19 ms·
I've been told repeatedly by people who have a vested interest in maintaining high housing prices that supply and demand don't work at all, ever, for any reason
by darksaints 6mo ago
I've been told repeatedly by people who have a vested interest in maintaining high housing prices that supply and demand don't work at all, ever, for any reason, and high prices are no reason to build more housing. How do I reconcile these facts?!?
- jareklupinski 6mo agoyou're not the one with stuff to reconcile simply ask the people on the vested side: "why do you want rents to stay high?" and stand back
- tharmas 6mo agoA house next door to me sat vacant for 4 years here in Vancouver. The owner couldn't sell at the asking price. The owner never lived in the house himself ever. He couldn't lower the price because then he would be losing money (selling it for less than what he bought it for). Over that 4 year period, immigration to Canada dropped dramatically. It just recently sold for slightly lower than the asking price (but slightly more than what the owner had bought it for 4 years prior). It was sold to a new immigrant to Canada. At least the new owner is actually living in it. Why would developers want to build so much supply that the price drops?
- seanmcdirmid 6mo agoIf demand picks up because supply increases, you will reach the previous equilibrium even with more supply. It isn’t rocket science, there is a price people are willing to pay to live in SD, and the market will keep gravitating to that price unless demand is somehow limited. The price people are willing to pay can even increase as density makes brings in things (eg culture, job opportunities) that make the city more desirable (eg see Hong Kong).
- tptacek 6mo agoSupply increased, rents declined.
- seanmcdirmid 6mo agoShort term. Long term the market will change to equilibrium. If you are buying, just lock in lower housing prices now. If you are renting without rent control, you get one or two years of reasonable rates and then it will go nuts again.
- nostrebored 6mo agoThis is an obviously farcical belief. If everywhere built more housing do you think the price of housing would go up? Where are these people bringing up housing prices coming from?
- bombcar 6mo agoHousing prices always go up (they seem to believe this) Houses can be built (this seems obvious) Ergo, we can remove the national debt by building between 59 million and 121 million houses (depending on if you count the value of the land there).
- seanmcdirmid 6mo agoBuffalo has 50% as much housing now as it did at its peak, since demand dropped and housing was just razed rather than maintained. There are lots and lots of cities in the USA that aren’t San Diego, LA, SF, Portland, Seattle, NYC, Boston, … and they have plenty of supply that there is no demand for. You can buy a house for cheap in Toledo. For some reason, people would rather pay $3000/month to live in San Diego than $700/month to live in Buffalo or Toledo. It shouldn’t be a mystery why. I lived in Beijing for 9 years so I get a different perspective. But ya, the market for people who want to live in Beijing rather than Chengde or Langfang is surprisingly vast, and Beijing has a resident system to prevent at will migrations.
- someperson 6mo agoThere a lot of desirable areas in a country and a fixed amount of people. The equilibrium between demand and supply has the supply curve impacted by a whole host of policy choices. Eg housing is impacted by cost of permitting, regulations, cost of materials and labor etc. All of these things can be improved by policy. There's a strong argument that especially infrastructure but housing should be built with people on work visas.
- seanmcdirmid 6mo agoWater is the primary limiter on city population sizes in the west. I wouldn’t be surprised if San Diego wasn’t at its limit already with respect to water resources, but I haven’t looked into it. Desalination could improve that. If we could have Chinese work crews come in and build housing, especially 30 story concrete towers that are popular in Asia, we could build fairly cheaply, that isn’t really the limitation (it’s easier to solve than getting water to those new units for expanded population).
- someperson 6mo agoThey thought Vegas was at it's limit years ago, but no they found efficiency upon efficiency.
- littlexsparkee 6mo agoSan Diego in fact has a surfeit that it's looking at selling off https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/climate/san-diego-water-sales-western-states.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/climate/san-diego-water-s...
- darksaints 6mo agoAt the levels of density seen in Paris, San Diego could house 16 million people. That's city proper. The metro area could house 226 million people. You're gonna have to do a lot better job convincing me that 16 million people would move to San Diego if they just built more housing. Let alone 226 million.
- seanmcdirmid 6mo agoTwist do you think happens to every city that has reached 16 million people? Did they become more popular or less? Given that I’ve lived in a city of that size, my answer will differ from yours (they become more expensive, not less). I’m confused on why you think paris is affordable and San Diego metro could somehow have enough water to grow to 220 million. The nearest comparison I can think of is south China Bay Area population (87 million), and if you think that those cities are affordable…I’m guessing we really have to agree to disagree.
- darksaints 6mo agoSan Diego would be a very popular city at lower prices, but simply put there isn't enough population in the US to even think that demand could grow anywhere close to those levels. It would take a 50 year long gold rush, draining of other American cities, etc. The fastest growing city in modern history, Shenzen, grew 6000% in 30 years, and it could only do so because China simultaneously had the highest population growth in the world and the highest urbanization rate in the world. At some point, demand is saturated, and it takes an extremely delusional belief that demand can perpetually grow so that prices never drop. We have proof in the article that prices can drop with even moderately fast construction rates. Keep going.
- Dylan16807 6mo ago> Twist do you think happens to every city that has reached 16 million people? It's not about the exact number, it's that one city is not going to 10x in population from getting the price of housing down to "still a city but not skyrocketing". > I’m confused on why you think paris is affordable Compared to San Diego, it does seem to be significantly more affordable, and mainly because of rent. > and San Diego metro could somehow have enough water The most expensive source of water, desalination, should be under $1 per day per person. And there's probably better options. > to grow to 220 million. That number is a silly number to explain density, not a proposal. > and if you think that those cities are affordable… No, the only comparison point was Paris, and the density of Paris.
- verteu 6mo agoNo, this is a false belief known as supply skepticism: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=supply+skepticism&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=supp...
- LudwigNagasena 6mo agoWeird title for a paper that argues that "Government intervention is critical to ensure that supply is added at prices affordable to a range of incomes". I would personally classify that position as "supply skepticism".
- WillPostForFood 6mo agoIf the alleged people actually said this, and they wanted to "maintain high prices", then why would they oppose more building? If they believed "supply and demand don't work at all", then more supply wouldn't hurt their goal of maintaining high prices.
- darksaints 6mo agoFor the same reason that NIMBYs care so much about urban trees or spotted owls. They don't actually give a shit about them, they just are willing to say or do anything to sabotage the process of increasing housing supply.
- noosphr 6mo agoBeing a NIMBY I want to live in the neighbourhood I bought a house in, not the one someone who can leave with a months notice feels like turning it into.
- darksaints 6mo agoBeing a homeowner, you get a title to your lot, not your entire neighborhood. You have no legal claim on your neighbor's home. If you want a legal claim on your neighbor's home, join an HOA. Or just buy it.
- pydry 6mo agoIf demand for cars skyrockets then you (eventually) get more cars at the same price coz the manufacturer can just make more. If everybody wants to buy up land because "god isnt making it any more" you get less land at an even higher price which makes it even more attractive as a store in value. So no, supply and demand doesnt really work for land the way it works for everything else. Land needs to be taxed a lot to create enough supply and in California prop 13 quite deliberately did the precise opposite of that.
- darksaints 6mo agoZoning that reduces buildable footprint and/or height artificially increases demand for land. If the only way to build a home is to buy a 9000 sqft lot, then my demand for land is 9000 sqft. If you can build 18 homes on that same lot, my demand for land is 450 sqft. Land definitely needs to be taxed, but not without the zoning changes first to allow more to be built on less.
- pydry 6mo agoZoning is the hobby horse of property developers. They're endlessly frustrated by the way zoning prevents them from building the most profitable construction - no matter whether there is a good or a bad reason for it (sometimes it's good sometimes it's not). This inspires a lobbying and public outreach effort to try and convince people that relaxing zoning rules will fix everything. As with many corporate lobbied for campaigns, it may be a good idea in general (e.g. net neutrality) or it may not be but it's definitely never the panacea it's sold as by the well funded PR campaign.
- darksaints 6mo agoTFA shows that it was zoning changes that allowed the influx of housing and lower prices. You can find similar articles across the country everywhere that has had significant relaxation of zoning restrictions, like in Minneapolis, Austin, and Seattle (just off the top of my head). This includes places where building code and permitting processes have gotten more arduous while the zoning was relaxed. I don't care if it is a panacea or not...If you want to convince me that restrictive zoning is not the most significant cause of our housing affordability crisis, you'd have to find some better proof than "developers like upzoning and developers are bad people".
- vkou 6mo agoEasily. Many of those people have a correct observation in that new construction is just luxury housing, which is obviously unaffordable for people struggling with rent. What they fail to miss is that for every luxury unit that's built and is occupied, some well-off person moved into it... And out of a shitty, cheap unit that's now on the market.
- BrenBarn 6mo agoThe question is whether the well-off person moved in from the same market, or from elsewhere. (Also, whether they vacate their previous unit or, e.g., keep it as a vacation home.)
- mpyne 6mo agoNone of those are really pertinent because it doesn't change the fact that the well-off person is going to occupy an additional housing unit in this scenario no matter what. The question is whether it's going to be new construction that they occupy or existing construction. If you're not well-off you'd want that decision to end up with "new construction" so you can move into "existing construction" at a lower rent/mortgage than if new construction didn't exist.
- BrenBarn 6mo agoI don't think that is necessarily true. I believe there are, for instance, many reasonably wealthy people who live somewhere outside California and would not move into a dumpy old apartment in LA or SF but might move into a fancy new one. In other words, they will not occupy an additional housing unit (in a given market) unless it is "nice" enough. I am in favor of building new housing, but I'm even more in favor of reducing wealth inequality. I think we can do both, but we need to be deliberate about it.
- bombcar 6mo agoTaken to extremes you'll have all wealthy people living in California, and the rest of the country available to us plebs. The greatest tool we have to reduce wealth inequality is make it so people can buy homes - and the biggest levers we seem to have there are making supply available in general, and making jobs available where there's already supply.