Economics dictates how valuable those things are and what premium they have over renting.
  - Gibbon1 1y ago
    What I realized when I bought a house was for an owner occupier buying a house is the only way to 'invest' the money you'd otherwise spend on rent. You'd never make such a low return illiquid investment otherwise.

joshmlewis 1y ago

As a side note, if anyone here is in Denver and wants to grab a coffee or cowork sometime, hit me up.

Glyptodon 1y ago

It all just goes to show that government building, or creating some financing framework for building, very plain housing and selling for cost to keep supply ahead of demand would be an effective policy.

rossdavidh 1y ago

Not saying it's not noteworthy, but Austin rents have also been trending down lately. I just recently heard the term "accidental landlord", which is someone who can't (or won't) sell at a price low enough to actually get rid of their house, so they rent it out. I know that's a factor in Austin; I wonder if it's part of the story in Denver?

ipnon 1y ago
In a proper market economy there are many accidents in everyone’s career as they adapt to changing market conditions. Only in a planned economy do some market segments face no surprises.

Incipient 1y ago

>back to 2022 prices If we could be so lucky - out median rent it FIFTY PERCENT up over 2022 prices.

tlogan 1y ago

In other news, San Francisco rents are up $223 from a year ago, with median rent rising 11% year-over-year [1]. But hey, at least we’re safe from the dangers of gas stoves. /s [1] https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/san-francisco-ca/ https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/san-fran...

CalRobert 1y ago
Inhaling combustion products isn't great... not sure why you'd link those things? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9819315/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9819315/ "We found that 12.7% (95% CI = 6.3–19.3%) of current childhood asthma in the US is attributable to gas stove use. The proportion of childhood asthma that could be theoretically prevented if gas stove use was not present (e.g., state-specific PAFs) varied by state (Illinois = 21.1%; California = 20.1%; New York = 18.8%; Massachusetts = 15.4%; Pennsylvania = 13.5%). " Indoor combustion seems like a very good thing to eliminate.
- tlogan 1y ago
  In San Francisco, the housing crisis poses a far greater and more immediate threat to children’s well-being than this issue. Lack of stable, affordable housing affects everything: education, health, safety, and long-term opportunity. We can debate other problems, but unless we address the fundamental need for proper housing, everything else should be secondary.
  - CalRobert 1y ago
    I agree, but it’s not like induction stoves are a huge expense

LoganDark 1y ago

Is $1800 per month supposed to be a normal or acceptable rent? Rent should be less than $1000 a month. And even that's only 30% if you're making over $50,000 a year.

jondwillis 1y ago

Let’s interview the people living in all of these high quality new builds and see how much they’re loving or not loving their new digs.

theoreticalmal 1y ago
Why?

WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago

back to 2022 rents! wow..yeah..., but why 2022? Feels like cherry picking the one year that makes today's numbers look okay run it against 2000-today, or even 2020, and the story probably gets way uglier