Well I mean…more and more people want to live in cities, and they’re not making more waterfront apartments. Lots of people want that apartment now, so the price is higher. I don’t know what you can do about that: you can’t provide a beautiful corner apartment overlooking the water in a desirable city for $700 to all the millions of people who want one.
The problem is simple: in a perfect society we wouldn’t increase flat prices simply so a landlord can make even more profit. There is no actual, logical reason why the flat should cost 5x as much, only made up ones that basically say “but I wanna!”. There’s no actual 5x increase in costs for the landlord, they pocket most of that additional rent.
Living space isn’t something you should be able to profit this heavily from in a functioning society, as it’s a basic necessity to life. It’s alright that nicer flats cost more but nowadays we value huge additional profits to landlords higher than basic human rights, provocatively spoken.
There is of course the supposed capitalistic reason of doing so, which is to make it more lucrative for others to build additional homes. Additional homes should in turn dampen the prices again. This however hasn’t been panning out the last few decades, as the prices have kept inflating.
That would be the case if it was as simple as, ECON 101: supply vs. demand.
To me, it seem to be a mixture of gov’t zoning laws (lobbied by corporations), foreign companies/people buying up land (to hold onto as an asset), and just more companies buying up the housing market to resale or rent out.
At least in the US, zoning laws and parking minimums have really restricted the ability of cities to build more housing in high demand areas. Look at how much space is wasted just for surface parking lots in downtown Denver, Houston, Austin, etc… Name almost any bigger city and soooo much valuable land is wasted on cars.
I also agree that real estate should not be used as an investment. If there was more restrictions around owning property in cities, that would certainly help. AirBnB/short term rentals are definitely not helping and should be heavily regulated/taxed.
On cars, yep, nothing will help as much as building up public transportation as much as posaible; electric/hydrogen cars are not the solution. A possible one with not too much building are increasing and improving bus routes and their frequency.
I was able to learn a bit from NotJustBikes and similar channels.
Zoning on buildings to parking space requirments are just mental.
All of it leads back to zoning laws preventing more housing being built, and of the correct types. Most of that is caused by NIMBY types worried about the character of the neighborhood, and perhaps a bit of bigotry. It IS supply and demand, and short supply is caused by bad policymaking that nobody really benefits from.
Zoning laws: yes, strong agree, but the bad guy there isn’t corporations, it’s NIMBYs. People with houses don’t want any development of any kind near them, and being residents they’re the ones who get to vote on it. They almost always vote no.
Foreign people buying land as assets is a thing. You know how you defeat that? Build more housing. If the value of the assets fails to rise, or even falls, then people won’t hold them as assets–and by dumping them on the market, they’ll further decrease the price.
Companies buying up houses to sell (usually after developing or refurbishing them) or rent is ECON101 in action.
If you can solve problem #1, the rest falls into place. But corner apartments overlooking the water in nice cities are still going to be expensive relative to other housing.
It’s not just in cities. Property prices have skyrocketed pretty much everywhere. Maybe you can point out to some middle-of-nowhere place where this hasn’t happened, but such places also tend to have no jobs which is a problem for the typical person (so entitled, needing a job to live, I know).
Like where? I know towns that will offer you a plot of land for $1, so long as you promise to develop on it.
You do get high housing costs in places where populations are rising faster than housing development can keep up, or where development makes no sense (would you build an apartment block in a shrinking town?)
But like…I can point you to a bunch of cities in the US where housing prices are still quite cheap. You probably won’t want to live in those cities. That’s why they’re cheap. Supply and demand in action.
You have to be a complete moron (and pretty ignorant) to believe housing prices are so high because “there is simply not enough supply”. Have you lot slept through the last decades? Do you know anything that’s happening?
Loads of people want to live in cities today, and at least in the west, it’s become more and more difficult to build housing. Therefore demand far outstrips supply.
It’s speculative investments, housing as assets instead of, well, housing. In almost every major city in the west there is an astonishing number of empty apartments. In my hometown of Berlin there is essentially one large corporation that owns most of the city as investment.
Also, new housing is constantly being built - but not for (average) people to live in it.
You may also recall that the whole thing came crashing down in 2008? Or have we just forgotten what happened there and the effects it has to this day.
You have to be a complete moron if you think the problem isn’t enough supply.
The population of the US is growing. And the percentage of people living in cities is rising. That’s lots of people looking for housing in cities. At the same time, single-family zoning (which account for around ~80% of land in US cities–before accounting for industrial and commercial) prevents the development of more housing. Old neighborhoods are effectively full, mostly owned by the same families that bought them in the 70s through 00s. New development is waaaay out on the fringes of the city, and expensive as hell because it’s in such high demand.
There isn’t enough new housing being developed to satisfy the growing demand for housing, so prices rise. It’s that simple! The problem is exacerbated, because the rising prices attract investors (corporate and private) and AirB&B etc. But the fundamental problem is that most of our cities are seas of already-occupied single-family homes, and at the same time populations are rising. This is obvious.
But politicians love to blame foreigners, immigration, corporations, AirB&B. You know why? Because the root of the problem is middle-aged surburban majority-white families that don’t want more people (with associated traffic, noise, whatever) in their neighborhood. And that’s their core voting base. Old white people vote like clockwork, young renters reliably don’t. If politicians go on a crusade against the single-family-dwelling suburbs, they know they’ll get voted out. So they throw you these stupid bones: “it’s the Chinese who are making housing expensive, by buying 1% of units (and mostly living in them)! It’s AirB&B, with a few thousand units for rent in a city of 6 million people! It’s the corporations, doing…things nobody can quite explain, that somehow involve buying housing and then just letting it sit there unoccupied? Or something?”
You’re a sucker, believing that bullshit. It’s the voters (the ones who actually vote) who are the problem.
The US is uniquely fucked. What the rest of the west shows though is that the housing crisis exists even without the idiocy that is American suburbanism. The consistent factor across the board is housing-as-profit.
Well I mean…more and more people want to live in cities, and they’re not making more waterfront apartments. Lots of people want that apartment now, so the price is higher. I don’t know what you can do about that: you can’t provide a beautiful corner apartment overlooking the water in a desirable city for $700 to all the millions of people who want one.
The problem is simple: in a perfect society we wouldn’t increase flat prices simply so a landlord can make even more profit. There is no actual, logical reason why the flat should cost 5x as much, only made up ones that basically say “but I wanna!”. There’s no actual 5x increase in costs for the landlord, they pocket most of that additional rent.
Living space isn’t something you should be able to profit this heavily from in a functioning society, as it’s a basic necessity to life. It’s alright that nicer flats cost more but nowadays we value huge additional profits to landlords higher than basic human rights, provocatively spoken.
There is of course the supposed capitalistic reason of doing so, which is to make it more lucrative for others to build additional homes. Additional homes should in turn dampen the prices again. This however hasn’t been panning out the last few decades, as the prices have kept inflating.
That would be the case if it was as simple as, ECON 101: supply vs. demand.
To me, it seem to be a mixture of gov’t zoning laws (lobbied by corporations), foreign companies/people buying up land (to hold onto as an asset), and just more companies buying up the housing market to resale or rent out.
At least in the US, zoning laws and parking minimums have really restricted the ability of cities to build more housing in high demand areas. Look at how much space is wasted just for surface parking lots in downtown Denver, Houston, Austin, etc… Name almost any bigger city and soooo much valuable land is wasted on cars.
I also agree that real estate should not be used as an investment. If there was more restrictions around owning property in cities, that would certainly help. AirBnB/short term rentals are definitely not helping and should be heavily regulated/taxed.
You have spoken nothing but the truth, IMO.
On cars, yep, nothing will help as much as building up public transportation as much as posaible; electric/hydrogen cars are not the solution. A possible one with not too much building are increasing and improving bus routes and their frequency.
I was able to learn a bit from NotJustBikes and similar channels.
Zoning on buildings to parking space requirments are just mental.
Thank you for the feedback!
All of it leads back to zoning laws preventing more housing being built, and of the correct types. Most of that is caused by NIMBY types worried about the character of the neighborhood, and perhaps a bit of bigotry. It IS supply and demand, and short supply is caused by bad policymaking that nobody really benefits from.
Zoning laws: yes, strong agree, but the bad guy there isn’t corporations, it’s NIMBYs. People with houses don’t want any development of any kind near them, and being residents they’re the ones who get to vote on it. They almost always vote no.
Foreign people buying land as assets is a thing. You know how you defeat that? Build more housing. If the value of the assets fails to rise, or even falls, then people won’t hold them as assets–and by dumping them on the market, they’ll further decrease the price.
Companies buying up houses to sell (usually after developing or refurbishing them) or rent is ECON101 in action.
If you can solve problem #1, the rest falls into place. But corner apartments overlooking the water in nice cities are still going to be expensive relative to other housing.
Thanks for the reply!
Yes, you are right about the residents.
Similar problem with homelessness, people don’t want shelters near their homes, so homelessness keeps being a thing.
It’s not just in cities. Property prices have skyrocketed pretty much everywhere. Maybe you can point out to some middle-of-nowhere place where this hasn’t happened, but such places also tend to have no jobs which is a problem for the typical person (so entitled, needing a job to live, I know).
Like where? I know towns that will offer you a plot of land for $1, so long as you promise to develop on it.
You do get high housing costs in places where populations are rising faster than housing development can keep up, or where development makes no sense (would you build an apartment block in a shrinking town?)
But like…I can point you to a bunch of cities in the US where housing prices are still quite cheap. You probably won’t want to live in those cities. That’s why they’re cheap. Supply and demand in action.
Whoa? Is that logic? We don’t do that here.
You have to be a complete moron (and pretty ignorant) to believe housing prices are so high because “there is simply not enough supply”. Have you lot slept through the last decades? Do you know anything that’s happening?
What else is it?
Loads of people want to live in cities today, and at least in the west, it’s become more and more difficult to build housing. Therefore demand far outstrips supply.
It’s speculative investments, housing as assets instead of, well, housing. In almost every major city in the west there is an astonishing number of empty apartments. In my hometown of Berlin there is essentially one large corporation that owns most of the city as investment. Also, new housing is constantly being built - but not for (average) people to live in it.
You may also recall that the whole thing came crashing down in 2008? Or have we just forgotten what happened there and the effects it has to this day.
Supply is definitely part of the problem. I’m not familiar with a single expert who claims otherwise.
You have to be a complete moron if you think the problem isn’t enough supply.
The population of the US is growing. And the percentage of people living in cities is rising. That’s lots of people looking for housing in cities. At the same time, single-family zoning (which account for around ~80% of land in US cities–before accounting for industrial and commercial) prevents the development of more housing. Old neighborhoods are effectively full, mostly owned by the same families that bought them in the 70s through 00s. New development is waaaay out on the fringes of the city, and expensive as hell because it’s in such high demand.
There isn’t enough new housing being developed to satisfy the growing demand for housing, so prices rise. It’s that simple! The problem is exacerbated, because the rising prices attract investors (corporate and private) and AirB&B etc. But the fundamental problem is that most of our cities are seas of already-occupied single-family homes, and at the same time populations are rising. This is obvious.
But politicians love to blame foreigners, immigration, corporations, AirB&B. You know why? Because the root of the problem is middle-aged surburban majority-white families that don’t want more people (with associated traffic, noise, whatever) in their neighborhood. And that’s their core voting base. Old white people vote like clockwork, young renters reliably don’t. If politicians go on a crusade against the single-family-dwelling suburbs, they know they’ll get voted out. So they throw you these stupid bones: “it’s the Chinese who are making housing expensive, by buying 1% of units (and mostly living in them)! It’s AirB&B, with a few thousand units for rent in a city of 6 million people! It’s the corporations, doing…things nobody can quite explain, that somehow involve buying housing and then just letting it sit there unoccupied? Or something?”
You’re a sucker, believing that bullshit. It’s the voters (the ones who actually vote) who are the problem.
The US is uniquely fucked. What the rest of the west shows though is that the housing crisis exists even without the idiocy that is American suburbanism. The consistent factor across the board is housing-as-profit.
What it shows is that inflation goes up, and the population is both growing and urbanizing all over the world.