4 ms·

Awful headline and I doubt it's what the author would have chosen, given that her comments are much more to do with supply: > “In San Francisco, demand is refl

Awful headline and I doubt it's what the author would have chosen, given that her comments are much more to do with supply: > “In San Francisco, demand is reflected in increased prices,” she says. “In Charlotte, demand is reflected in increased quantities.” > “A big takeaway is that cities are in control of a big portion of their supply sensitivity,” Gorback says. “It’s cities that control zoning. It’s cities that control permitting. The real keeper of the keys are the municipalities.”

kurthr 3mo ago
Some 10-15% of San Francisco housing is unoccupied. The exact why and how to fix it are arguable, but I'm doubtful the investment is actually helping. https://www.pacificresearch.org/time-to-ask-why-so-many-san-francisco-homes-are-vacant/ https://www.pacificresearch.org/time-to-ask-why-so-many-san-...
- BobbyJo 3mo ago
  When a good's supply is constrained, it becomes a store of value. See: gold. Strangely enough, if housing got built in response to price increases, there would likely be less unused housing, because it would be seen less as a way to store capital.
  - roenxi 3mo ago
    > When a good's supply is constrained, it becomes a store of value. See: gold. That doesn't make sense as stated, because every physical commodity is supply-constrained to some extent, even and especially the ones that are extremely bad stores of value. Picking on Fermium (it has a nice atomic number) - Fermium is supply constrained and it makes a horrible store of value because it rapidly morphs into something else. Gold is a well-liked store of value because it is absurdly stable (about as close as we can practically get to indestructible) and roughly the easiest to physically store out of all the durable candidates.
    - uniqueusername7 3mo ago
      While houses depreciate, both they and the ground they are built on tend to have a very low chance of experiencing spontaneous transmutation, so I'm not sure how good of an example fermium is.
      - microgpt 3mo ago
        What if we added some kind of artificial spontaneous transmutation to housing? Maybe (this is really dumb but bear with me) every year 200 randomly chosen houses become the property of whoever is living in them at a random moment. What would happen?
  - pydry 3mo ago
    When property taxes are higher housing is built more densely. This is because the store of value quickly becomes a millstone around the owner's neck if it isnt being used efficiently. That's a feature if you want a healthy city and a bug if you're one of the ultra wealthy. The UK is a bit like San Francisco in this respect. There are no property taxes, just something called a council tax (which is basically a poll tax) and "stamp duty" which is levied only on property transactions. The latter is particularly toxic because it actively encourages property hoarding. This is why London is an alpha world+ city which can't build up to save its life.
    - dripdry45 3mo ago
      imo The big key here is zoning. I live in a city where they actively work against people who want to build out their properties and create more density. The property taxes are sky high, but the city actively works against your affording them. It’s terrible.
      - pydry 3mo ago
        How high is sky high?
        Schiendelman 3mo ago
        The real answer is rough: By giving the public any say at all, they push and push until they have restricted growth. It's far better for everyone to not ask anyone but the owner of the property how tall they want to build.
    - microgpt 3mo ago
      Competition was supposed to save this though. You have to use it effectively otherwise your neighboring competitor takes all your customers.
- fragmede 3mo ago
  Taxing empty housing seems like the obvious answer. Make it more expensive and more work to keep it empty than it is to fill it.
  - microgpt 3mo ago
    Which form do I file to claim that my empty house is not actually empty?
    - Obscurity4340 3mo ago
      Maybe demand the electricity bill? How do insurance companies deal with this kind of misrepresentation?
      - microgpt 3mo ago
        They just refuse to pay out if it seems like you lied. They don't enforce everything before a claim is filed.
  - Schiendelman 3mo ago
    This wouldn't be necessary if we weren't using zoning to restrict supply. The restrictions are what cause scarcity, and it's the scarcity that drives up prices. Land owners are already well incentivized not to let housing sit empty, unless their housing's value is being artificially pushed upward through the scarcity we create. Basically, if we quit creating the housing problem with zoning restrictions, you wouldn't see housing sit empty, and it wouldn't matter anyway because the motivated self-interest of FAR more people would build housing to meet demand.
    - fragmede 3mo ago
      Having had a second to think, it's rent control that's the issue, so the solution would be to get rid of that. Totally politically untenable, but rent control is why landlords are incentivized to leave places vacant.
- khuey 3mo ago
  https://socketsite.com/archives/2022/02/there-are-not-40000-vacant-homes-in-san-francisco.html https://socketsite.com/archives/2022/02/there-are-not-40000-...
  - jstanley 3mo ago
    The table in the article seems to contradict its own headline. The headline says there are not 40k vacant homes, but the table breaks down the reasons for vacancy of just a bit over 40k homes. So it sounds to me like there are in fact 40k vacant homes. And it goes on to say: > Yes, 40,458 units of housing in San Francisco were classified as “vacant” in the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) for 2019. However it also says: > an occupied unit is actually classified as “vacant” for the purposes of the ACS if the person living in the unit is planning to move within two months of being surveyed But this doesn't appear to match any of the categories that sum to 40458, so I am not sure if this is even applicable.
- legitster 3mo ago
  2 things: - this article is out of date. The market has changed a lot since the AI boom. - That's a 10%ish of all housing in the city. Right now, of available units SF has one of the smallest vacancy rates in the country right now. The difference is (as the article alludes), apartments that are undergoing renovations, not currently permitted, etc.
legitster 3mo ago
It's kind of insane that you look at a city like San Francisco that's on a tiny bit of land in a desirable location and they absolutely refuse to build up. I get that their Victorian houses are pretty, but they're only about a 100 years old and they are now crammed full of people and cars. It's too young of a city to be sycophantically in love with its past self.
- pydry 3mo ago
  That's partly the effect of prop 13. When land (or its proxy, property) is detaxed then property becomes a valuable commodity to hoard and guard the value of jealously. So, it attracts the foreign investors looking for stores of value and encourages NIMBYism. If the tax bill of properties in high value locations went up with land value then it would encourage people to stop hoarding and to sell up and have their properties redeveloped. So, blame Howard Jarvis and his taxpayer's foundation.
  - jounker 3mo ago
    This.
  - ericd 3mo ago
    Yeah, I had dinner with a REIT exec a few years ago, they explicitly called out how they loved how Prop 13 kept the CA property market inflated and NIMBYism strong. Absolutely worth trying to tear it down if you care about housing affordability.
  - thatfrenchguy 3mo ago
    This is an issue in other cities that don’t have prop 13 fwiw, the United States just does not do redevelopment barring a few poor inner neighborhoods getting gentrified by foreclosures in like Houston or Dallas. That’s the natural consequence of individual ownership of houses.
  - AnthonyMouse 3mo ago
    > So, it attracts the foreign investors looking for stores of value and encourages NIMBYism. This doesn't make a lot of sense for two reasons. The first is that real estate is more the exception than the rule in being subject to property tax to begin with. If foreign investors want a store of value that minimizes "property tax" then they could just buy stocks or bonds etc. Which is why "foreign investors" are a red herring that pundits keep bringing up because it's clickbait or because they want a scapegoat to divert attention from the real problem (which is zoning). The second is that if you have a place where taxes are lower than other places, that's the place people should be lobbying to build things. Who wants their lower taxes to be on a $1M single family home when they could be on a $100M skyscraper? The main reason this isn't happening is that the effective property tax rate in California is ~0.7% compared to the national average of ~0.9%, which isn't enough different to make a dramatic difference. The real problem with prop 13 is that it resets on sale transactions or if you build anything, which does provide a major deterrent to construction because then existing property owners neither want to sell to a developer and use the money to buy something else nor build anything on their property themselves since either one would result in a huge tax hike.
next_xibalba 3mo ago
Here is the abstract of the paper this article is about(Global Capital and Local Assets: House Prices, Quantities, and Elasticities): “”” We estimate price elasticities of housing supply for U.S. cities by examining the impact of foreign purchases on housing prices and quantities. After other countries introduced foreign-buyer taxes beginning in 2011, both house prices and quantities increased more in locations with high foreign-born populations. A 1% increase in global capital inflows, instrumented with tax policy changes scaled by immigrant exposure, increased prices and quantities by 3% and 0.5%, respectively, over 2011–2018. We combine these estimates to construct new local supply elasticities. Compared to prior estimates, our elasticities are more inelastic and change cities’ relative rankings. “”” So it would seem the focus of the research was very much foreign investment in housing.

kurthr 3mo ago

Some 10-15% of San Francisco housing is unoccupied. The exact why and how to fix it are arguable, but I'm doubtful the investment is actually helping. https://www.pacificresearch.org/time-to-ask-why-so-many-san-francisco-homes-are-vacant/ https://www.pacificresearch.org/time-to-ask-why-so-many-san-...

BobbyJo 3mo ago
When a good's supply is constrained, it becomes a store of value. See: gold. Strangely enough, if housing got built in response to price increases, there would likely be less unused housing, because it would be seen less as a way to store capital.
- roenxi 3mo ago
  > When a good's supply is constrained, it becomes a store of value. See: gold. That doesn't make sense as stated, because every physical commodity is supply-constrained to some extent, even and especially the ones that are extremely bad stores of value. Picking on Fermium (it has a nice atomic number) - Fermium is supply constrained and it makes a horrible store of value because it rapidly morphs into something else. Gold is a well-liked store of value because it is absurdly stable (about as close as we can practically get to indestructible) and roughly the easiest to physically store out of all the durable candidates.
  - uniqueusername7 3mo ago
    While houses depreciate, both they and the ground they are built on tend to have a very low chance of experiencing spontaneous transmutation, so I'm not sure how good of an example fermium is.
    - microgpt 3mo ago
      What if we added some kind of artificial spontaneous transmutation to housing? Maybe (this is really dumb but bear with me) every year 200 randomly chosen houses become the property of whoever is living in them at a random moment. What would happen?
- pydry 3mo ago
  When property taxes are higher housing is built more densely. This is because the store of value quickly becomes a millstone around the owner's neck if it isnt being used efficiently. That's a feature if you want a healthy city and a bug if you're one of the ultra wealthy. The UK is a bit like San Francisco in this respect. There are no property taxes, just something called a council tax (which is basically a poll tax) and "stamp duty" which is levied only on property transactions. The latter is particularly toxic because it actively encourages property hoarding. This is why London is an alpha world+ city which can't build up to save its life.
  - dripdry45 3mo ago
    imo The big key here is zoning. I live in a city where they actively work against people who want to build out their properties and create more density. The property taxes are sky high, but the city actively works against your affording them. It’s terrible.
    - pydry 3mo ago
      How high is sky high?
      - Schiendelman 3mo ago
        The real answer is rough: By giving the public any say at all, they push and push until they have restricted growth. It's far better for everyone to not ask anyone but the owner of the property how tall they want to build.
  - microgpt 3mo ago
    Competition was supposed to save this though. You have to use it effectively otherwise your neighboring competitor takes all your customers.
fragmede 3mo ago
Taxing empty housing seems like the obvious answer. Make it more expensive and more work to keep it empty than it is to fill it.
- microgpt 3mo ago
  Which form do I file to claim that my empty house is not actually empty?
  - Obscurity4340 3mo ago
    Maybe demand the electricity bill? How do insurance companies deal with this kind of misrepresentation?
    - microgpt 3mo ago
      They just refuse to pay out if it seems like you lied. They don't enforce everything before a claim is filed.
- Schiendelman 3mo ago
  This wouldn't be necessary if we weren't using zoning to restrict supply. The restrictions are what cause scarcity, and it's the scarcity that drives up prices. Land owners are already well incentivized not to let housing sit empty, unless their housing's value is being artificially pushed upward through the scarcity we create. Basically, if we quit creating the housing problem with zoning restrictions, you wouldn't see housing sit empty, and it wouldn't matter anyway because the motivated self-interest of FAR more people would build housing to meet demand.
  - fragmede 3mo ago
    Having had a second to think, it's rent control that's the issue, so the solution would be to get rid of that. Totally politically untenable, but rent control is why landlords are incentivized to leave places vacant.
khuey 3mo ago
https://socketsite.com/archives/2022/02/there-are-not-40000-vacant-homes-in-san-francisco.html https://socketsite.com/archives/2022/02/there-are-not-40000-...
- jstanley 3mo ago
  The table in the article seems to contradict its own headline. The headline says there are not 40k vacant homes, but the table breaks down the reasons for vacancy of just a bit over 40k homes. So it sounds to me like there are in fact 40k vacant homes. And it goes on to say: > Yes, 40,458 units of housing in San Francisco were classified as “vacant” in the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) for 2019. However it also says: > an occupied unit is actually classified as “vacant” for the purposes of the ACS if the person living in the unit is planning to move within two months of being surveyed But this doesn't appear to match any of the categories that sum to 40458, so I am not sure if this is even applicable.
legitster 3mo ago
2 things: - this article is out of date. The market has changed a lot since the AI boom. - That's a 10%ish of all housing in the city. Right now, of available units SF has one of the smallest vacancy rates in the country right now. The difference is (as the article alludes), apartments that are undergoing renovations, not currently permitted, etc.

legitster 3mo ago

It's kind of insane that you look at a city like San Francisco that's on a tiny bit of land in a desirable location and they absolutely refuse to build up. I get that their Victorian houses are pretty, but they're only about a 100 years old and they are now crammed full of people and cars. It's too young of a city to be sycophantically in love with its past self.

pydry 3mo ago
That's partly the effect of prop 13. When land (or its proxy, property) is detaxed then property becomes a valuable commodity to hoard and guard the value of jealously. So, it attracts the foreign investors looking for stores of value and encourages NIMBYism. If the tax bill of properties in high value locations went up with land value then it would encourage people to stop hoarding and to sell up and have their properties redeveloped. So, blame Howard Jarvis and his taxpayer's foundation.
- jounker 3mo ago
  This.
- ericd 3mo ago
  Yeah, I had dinner with a REIT exec a few years ago, they explicitly called out how they loved how Prop 13 kept the CA property market inflated and NIMBYism strong. Absolutely worth trying to tear it down if you care about housing affordability.
- thatfrenchguy 3mo ago
  This is an issue in other cities that don’t have prop 13 fwiw, the United States just does not do redevelopment barring a few poor inner neighborhoods getting gentrified by foreclosures in like Houston or Dallas. That’s the natural consequence of individual ownership of houses.
- AnthonyMouse 3mo ago
  > So, it attracts the foreign investors looking for stores of value and encourages NIMBYism. This doesn't make a lot of sense for two reasons. The first is that real estate is more the exception than the rule in being subject to property tax to begin with. If foreign investors want a store of value that minimizes "property tax" then they could just buy stocks or bonds etc. Which is why "foreign investors" are a red herring that pundits keep bringing up because it's clickbait or because they want a scapegoat to divert attention from the real problem (which is zoning). The second is that if you have a place where taxes are lower than other places, that's the place people should be lobbying to build things. Who wants their lower taxes to be on a $1M single family home when they could be on a $100M skyscraper? The main reason this isn't happening is that the effective property tax rate in California is ~0.7% compared to the national average of ~0.9%, which isn't enough different to make a dramatic difference. The real problem with prop 13 is that it resets on sale transactions or if you build anything, which does provide a major deterrent to construction because then existing property owners neither want to sell to a developer and use the money to buy something else nor build anything on their property themselves since either one would result in a huge tax hike.

next_xibalba 3mo ago

Here is the abstract of the paper this article is about(Global Capital and Local Assets: House Prices, Quantities, and Elasticities): “”” We estimate price elasticities of housing supply for U.S. cities by examining the impact of foreign purchases on housing prices and quantities. After other countries introduced foreign-buyer taxes beginning in 2011, both house prices and quantities increased more in locations with high foreign-born populations. A 1% increase in global capital inflows, instrumented with tax policy changes scaled by immigrant exposure, increased prices and quantities by 3% and 0.5%, respectively, over 2011–2018. We combine these estimates to construct new local supply elasticities. Compared to prior estimates, our elasticities are more inelastic and change cities’ relative rankings. “”” So it would seem the focus of the research was very much foreign investment in housing.