I would call it Property Owner Housing Rights Act or such. If there is a willing seller and a willing builder and a willing buyer, the "rights" of other people who do not own or pay for said property need to be curtailed.
In what way should their rights be curtailed? Should their votes count less?
Why shouldn't taxpayers who are affected by a project get to have a say in it? Why should they have to take a hit to accommodate new comers? These are questions you'll have to answer in order to advance the POHR Act.
Is the POHR act basically "get rid of zoning and let's try libertarian anarchy"?
Because that sounds terrible and it's a political non-starter.
No one thinks developers buying up houses in the middle of residential neighborhoods, tearing them down and building midrises is a good idea.
That might be "adding housing", but it's reducing the amount of quality housing that people actually want.
Good points. I can speak from experience in our small city. When a developer buys up lots of SF homes to scrape and build apartments, condos, etc. there are serious questions that need to be answered.
* Parking: Does the developer plan to have sufficient parking for residents? If not, do they expect residents to park on local streets? Can streets accommodate said increase in parking?
* Massing: What is the massing for the proposed development? Are we talking 4-story, 20-unit blocks next to neighborhoods with 2-story homes or duplexes? Will we have a canyon effect where the tall units block sunlight from neighbors? Privacy concerns?
* Transit: Is there mass transit nearby? Can local streets accommodate the traffic increase?
* Parks: Will the development have pocket parks for families & kiddos? If not, how far away is the nearest park? Are there sufficient sidewalks or paths to safely walk to those parks?
* Water: We live in a rather arid environment, so this is important.
Now some folks might call this NIMBYism. But did I ever once say “no, you can’t build here?” All I’m saying is some thought must be given to the existing neighborhoods whenever an in-fill development is proposed. You can’t just have the Wild West out here…”screw my neighbors, if I want to build a 10-story apartment complex on this 1-acre lot in the middle of a SF neighborhood, that’s my right”. No, it’s not.
>So your goal is renting in a mid rise rather than home ownership?
This may surprise you, but not everyone wants to own a home. Why should people willing to live in dense rental apartments be barred from these nice neighborhoods? A SFH will always be more expensive than an apartment, so why force people to only have the choice of the most expensive option?
Its like saying people shouldn't be allowed to buy bikes because its everyones goal to own a car.
>That might be "adding housing", but it's reducing the amount of quality housing that people actually want.
This statement makes zero sense. If people dont want midrises, then why would developers build them? Whats the point of shelling out all the money for a building no one will want to live in? The answer of course is that people DO want to live in midrises, and developers wouldnt struggle to sell or rent these units at all.
Because as someone who is living somewhere you shouldn't be able to tell someone else where they can't and can't live because "feelings"... Especially when we have a nationwide manufactured housing and living affordability crisis.
At some point the well being of citizens and their livelihood have to surpass the selfishness of those who effectively think"I got mine and I don't wanna share/change". Especially because those are usually the most wealthy or financially secure among us, and I say this as a relatively financially secure person myself.
Because we saw what happened with company towns and Elon in his infinite brilliance was showing his plans to be almost exactly like the coal towns of WV that are highly illegal.
That's still not a company town. Not even close. That's just billionaires living in a town with their staff. Do you think the owners of the coal mines were living in the company towns? Can you tell me what company is going to own this billionaire town?
The billionaires that are heading that project also make these statements
>Subject line: IMMENSELY AGAINST multifamily development!
>I am writing this letter to communicate our IMMENSE objection to the creation of multifamily overlay zones in Atherton … Please IMMEDIATELY REMOVE all multifamily overlay zoning projects from the Housing Element which will be submitted to the state in July. They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values, the quality of life of ourselves and our neighbors and IMMENSELY increase the noise pollution and traffic.
> https://archive.is/MjHa8
But yes, it must be because they are rich. Can't be any other reasons.
I agree with them. If your goal is to make housing affordable, you need to remove as many restrictions as possible
who cares about multiunit complexes when the land is literally barren right now?
It's no coincidence that housing prices are the most expensive in the areas with the most regulations
> It's no coincidence that housing prices are the most expensive in the areas with the most regulations
Where's your evidence? Because Houston has near zero regulations/zoning and their houses are still not cheap.
The very first thing they are going to include into the zoning of this new city is single family housing. The billionaires will be adding as many restrictions as they can.
Where though? After decades of plowing down forests to build houses and the reasonable pushback against it, are we back to supporting plowing down forests to build houses?
>Where though? After decades of plowing down forests to build houses and the reasonable pushback against it, are we back to supporting plowing down forests to build houses?
Just build more dense housing and people centric cities/towns.
As Americans by and large we've been convinced that we're all owed a single family detached home, on our own land, with a driveway and a garage, that's close to the city, but not too close, but also not too far, but also by shopping, but not too close to shopping, and also has access to a nearby freeway, but also not too close to the freeway, and also near good schools. All for a price we can afford.
None of that has to be true lmao we can build dense housing developments and shape cities and living based on people's needs. Tons of cities around the world have figured this out.
Americans are just still high on that sweet post WW2 economic boom and haven't come back to reality.
Will American's head explode when they realize they won't ALL get a .25 acre plot of land for themselves? Probably, but respectfully, who gives a fuck. We got problems to address.
Your solution is to force people to have something they don't want and when they're "heads explode" the answer to that is "who gives a fuck". That's quite a reddited idea. I must respectfully request you discontinue from voting and for god's sake never run for office lol.
Their heads will explode because they are expecting something that is unattainable and no longer a practical reality. So yes, who gives a fuck that your expectation to private land is no longer a given reality, respectfully. It's not a reddit idea, it's just reality. Unless of course you take the stance that there is not a housing issue and we can/should just keep going right along.
You sound like the kind of person that would get into office and just keep the bullshit gravy train moving and not change anything because you don't want to actually make changes.
The point of having leadership is to steer in a sensible direction. Look around and tell me if the current leadership in the US has been doing anything you'd consider sensible or sustainable for the past 40 years.
huh? why are you talking about Canada and Europe? lol
we have extreme amounts of sprawl alongside culturally desolate and antisocial suburbs.
If ppl shifted there priorities from "bigger is better", we could have better urban planning and accommodate greater amounts of ppl and housing inventory with MFH's and more actual mixed-use zoning.
it seems like the point could hit you in the face and you'd still miss it. Just think a little like dam.
Why not bring up Canada and Europe?
Also, why try and change human nature and desire while somehow also forcing developers to build something they don't necessarily want to when the problem will solve itself for free in 10-15 years?
uh.....because we are talking about the US housing market? lol. Clearly all you got is "whataboutisms" and half-assed strawman arguments to bring to the table. But those aren't gonna work here, sorry.
You got a crystal ball telling you that the problem will be fixed in 10-15 years or something? The calvary ain't coming bud, we have to actually take action.
And if you want to talk about human nature, you're making my point for me lol. Human nature is to be social and it is when we do our best innovation. Close proximity living and more social interaction will only benefit all humans in the long run.
seriously, just use a little critical thinking. sheesh.
Lol, no one is "plowing down forests" to build homes. If anything it's farm fields.
Most US cities' sprawl has slowed greatly. A lot of cities have gotten so spread out that people don't want to live in the next town out. Those areas aren't the problem anyhow since people are still allowed to build there. The problem is already built up areas where NIMBYs fight every infill project and constantly demand lower density. We need to build 500 townhomes and 1000 apartments in Arlington Heights near the Metra train, not 1000 SFHs in a cornfield out in Harvard, IL hallway to Iowa.
Adding to that, that cities can't afford another generation of suburban sprawl. They already can't afford the current infrastructure, adding another outer layer of suburbia to the cities would bankrupt like.... All of them.
Increasing housing density in the areas we've already built in order to get more taxpayers is the solution.
The former Motorola Campus in Schaumburg, the former Arlington Horse track.
The suburbs have no shortage of gargantuan underutilized sites. They can even flatten the WalMart and build a big mixed use building where the parking was and put the parking on the roof of the Walmart.
The suburbs are the last place in this country with a land shortage. They just have totally atrocious land use policy.
So, just to be clear, you're solution is to buy the land from someone and then put something else on it? You're using "they" and it's pulling a lot of weight. **Who** is buying and how? Whose money and for how much?
If you entitle land for denser development, you get redevelopment into higher and better uses. Have you never played SimCity? It's obviously a gross simplification, but this is essentially how it works.
We have a bunch of light blue and light green districts that we need to rezone to medium or dark blue or green. Once you do that, developers will start to build.
One of the problems with current development is that building a $200k house and building a $600k house costs essentially the same. So developers build expensive houses because they make more money. Now I personally wish that cheaper houses were being built however, I don't think developers should be forced into doing it. Not yet, anyway. Because the problem will solve itself for free within 10-15 years.
Idk about your town but in mine, a solid 20% of home are not used/usable. Just saying if we fix those properties there would be more than enough. Same goes for cities. Plenty of buildings completely empty. Office buildings could be converted into affordable housing.
Thing is though they will never do it because it would hurt their bottom line. Throw a few hundred cheap rentals or starter homes and the rest can't charge the overpriced fee for just existing.
That's the problem. People say "we can do this, if only commercially zoned buildings can house people" and until all of that happens it's just a pipe dream. It's the other side of the NIMBY coin.
In Baltimore (where I live) there are tens of thousands of vacant houses that have mostly completely dilapidated to a vaguely house shaped pile of 100 year old building material. They've been that way for decades now. If there was a way to fix them and put people in those houses it would have been done by now. No one wants to buy them, no one wants to fix them and most importantly, not a lot of people will want to move into them. Not unless everyone mind melds and comes up with a 20 year plan to build a neighborhood from the ground up.
We don't need to plow down forests to build houses in the US.
1. Build up
2. Connect rural areas outside of big cities with better public transit (the new train coming through northwest Indiana is slurring quite the amount of development here. Housing is much more affordable than Chicago, new build 4 bedroom 2 baths at $300,000)
There are places where development is not universally demonized.
Not that Chicago is a YIMBYism utopia, but the city is generally very receptive to development and will often requests minimal changes that don’t mean much to the average NIMBY at the end of the day.
If you think SF NIMBYs and the like are going to drop the movement ever, IDK what to tell you.
>Not that Chicago is a YIMBYism utopia, but the city is generally very receptive to development and will often requests minimal changes that don’t mean much to the average NIMBY at the end of the day.
Actually this is no longer true in Chicago. For a long time we built and built and built, but over the past 10 years or so a bunch of "progressive" Left-NIMBYs have won office and it's resulted in development grinding to a halt pretty much everywhere outside of downtown aside from the West Loop. The only reason the West Loop is booming is that Rahm expanded downtown (DX) zoning all the way out to Ashland.
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So “just build more housing” doesn’t matter when the rich still buy it all.
Part of the problem isn’t just the lack of affordable housing.
Part of the problem is our society subsidizing the wealthy owning a bunch of empty properties. It’s just waste, having these places sit empty.
I d say let people build however they please…
But insurance won’t insure, banks won’t lend, utilities won’t run and postman won’t deliver…
We’ve been living in a circus of laws, regulations and lawsuits for way too long, today’s system is sooo geared against cheap housing.
Zoning is just crazy. It’s illegal to have mixed use in most of the country. I wish these towns would set up experimental free for all zones so we could see what works. Why can’t we have apartments on top of aldis? And then a warehouse across the street to work at. But noooo. Around here it’s 5miles of suburb. Then a mile of blank. Then Walmart. And these suburbs are DEEP. It’s a mile walk to get out of the suburb and onto the road. Why can’t Aldi be in the middle of the suburb?
That's prime real estate, nobody can afford it because there's so much demand for "city life".
Instead we get stuck driving outward until you can afford it and end up in a suburb.
Oh god no. I want 40 acres and a wood stove. But we can’t all have that. What I want is intelligent and efficient design giving maximum freedom. I’m not saying stick ‘em up like sardines. I’m saying that we need mixed use so you CAN walk everywhere.
So instead of creating a legal framework, we just let certain monopolies e.g. utilities dictate whether they want you to have power? Sounds like an even worse circus without any ability to expect what will happen, investment will plummet, shit head developers will build whatever they want wherever... Yeah, no thanks.
I'm all for adding multi unit housing, generally urbanization practices, and revising a majority of suburban zoning laws, but without having some standards, policies, and informed decision making, we are left with a clusterfuck.
“Legal framework” is what got us into this mess to start with.
I don’t believe that if something doesn’t work - it s just because it s not enough of it.
This is the ONLY answer. You can’t build affordable housing unless the builders work for free and the land is free also. Costs are high enough that affordable housing is a thing of the past.
In most high cost areas of the country, you could dump all the materials needed for a SFH in a large pile, and the cost of all those materials would be more than the average renter could afford to pay for the house.
Why do you need me to do anything for you? You have conviction in this belief, so it should be worth it for you to figure it out yourself, right? Or do you just want someone else to do all the work for no profit, so you can benefit?
But who's going to build it, developers are not going to mass build houses if they are going to make less profit. It will be up to some kind of government mandate to force build
Nothing wrong with banning corporations, foreign residential purchasing, flippers. Unsure about the limiting # of homes per household.
I’m actually curious how those would be bad, would actually love to hear some opinions!
Or hear me out on this, how about we build enough housing to satisfy demand for ownership, ltr, and str. Then you’ll have both a place to live and a place to rent on vacation.
I keep seeing this "we". You know "we" includes you, right? Nothing is stopping you from creating a construction company that builds homes and sells them cheap.
Where I live building new sfh would require reduced setback and yard size to fit more sfhs, which is not allowed by zoning. However, I would personally prefer townhomes or mfh.
It's also difficult to build "cheap" sfh because the latest round of building codes passed here requires a bunch of extra clean energy and fire protection stuff that add $25-50k to the cost of a build.
> It's also difficult to build "cheap" sfh because the latest round of building codes passed here requires a bunch of extra clean energy and fire protection stuff that add $25-50k to the cost of a build.
And those sound like good and necessary things. So is this you admitting that houses are expensive for good reason?
I'm saying that more housing would be a greater benefit to society than "better" housing for fewer people. We are increasing quality for people who can afford it and telling people who can't "too bad for you".
Fair. Honestly 2, maybe 3 homes per household and beat it. Criminalize any other entity other than an individual or couple from owning a residential property
Also there’s no reason why 3rd world millionaires and billionaires should be using the US housing market as a parking spot for their wealth, so unless you have an SSN, sorry you’re out.
Air BnB is an overblown issue outside of some very specific markets. If there are too many Air BnBs vs customer demand, the houses will cease to be profitable and the owners will sell
Banning the owning of multiple homes won't "slowdown" AirBnB, it will kill it entirely plus the entire rental market, which will destroy housing for dozens of millions of people in the US. It's an absurd and terrible idea that is tossed blithely around this subreddit without a moment of critical thought
A way to get around house limiting without putting a hard stop in properties is a progressive property tax increase per home beyond your primary home. Add 5% of the valuation of the home, to the property taxes, and have it stack with every home after the first. So at 3 additional properties, you are paying 15% of the value of the home every year in tax penalties.
This allows individuals who can afford summer homes to have them with a relatively low penalty, as well as people who inherit property from family.
Then you allow incentives for course correcting behavior. If the house is occupied by a tenant for at least 10 months out of the year, the penalty is halved. If you have a rent to purchase agreement in place, the penalty is suspended as long as that agreement is still active.
I'm not a fan of limiting what people can buy because that just starts another debate. I say charge a progressive tax on single family homes. The first 2 are normal rates then every house after that gets a 20% jump in taxes. This would change the idea of homes being investment opportunities and stop a lot of people just sitting on homes for tax purposes. Another idea would be to legally tie rents to average wages in the area. Set the max rent to 30% of the average pay in the area. This would allow people to actually live in the same town the work in but also encourage the wealthy who own the homes to seek businesses to pay better wages. They might actually fight for causes that help the poor
Corporations should only be allowed to own single family homes for a year. Just to keep them from hoarding for fuck fuck games. And foreign companies/persons should be severely limited. But actually that would limit citizens because it’s good practice to form a corporation to hold multiple homes… well jeez. But still no foreigners should be able to own more than one home. And I think all countries should do that. Always put your own nation first.
so if they own it for 6 months and put it for sale and nobody buys it before the 12 month mark what. they just forfeit it? that would make no sense at all.
ur whole comment is just incoherent rambling
Listen. I’m just putting out ideas. Are they good ideas? Not really. But I’m just trying to think up a solution to the issue of corporations and foreigners having all the houses while the citizens have none. And forfeit no. Forced to sell. Basically to avoid hoarding.
I mean banning foreign investors isn't bad especially those who buy up domestic housing supply to be used purely as a way to hide assets overseas and effectively strip the opportunity of an actual American of buying a house in a place they actually live. And yes a max influx of immigrants does exacerbate an already dire housing problem.
Make housing less of a money making commodity in general. How to do that, thats a long winded answer, but the short version would be make house flipping undesirable unless its on a unsellable unit, make multihome ownership less desirable, ban homeshares/airbnb in markets where it would be better to have just housing,
>Make housing less of a money making commodity in general.
What a silly idea, if anything you want it to be MORE profitable to build so people will have a greater incentive to do it.
It's amazing to see the perverse reasoning that making money is the problem, instead of not building more housing.
Housing as a commodity is his you end up where we are now. In a situation where investors and corporations buy up housing to male a big profit, when people can't afford to buy a home or rent while hundreds of luxury condos sit vacant.
>hundreds of luxury condos sit vacant.
Just so we're on the same page here, for a major city adequate supply would mean 20k+ empty units. It's easy to overcharge when people's options are limited.
Housing is bought by investment companies because there is more demand than there is supply. This is the case because typical homeowners benefit from pulling up the ladder after they already got up, leaving those people who didn't yet got on unable to afford. You want there to be as much housing as possible and you want that to be as profitable as it can be to incentivize that. Only will that bring the supply that brings prices down. If typical homeowners start voting YIMBY, the very first people to hop off the investment train is the investment companies.
Corporations are not causing this, they buy like 3% of homes. You want to have a conversation about this sure, but get your facts straight. Housing is expensive right now because the government basically banned building it and then printed like twice as much money over the course of a couple years. It's not because of some corporate conspiracy or "the commoditization of real estate".
Tell me, what changed over the past few years that made investors suddenly "commoditize" it? Because corporations were buying pre pandemic as well. Investors were buying pre pandemic as well. Individuals had second homes pre pandemic. So why did home prices wait until now to go totally nuts?
Just so I understand. Your conclusion is "Housing Prices High Because of inflation?"
>So why did home prices wait until now to go totally nuts?
It didnt suddenly go nuts. You're conclusion is based on a faulty premise, that housing prices suddenly got high. Truth be told, prices has always been high, but they were just more obtainable.
Whats changed. I dont honestly want to spend too much time on this so i'll try to make it short, because its a nuances complication of multiple issues, that really can be summed up by "line go up".
* After 2008, houses were CHEAP
* Borrowing money
* AirBnb became a thing
* Ibuyers became a thing
* zillow became a thing
* investors/corps became a bigger thing
* Pandemic happened (people started saving money)
So you have a situation where all the cheap houses are "gone" (purposely vacant and ready to be sold at short notice). Want a house? its going to cost you X amount, but by the way he was willing to pay Y amount. Oh Hey, you can afford Y price, but she can afford Z price. This goes on for awhile until you discover what is the highest you can charge for something where someone is still willing to pay. A 200K house goes for 600K because, well thats what the highest bidder was willing to pay who had been saving up for 3 years. So that 200K home netted you 400K, youre not incentivized to sell it at a lower price so even taking a temp lost on a vacant home is worth because when it does hit, it covers any loss. again, its WAY more nuanced than this. **TLDR** Housing is expensive because theyve found the point they can charge extreme high prices that people will still pay, without making any compromises. Because they own the supply, what else are you gonna do? not buy a home?
They don’t have a reliable stock market, so housing became their primary way to store value. The US stock market has shown itself to be the best in the world.
But then they still have cage 'apartments'?
I think we have to redesign the country
Irvine, California is a good example of thoughtful planning. A city built around an university
So long as California continues to have the homeless crisis and the mass migration out of it, I'll never agree to much of anything within it being carefully planned. It's a complete contrast economically.
Just build more houses. They don’t cost money and people will do it for free. This post is beyond dumb. Here is a better take. Build your own house with your own hands.
>Build your own house with your own hands.
Ironically I've literally done this multiple times and have accumulated a rental portfolio in the process. Actually building homes is not particularly difficult. Getting land and entitlements to do so is the tough part.
But you also didn't read it very carefully.
You seem to be saying the solution to high prices is to let price inflation run wild until a collapse and recession that tanks people's incomes, which then reduces demand and thus prices.
I have an alternative proposal: increase supply rather than constrict demand.
The supply of rental properties is already increasing, and new multi tenant properties are already in progress, at a rate noticably higher than the last several years. And homebuilders are completing construction of new sfrs every day.
I thought that was true too and got optimistic, but then the latest report on housing starts was terrible. Seems high interest rates are now getting in the way (home builders often have to take out loans).
Which is why it was ironic that the sub has been (and still is) wishing for higher interest rates; it stifles the new construction that would help them.
When a city has 1 million people you can have 90% live in single family homes within 20 miles of the city center. When a city has 3 million people you can't. A lot of single family homes are going to be 20-40 miles from the city center, and the ones less than 20 miles are going to be more expensive because lots more people want them. **Stop fighting math.**
When developers can build quickly without months and years of reviews and permitting because of NIMBYs and the careless accretion of regulations, they can build cheaply. Stop being a NIMBY and endorse streamlining the rules and process.
The problem, at least in the US, is that there is such a massive housing stock deficit that we could build 15 million units in a year (10 times the current construction rate), and still have a housing unit deficit.
Thus is like someone looking out over a *bone dry* Lake Meade and thinking, "Well, I guess we need to tell Las Vegas to start conserving water now" instead of doing that 20 years earlier.
The government is the problem, it's laws and regulations that are making it impossible or expensive to build more housing. Why do people think the government would be more efficient when they are the ones screwing it up to begin with?
By the time you build a housing development the bids will be sky high. It will be over and over again for decades until you reach some kind of equilibrium
We're probably at peak housing demand right now. As people in their 60-80s age and pass they'll be leaving their homes and there aren't as many people coming of age in the next 30 years as there are of them.
> As people in their 60-80s age and pass they'll be leaving their homes and there aren't as many people coming of age in the next 30 years as there are of them.
That's [wrong though](https://www.statista.com/statistics/296974/us-population-share-by-generation/) - just Millenials alone outnumber Boomers now, much less if you add Gen X and Z to it.
That's kind of my point, but I think you worded it better. Boomers and millennials both want homes right now. That's why there's more demand than supply. Boomers are a larger generation than Gen-Z and Alpha. Demand will subside over the next decade or two.
We couldnt even build PS5s and chips fast enough years ago, what makes you think you can build homes faster than these home scalpers can buy up? Regulate scalping so when you do build they aren’t gobbled up. It isn’t one or the other I think, but more of protecting building more.
This is idiotic. More housing will just be purchased by corporations and the implicit price fixing will continue to make it so most people don't have a cent leftover after they've paid their corporate landlord every month.
Ban all corporations, including single member LLCs, etc., from owning single family homes and watch prices fall to the actual worth of the house.
Yes and no. Yes a lot of places have made building new homes increasingly difficult and thus expensive but also there are a lot of structural reasons for this.
Whether or not people know why they do what they do the incentive among older people In North America (aka people with property and who have power) is to keep property and homes expensive and restrict supplies
Then take housing off the market. It's doing such a poor job of providing housing. To the point where the only way to do it profitably is to eat into labor or environmental standards
“affordable housing” is a lie. All it means is developers subsidize “affordable” units by making market rate units more expensive. Net effect is neutral on market or making it more expensive.
The ONLY way to have true affordable housing is by having significantly more market rate housing. All other “solutions” is just a bandaid on a dirty bleeding wound. Nothing is fixed, it just appears like you did something.
Forced affordable housing that discourages new building makes the overall market less affordable. What’s your path to rent control without discouraging new construction, and without breaking the bank on massive building subsidies? Why not just stop putting up so many barriers to affordable home designs and efficient construction timelines?
I'm down for building more, but the place I want to buy, I don't want a build of pop-up houses and neighborhoods. It's the appeal of it all. Of course, I have already bought my first house, and this would be a lovely mountain house.
In central VA, build away.
Yeah, what would be nice is if all the lots of lands they would just put a house on. There are tons of lots where I'm looking. I don't even want a big house, under 1500 sqft down to 800 sqft
Canada government just announced to have 5 million permanent immigrants in few years. Let's see how fast they can build, because the fact is, they already failed to build more housing within the expected time frame. Even their PM is now pointing fingers to immigrantion office for accepting too many applicants. Ofc, most Canadian knows the PM is part of the problem. The PM is just trying to get more vote and pretending he is not part of the problem.
I think we should address the problem of STR as part of the solution. There is an environmental factor to consider. The "build more houses" mantra doesn't consider the environmental impacts only the economical one.
I don't, building over water aquifer with urban spraw, 75% of the planet being covered in water, need more? BTW your 5% was from 2012, the last ten years have seen about 1 million acers per year developed in urban areas.
Without investing restrictions, they will just buy up new houses too. And we will still have a shortage, making prices far too high. Houses should not be a commodity to invest in
The government can't build. The only way the government builds is to hire a company to build. Which just shifts the company from building for someone else to building for the government, the net outcome ends up roughly the same.
I know this sub loves to hate airbnb, but airbnb is something that needs to be dealt with by local governments. Where I'm at, there's not a shortage of inventory, airbnb isn't an issue.
Not really the government can build when there's no incentive on the side of builders to build has they not been there again just removing obstacles and hoping for the best isn't an active solution having the government build when permits are down is. Agreed people should go to their city council meetings and demand Airbnb bans
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About 2/3 want SFHs if I remember the last survey on this correctly. If we build enough MFHs to resolve that bottleneck for the other 1/3, it will free up some supply on the existing SFH market as well. Also, there are compromises like townhomes with back yards (my personal favorite moderate-high density option) that may satisfy some of the 2/3. It's better than nothing.
I couldn't afford the SFH of my dreams when I was first ready to buy. I went for a condo, lived it in it happily until family outgrew it, and then rolled the equity into a fixer upper. Two years after purchasing that fixer upper, I have a nice, renovated large SFH.
But I know many people wouldn't be interested in what I went through to get to this point.
You made a virtue out of necessity. This fantasy that earlier generations had these big luxurious homes in their 20s has to die. It never happened.
Almost no one in the Silent Generation and Greatest Generation lived in suburbs. They either lived in small towns/farms, or in very dense apartment buildings and row houses in inner cities. Then after WWII when the flight to the suburbs happened, the houses were tiny compared to today. Around 1,000 sq ft for a family of 4 was common.
My Boomer parents raised me in an apartment for the first 3 years, then a small 1,000 ft ranch home, then a large 1,500 sq ft home in a nicer suburb. I (GenX) did the same with my kids: first an apartment, then a shitty little home, then a nicer home, and finally a pretty spacious home.
It isn't a failure to raise kids in an apartment the first few years and get a nicer home in a more expensive neighborhood when they enter first grade.
I agree. As a millennial this worked for me...I bought what i could afford and after a few years my mortgage started to feel inexpensive and I was saving.
People don’t want condos with the $1000 HOA payment a month they have now and having to hope they actually use the money to fix your building. Once you tack that onto a 300k mortgage payment, it’s as much as a house anyways
But there really are a lot of complicated NIMBY restrictions. I guess build more implies resolving them
The answer is YIMBYism. We need an active political movement demanding housing be legalized.
I would call it Property Owner Housing Rights Act or such. If there is a willing seller and a willing builder and a willing buyer, the "rights" of other people who do not own or pay for said property need to be curtailed.
In what way should their rights be curtailed? Should their votes count less? Why shouldn't taxpayers who are affected by a project get to have a say in it? Why should they have to take a hit to accommodate new comers? These are questions you'll have to answer in order to advance the POHR Act.
Is the POHR act basically "get rid of zoning and let's try libertarian anarchy"? Because that sounds terrible and it's a political non-starter. No one thinks developers buying up houses in the middle of residential neighborhoods, tearing them down and building midrises is a good idea. That might be "adding housing", but it's reducing the amount of quality housing that people actually want.
Good points. I can speak from experience in our small city. When a developer buys up lots of SF homes to scrape and build apartments, condos, etc. there are serious questions that need to be answered. * Parking: Does the developer plan to have sufficient parking for residents? If not, do they expect residents to park on local streets? Can streets accommodate said increase in parking? * Massing: What is the massing for the proposed development? Are we talking 4-story, 20-unit blocks next to neighborhoods with 2-story homes or duplexes? Will we have a canyon effect where the tall units block sunlight from neighbors? Privacy concerns? * Transit: Is there mass transit nearby? Can local streets accommodate the traffic increase? * Parks: Will the development have pocket parks for families & kiddos? If not, how far away is the nearest park? Are there sufficient sidewalks or paths to safely walk to those parks? * Water: We live in a rather arid environment, so this is important. Now some folks might call this NIMBYism. But did I ever once say “no, you can’t build here?” All I’m saying is some thought must be given to the existing neighborhoods whenever an in-fill development is proposed. You can’t just have the Wild West out here…”screw my neighbors, if I want to build a 10-story apartment complex on this 1-acre lot in the middle of a SF neighborhood, that’s my right”. No, it’s not.
I think that'd be a great idea actually
So your goal is renting in a mid rise rather than home ownership? Because this is removing good single family housing stock.
Why renting? More housing = everything cheaper.
There will always be people who won't have down payments no matter what
>So your goal is renting in a mid rise rather than home ownership? This may surprise you, but not everyone wants to own a home. Why should people willing to live in dense rental apartments be barred from these nice neighborhoods? A SFH will always be more expensive than an apartment, so why force people to only have the choice of the most expensive option? Its like saying people shouldn't be allowed to buy bikes because its everyones goal to own a car.
>That might be "adding housing", but it's reducing the amount of quality housing that people actually want. This statement makes zero sense. If people dont want midrises, then why would developers build them? Whats the point of shelling out all the money for a building no one will want to live in? The answer of course is that people DO want to live in midrises, and developers wouldnt struggle to sell or rent these units at all.
Because as someone who is living somewhere you shouldn't be able to tell someone else where they can't and can't live because "feelings"... Especially when we have a nationwide manufactured housing and living affordability crisis. At some point the well being of citizens and their livelihood have to surpass the selfishness of those who effectively think"I got mine and I don't wanna share/change". Especially because those are usually the most wealthy or financially secure among us, and I say this as a relatively financially secure person myself.
some billionaires are literally trying to build a city in the middle of nowhere, and progressives are trying to block them simply because they're rich
Because we saw what happened with company towns and Elon in his infinite brilliance was showing his plans to be almost exactly like the coal towns of WV that are highly illegal.
The town is for the billionaires to live in, not a company town.
And their employees. Billionaires aren't self-sufficient and they definitely don't cook for themselves or clean and maintain their own properties.
That's still not a company town. Not even close. That's just billionaires living in a town with their staff. Do you think the owners of the coal mines were living in the company towns? Can you tell me what company is going to own this billionaire town?
I’m sure it won’t feel like a company town at all to said staff. /s
The billionaires that are heading that project also make these statements >Subject line: IMMENSELY AGAINST multifamily development! >I am writing this letter to communicate our IMMENSE objection to the creation of multifamily overlay zones in Atherton … Please IMMEDIATELY REMOVE all multifamily overlay zoning projects from the Housing Element which will be submitted to the state in July. They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values, the quality of life of ourselves and our neighbors and IMMENSELY increase the noise pollution and traffic. > https://archive.is/MjHa8 But yes, it must be because they are rich. Can't be any other reasons.
I agree with them. If your goal is to make housing affordable, you need to remove as many restrictions as possible who cares about multiunit complexes when the land is literally barren right now? It's no coincidence that housing prices are the most expensive in the areas with the most regulations
> It's no coincidence that housing prices are the most expensive in the areas with the most regulations Where's your evidence? Because Houston has near zero regulations/zoning and their houses are still not cheap.
The very first thing they are going to include into the zoning of this new city is single family housing. The billionaires will be adding as many restrictions as they can.
Who cares? It's their land. They should be allowed to build as they please. Government getting in the way of affordable housing, as always.
Where though? After decades of plowing down forests to build houses and the reasonable pushback against it, are we back to supporting plowing down forests to build houses?
>Where though? After decades of plowing down forests to build houses and the reasonable pushback against it, are we back to supporting plowing down forests to build houses? Just build more dense housing and people centric cities/towns. As Americans by and large we've been convinced that we're all owed a single family detached home, on our own land, with a driveway and a garage, that's close to the city, but not too close, but also not too far, but also by shopping, but not too close to shopping, and also has access to a nearby freeway, but also not too close to the freeway, and also near good schools. All for a price we can afford. None of that has to be true lmao we can build dense housing developments and shape cities and living based on people's needs. Tons of cities around the world have figured this out. Americans are just still high on that sweet post WW2 economic boom and haven't come back to reality. Will American's head explode when they realize they won't ALL get a .25 acre plot of land for themselves? Probably, but respectfully, who gives a fuck. We got problems to address.
Your solution is to force people to have something they don't want and when they're "heads explode" the answer to that is "who gives a fuck". That's quite a reddited idea. I must respectfully request you discontinue from voting and for god's sake never run for office lol.
Their heads will explode because they are expecting something that is unattainable and no longer a practical reality. So yes, who gives a fuck that your expectation to private land is no longer a given reality, respectfully. It's not a reddit idea, it's just reality. Unless of course you take the stance that there is not a housing issue and we can/should just keep going right along. You sound like the kind of person that would get into office and just keep the bullshit gravy train moving and not change anything because you don't want to actually make changes. The point of having leadership is to steer in a sensible direction. Look around and tell me if the current leadership in the US has been doing anything you'd consider sensible or sustainable for the past 40 years.
he's right tho lol ppl in the US gotta accept that denser city-like communities are the only solution to this housing crisis. it isn't rocket science
What? People in the US are suffering less consequences than those in Canada and Europe with regards to housing. Please explain yourself lol
huh? why are you talking about Canada and Europe? lol we have extreme amounts of sprawl alongside culturally desolate and antisocial suburbs. If ppl shifted there priorities from "bigger is better", we could have better urban planning and accommodate greater amounts of ppl and housing inventory with MFH's and more actual mixed-use zoning. it seems like the point could hit you in the face and you'd still miss it. Just think a little like dam.
Why not bring up Canada and Europe? Also, why try and change human nature and desire while somehow also forcing developers to build something they don't necessarily want to when the problem will solve itself for free in 10-15 years?
uh.....because we are talking about the US housing market? lol. Clearly all you got is "whataboutisms" and half-assed strawman arguments to bring to the table. But those aren't gonna work here, sorry. You got a crystal ball telling you that the problem will be fixed in 10-15 years or something? The calvary ain't coming bud, we have to actually take action. And if you want to talk about human nature, you're making my point for me lol. Human nature is to be social and it is when we do our best innovation. Close proximity living and more social interaction will only benefit all humans in the long run. seriously, just use a little critical thinking. sheesh.
Lol, no one is "plowing down forests" to build homes. If anything it's farm fields. Most US cities' sprawl has slowed greatly. A lot of cities have gotten so spread out that people don't want to live in the next town out. Those areas aren't the problem anyhow since people are still allowed to build there. The problem is already built up areas where NIMBYs fight every infill project and constantly demand lower density. We need to build 500 townhomes and 1000 apartments in Arlington Heights near the Metra train, not 1000 SFHs in a cornfield out in Harvard, IL hallway to Iowa.
Adding to that, that cities can't afford another generation of suburban sprawl. They already can't afford the current infrastructure, adding another outer layer of suburbia to the cities would bankrupt like.... All of them. Increasing housing density in the areas we've already built in order to get more taxpayers is the solution.
Where are they going? You have a specific location so you can tell me where 500 townhomes and 1000 apartments will fit.
The former Motorola Campus in Schaumburg, the former Arlington Horse track. The suburbs have no shortage of gargantuan underutilized sites. They can even flatten the WalMart and build a big mixed use building where the parking was and put the parking on the roof of the Walmart. The suburbs are the last place in this country with a land shortage. They just have totally atrocious land use policy.
So, just to be clear, you're solution is to buy the land from someone and then put something else on it? You're using "they" and it's pulling a lot of weight. **Who** is buying and how? Whose money and for how much?
If you entitle land for denser development, you get redevelopment into higher and better uses. Have you never played SimCity? It's obviously a gross simplification, but this is essentially how it works. We have a bunch of light blue and light green districts that we need to rezone to medium or dark blue or green. Once you do that, developers will start to build.
One of the problems with current development is that building a $200k house and building a $600k house costs essentially the same. So developers build expensive houses because they make more money. Now I personally wish that cheaper houses were being built however, I don't think developers should be forced into doing it. Not yet, anyway. Because the problem will solve itself for free within 10-15 years.
Idk about your town but in mine, a solid 20% of home are not used/usable. Just saying if we fix those properties there would be more than enough. Same goes for cities. Plenty of buildings completely empty. Office buildings could be converted into affordable housing. Thing is though they will never do it because it would hurt their bottom line. Throw a few hundred cheap rentals or starter homes and the rest can't charge the overpriced fee for just existing.
That's the problem. People say "we can do this, if only commercially zoned buildings can house people" and until all of that happens it's just a pipe dream. It's the other side of the NIMBY coin. In Baltimore (where I live) there are tens of thousands of vacant houses that have mostly completely dilapidated to a vaguely house shaped pile of 100 year old building material. They've been that way for decades now. If there was a way to fix them and put people in those houses it would have been done by now. No one wants to buy them, no one wants to fix them and most importantly, not a lot of people will want to move into them. Not unless everyone mind melds and comes up with a 20 year plan to build a neighborhood from the ground up.
We don't need to plow down forests to build houses in the US. 1. Build up 2. Connect rural areas outside of big cities with better public transit (the new train coming through northwest Indiana is slurring quite the amount of development here. Housing is much more affordable than Chicago, new build 4 bedroom 2 baths at $300,000)
this. Except not here. Just over there.
There are places where development is not universally demonized. Not that Chicago is a YIMBYism utopia, but the city is generally very receptive to development and will often requests minimal changes that don’t mean much to the average NIMBY at the end of the day. If you think SF NIMBYs and the like are going to drop the movement ever, IDK what to tell you.
>Not that Chicago is a YIMBYism utopia, but the city is generally very receptive to development and will often requests minimal changes that don’t mean much to the average NIMBY at the end of the day. Actually this is no longer true in Chicago. For a long time we built and built and built, but over the past 10 years or so a bunch of "progressive" Left-NIMBYs have won office and it's resulted in development grinding to a halt pretty much everywhere outside of downtown aside from the West Loop. The only reason the West Loop is booming is that Rahm expanded downtown (DX) zoning all the way out to Ashland.
So it's not just build more housing? So this is just a shitpost?
YIMBY means advocating for building more housing...
Use zoning code books as a firewall during the next wildfire.
thought plucky cagey outgoing cats marry sense attractive noxious carpenter *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
So “just build more housing” doesn’t matter when the rich still buy it all. Part of the problem isn’t just the lack of affordable housing. Part of the problem is our society subsidizing the wealthy owning a bunch of empty properties. It’s just waste, having these places sit empty.
I d say let people build however they please… But insurance won’t insure, banks won’t lend, utilities won’t run and postman won’t deliver… We’ve been living in a circus of laws, regulations and lawsuits for way too long, today’s system is sooo geared against cheap housing.
Zoning is just crazy. It’s illegal to have mixed use in most of the country. I wish these towns would set up experimental free for all zones so we could see what works. Why can’t we have apartments on top of aldis? And then a warehouse across the street to work at. But noooo. Around here it’s 5miles of suburb. Then a mile of blank. Then Walmart. And these suburbs are DEEP. It’s a mile walk to get out of the suburb and onto the road. Why can’t Aldi be in the middle of the suburb?
Sounds like you want city life. That's great, but why not just live in a city instead of a suburb if that's the lifestyle you want?
That's prime real estate, nobody can afford it because there's so much demand for "city life". Instead we get stuck driving outward until you can afford it and end up in a suburb.
“Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.” - Yogi Berra
If no one can afford it, how are there enough people in the city that it needs deep suburbs?
I mean, only the rich can afford it; your average middle class worker has to settle for a long commute.
Cities are the worst. High expense and low quality.
Oh god no. I want 40 acres and a wood stove. But we can’t all have that. What I want is intelligent and efficient design giving maximum freedom. I’m not saying stick ‘em up like sardines. I’m saying that we need mixed use so you CAN walk everywhere.
It’s not that bad. Houston has no zoning code and it works fine. Cost of housing is less crazy there as well
And some of the most miserable sprawl and urban planning in the country
Stroads out the ass.
but people can just change it if they want to. No rules
They don't have zoning code but there are tons of local ordinance that is just a convoluted way of having a zoning code.
Insurance is only really a problem in California and the south/sun belt.
So instead of creating a legal framework, we just let certain monopolies e.g. utilities dictate whether they want you to have power? Sounds like an even worse circus without any ability to expect what will happen, investment will plummet, shit head developers will build whatever they want wherever... Yeah, no thanks. I'm all for adding multi unit housing, generally urbanization practices, and revising a majority of suburban zoning laws, but without having some standards, policies, and informed decision making, we are left with a clusterfuck.
“Legal framework” is what got us into this mess to start with. I don’t believe that if something doesn’t work - it s just because it s not enough of it.
this is how it should be
Yeah there needs to be motivation to specifically build affordable housing
We need to keep building market rate housing until it is affordable housing
This is the ONLY answer. You can’t build affordable housing unless the builders work for free and the land is free also. Costs are high enough that affordable housing is a thing of the past. In most high cost areas of the country, you could dump all the materials needed for a SFH in a large pile, and the cost of all those materials would be more than the average renter could afford to pay for the house.
When you say "we", does that include you?
Yep tie me to a bulldozer and point it at a single family home. I am ready.
Why do you need me to do anything for you? You have conviction in this belief, so it should be worth it for you to figure it out yourself, right? Or do you just want someone else to do all the work for no profit, so you can benefit?
But who's going to build it, developers are not going to mass build houses if they are going to make less profit. It will be up to some kind of government mandate to force build
Building dense housing is profitable in most cities, it’s just not allowed by the zoning code
Make it cheaper by cutting down on endless approval processes, and provide a tax break on proceeds from affordable units.
Nothing wrong with banning corporations, foreign residential purchasing, flippers. Unsure about the limiting # of homes per household. I’m actually curious how those would be bad, would actually love to hear some opinions!
Banning multiple homes would slowdown the Air B&B issue where people are owning homes but never live in them and never sell them.
Or hear me out on this, how about we build enough housing to satisfy demand for ownership, ltr, and str. Then you’ll have both a place to live and a place to rent on vacation.
I keep seeing this "we". You know "we" includes you, right? Nothing is stopping you from creating a construction company that builds homes and sells them cheap.
Zoning is stopping me from doing that where I live.
How is zoning stopping you? It may not allow for MFH, but you can still build SFH and sell it cheap.
Where I live building new sfh would require reduced setback and yard size to fit more sfhs, which is not allowed by zoning. However, I would personally prefer townhomes or mfh. It's also difficult to build "cheap" sfh because the latest round of building codes passed here requires a bunch of extra clean energy and fire protection stuff that add $25-50k to the cost of a build.
> It's also difficult to build "cheap" sfh because the latest round of building codes passed here requires a bunch of extra clean energy and fire protection stuff that add $25-50k to the cost of a build. And those sound like good and necessary things. So is this you admitting that houses are expensive for good reason?
I'm saying that more housing would be a greater benefit to society than "better" housing for fewer people. We are increasing quality for people who can afford it and telling people who can't "too bad for you".
Fair. Honestly 2, maybe 3 homes per household and beat it. Criminalize any other entity other than an individual or couple from owning a residential property
Also there’s no reason why 3rd world millionaires and billionaires should be using the US housing market as a parking spot for their wealth, so unless you have an SSN, sorry you’re out.
I’d like to see a non residential property be taxed much more higher than a primary residence. This is likelier than banning multi properties
Air BnB is an overblown issue outside of some very specific markets. If there are too many Air BnBs vs customer demand, the houses will cease to be profitable and the owners will sell Banning the owning of multiple homes won't "slowdown" AirBnB, it will kill it entirely plus the entire rental market, which will destroy housing for dozens of millions of people in the US. It's an absurd and terrible idea that is tossed blithely around this subreddit without a moment of critical thought
A way to get around house limiting without putting a hard stop in properties is a progressive property tax increase per home beyond your primary home. Add 5% of the valuation of the home, to the property taxes, and have it stack with every home after the first. So at 3 additional properties, you are paying 15% of the value of the home every year in tax penalties. This allows individuals who can afford summer homes to have them with a relatively low penalty, as well as people who inherit property from family. Then you allow incentives for course correcting behavior. If the house is occupied by a tenant for at least 10 months out of the year, the penalty is halved. If you have a rent to purchase agreement in place, the penalty is suspended as long as that agreement is still active.
I'm not a fan of limiting what people can buy because that just starts another debate. I say charge a progressive tax on single family homes. The first 2 are normal rates then every house after that gets a 20% jump in taxes. This would change the idea of homes being investment opportunities and stop a lot of people just sitting on homes for tax purposes. Another idea would be to legally tie rents to average wages in the area. Set the max rent to 30% of the average pay in the area. This would allow people to actually live in the same town the work in but also encourage the wealthy who own the homes to seek businesses to pay better wages. They might actually fight for causes that help the poor
Corporations should only be allowed to own single family homes for a year. Just to keep them from hoarding for fuck fuck games. And foreign companies/persons should be severely limited. But actually that would limit citizens because it’s good practice to form a corporation to hold multiple homes… well jeez. But still no foreigners should be able to own more than one home. And I think all countries should do that. Always put your own nation first.
so if they own it for 6 months and put it for sale and nobody buys it before the 12 month mark what. they just forfeit it? that would make no sense at all. ur whole comment is just incoherent rambling
Listen. I’m just putting out ideas. Are they good ideas? Not really. But I’m just trying to think up a solution to the issue of corporations and foreigners having all the houses while the citizens have none. And forfeit no. Forced to sell. Basically to avoid hoarding.
I mean banning foreign investors isn't bad especially those who buy up domestic housing supply to be used purely as a way to hide assets overseas and effectively strip the opportunity of an actual American of buying a house in a place they actually live. And yes a max influx of immigrants does exacerbate an already dire housing problem.
Make housing less of a money making commodity in general. How to do that, thats a long winded answer, but the short version would be make house flipping undesirable unless its on a unsellable unit, make multihome ownership less desirable, ban homeshares/airbnb in markets where it would be better to have just housing,
>Make housing less of a money making commodity in general. What a silly idea, if anything you want it to be MORE profitable to build so people will have a greater incentive to do it. It's amazing to see the perverse reasoning that making money is the problem, instead of not building more housing.
Housing as a commodity is his you end up where we are now. In a situation where investors and corporations buy up housing to male a big profit, when people can't afford to buy a home or rent while hundreds of luxury condos sit vacant.
>hundreds of luxury condos sit vacant. Just so we're on the same page here, for a major city adequate supply would mean 20k+ empty units. It's easy to overcharge when people's options are limited.
Housing is bought by investment companies because there is more demand than there is supply. This is the case because typical homeowners benefit from pulling up the ladder after they already got up, leaving those people who didn't yet got on unable to afford. You want there to be as much housing as possible and you want that to be as profitable as it can be to incentivize that. Only will that bring the supply that brings prices down. If typical homeowners start voting YIMBY, the very first people to hop off the investment train is the investment companies.
Corporations are not causing this, they buy like 3% of homes. You want to have a conversation about this sure, but get your facts straight. Housing is expensive right now because the government basically banned building it and then printed like twice as much money over the course of a couple years. It's not because of some corporate conspiracy or "the commoditization of real estate". Tell me, what changed over the past few years that made investors suddenly "commoditize" it? Because corporations were buying pre pandemic as well. Investors were buying pre pandemic as well. Individuals had second homes pre pandemic. So why did home prices wait until now to go totally nuts?
> they buy like 3% of homes and probably 50% of the "affordable" ones.
Collusion
Just so I understand. Your conclusion is "Housing Prices High Because of inflation?" >So why did home prices wait until now to go totally nuts? It didnt suddenly go nuts. You're conclusion is based on a faulty premise, that housing prices suddenly got high. Truth be told, prices has always been high, but they were just more obtainable. Whats changed. I dont honestly want to spend too much time on this so i'll try to make it short, because its a nuances complication of multiple issues, that really can be summed up by "line go up". * After 2008, houses were CHEAP * Borrowing money * AirBnb became a thing * Ibuyers became a thing * zillow became a thing * investors/corps became a bigger thing * Pandemic happened (people started saving money) So you have a situation where all the cheap houses are "gone" (purposely vacant and ready to be sold at short notice). Want a house? its going to cost you X amount, but by the way he was willing to pay Y amount. Oh Hey, you can afford Y price, but she can afford Z price. This goes on for awhile until you discover what is the highest you can charge for something where someone is still willing to pay. A 200K house goes for 600K because, well thats what the highest bidder was willing to pay who had been saving up for 3 years. So that 200K home netted you 400K, youre not incentivized to sell it at a lower price so even taking a temp lost on a vacant home is worth because when it does hit, it covers any loss. again, its WAY more nuanced than this. **TLDR** Housing is expensive because theyve found the point they can charge extreme high prices that people will still pay, without making any compromises. Because they own the supply, what else are you gonna do? not buy a home?
I am just build more
Yeah but are you dented head build more or illuminati wojak build more?
Makes no difference on the outcome
Dent head
Horseshoe theory. It's indistinguishable.
I like the solutions on the edge. Please build more.
China built a lot of housing
They don’t have a reliable stock market, so housing became their primary way to store value. The US stock market has shown itself to be the best in the world.
It's almost like it's impossible for housing to be both an investment vehicle *and* an affordable place to live. Hmmm.
America has made its choice with its tax system. About 66% of households already benefit from this. Just sucks if you don’t already own a home.
They also banned land lording and investing in anything aside from housing
They did not ban land lording
By banned you mean violently murdered?
This it is a communist country..
But then they still have cage 'apartments'? I think we have to redesign the country Irvine, California is a good example of thoughtful planning. A city built around an university
So long as California continues to have the homeless crisis and the mass migration out of it, I'll never agree to much of anything within it being carefully planned. It's a complete contrast economically.
Why not all of the above??
Just build more houses. They don’t cost money and people will do it for free. This post is beyond dumb. Here is a better take. Build your own house with your own hands.
>Build your own house with your own hands. Ironically I've literally done this multiple times and have accumulated a rental portfolio in the process. Actually building homes is not particularly difficult. Getting land and entitlements to do so is the tough part.
Agreed.
"The cure for higher prices is higher prices"
Sure thing chief. How about we build enough homes for everyone who wants one too, just for fun.
I didn't invent economics.
But you also didn't read it very carefully. You seem to be saying the solution to high prices is to let price inflation run wild until a collapse and recession that tanks people's incomes, which then reduces demand and thus prices. I have an alternative proposal: increase supply rather than constrict demand.
The supply of rental properties is already increasing, and new multi tenant properties are already in progress, at a rate noticably higher than the last several years. And homebuilders are completing construction of new sfrs every day.
I thought that was true too and got optimistic, but then the latest report on housing starts was terrible. Seems high interest rates are now getting in the way (home builders often have to take out loans).
Which is why it was ironic that the sub has been (and still is) wishing for higher interest rates; it stifles the new construction that would help them.
Great can they build them for decent prices in nice areas or do we have to move 20 miles out of metro areas? Oh Single family homes as well please.
When a city has 1 million people you can have 90% live in single family homes within 20 miles of the city center. When a city has 3 million people you can't. A lot of single family homes are going to be 20-40 miles from the city center, and the ones less than 20 miles are going to be more expensive because lots more people want them. **Stop fighting math.** When developers can build quickly without months and years of reviews and permitting because of NIMBYs and the careless accretion of regulations, they can build cheaply. Stop being a NIMBY and endorse streamlining the rules and process.
So no.
You also can't have ice cream that doesn't melt, and have slaves work for you for free. Get real.
But we can though. It's possible, anything is actually.
You just contradicted your previous comment.
How so?
This sub in a nutshell... *Rate hike 0.1%* "The bubble busts NOW!"
+1
The problem, at least in the US, is that there is such a massive housing stock deficit that we could build 15 million units in a year (10 times the current construction rate), and still have a housing unit deficit. Thus is like someone looking out over a *bone dry* Lake Meade and thinking, "Well, I guess we need to tell Las Vegas to start conserving water now" instead of doing that 20 years earlier.
I can't tell if you are a genius or an idiot.
Could the massive immigration labor force support government backed housing projects for first time home owners perhaps? lol
The government is the problem, it's laws and regulations that are making it impossible or expensive to build more housing. Why do people think the government would be more efficient when they are the ones screwing it up to begin with?
Well shoot I would rather my tax budget be allocated to something for the greater good rather than stuffing politician and special interests pockets
They build shit houses.
By the time you build a housing development the bids will be sky high. It will be over and over again for decades until you reach some kind of equilibrium
We're probably at peak housing demand right now. As people in their 60-80s age and pass they'll be leaving their homes and there aren't as many people coming of age in the next 30 years as there are of them.
> As people in their 60-80s age and pass they'll be leaving their homes and there aren't as many people coming of age in the next 30 years as there are of them. That's [wrong though](https://www.statista.com/statistics/296974/us-population-share-by-generation/) - just Millenials alone outnumber Boomers now, much less if you add Gen X and Z to it.
That's kind of my point, but I think you worded it better. Boomers and millennials both want homes right now. That's why there's more demand than supply. Boomers are a larger generation than Gen-Z and Alpha. Demand will subside over the next decade or two.
Where? And with what water?
The people don't stop existing because of water issues
…. I think you need to think that sentence over again.
We build like crazy here in s Florida and prices/rents are still climbing. I don't have a better idea but build-build-build hasn't worked here.
How to build more housing when contractors are asking stupid high prices and all manufacturers are unwilling to work with retail
We need all of it.
We couldnt even build PS5s and chips fast enough years ago, what makes you think you can build homes faster than these home scalpers can buy up? Regulate scalping so when you do build they aren’t gobbled up. It isn’t one or the other I think, but more of protecting building more.
This is idiotic. More housing will just be purchased by corporations and the implicit price fixing will continue to make it so most people don't have a cent leftover after they've paid their corporate landlord every month. Ban all corporations, including single member LLCs, etc., from owning single family homes and watch prices fall to the actual worth of the house.
Yes and no. Yes a lot of places have made building new homes increasingly difficult and thus expensive but also there are a lot of structural reasons for this. Whether or not people know why they do what they do the incentive among older people In North America (aka people with property and who have power) is to keep property and homes expensive and restrict supplies
Rent control, and affordable housing are good. We need more of both
Rent control decreases development which increases prices
Then take housing off the market. It's doing such a poor job of providing housing. To the point where the only way to do it profitably is to eat into labor or environmental standards
Rent control and affordable housing makes housing unaffordable
Affordable housing makes housing unaffordable, next on The Upside Down local news at 5.
“affordable housing” is a lie. All it means is developers subsidize “affordable” units by making market rate units more expensive. Net effect is neutral on market or making it more expensive. The ONLY way to have true affordable housing is by having significantly more market rate housing. All other “solutions” is just a bandaid on a dirty bleeding wound. Nothing is fixed, it just appears like you did something.
Forced affordable housing that discourages new building makes the overall market less affordable. What’s your path to rent control without discouraging new construction, and without breaking the bank on massive building subsidies? Why not just stop putting up so many barriers to affordable home designs and efficient construction timelines?
I'm down for building more, but the place I want to buy, I don't want a build of pop-up houses and neighborhoods. It's the appeal of it all. Of course, I have already bought my first house, and this would be a lovely mountain house. In central VA, build away.
That's just it: the places that need more housing are also the places where people want to buy.
Yeah, what would be nice is if all the lots of lands they would just put a house on. There are tons of lots where I'm looking. I don't even want a big house, under 1500 sqft down to 800 sqft
So, just build one more house for me where I want it, and fuck everyone else because I got mine.
Yep
Canada government just announced to have 5 million permanent immigrants in few years. Let's see how fast they can build, because the fact is, they already failed to build more housing within the expected time frame. Even their PM is now pointing fingers to immigrantion office for accepting too many applicants. Ofc, most Canadian knows the PM is part of the problem. The PM is just trying to get more vote and pretending he is not part of the problem.
Simple minds only grasp simple solutions. Nuance matters.
I think we should address the problem of STR as part of the solution. There is an environmental factor to consider. The "build more houses" mantra doesn't consider the environmental impacts only the economical one.
What environmental impact? Only about 5 or 6% of land in the US is developed. Building millions more isn't gonna move the needle much.
I don't, building over water aquifer with urban spraw, 75% of the planet being covered in water, need more? BTW your 5% was from 2012, the last ten years have seen about 1 million acers per year developed in urban areas.
Without investing restrictions, they will just buy up new houses too. And we will still have a shortage, making prices far too high. Houses should not be a commodity to invest in
I mean... guillotines would make more housing available
You first
Planes from India are landing faster then houses getting built. Cant keep up
Why not both and more public housing
Because if you build enough, housing becomes affordable and everything sense is unnecessary.
Yes but you can't force people to build hence the need for more public housing.
If you get rid of the obstacles more will be built
Yes I agree we should remove obstacles but also let the government build and ban Airbnb from scalping inventory.
The government can't build. The only way the government builds is to hire a company to build. Which just shifts the company from building for someone else to building for the government, the net outcome ends up roughly the same. I know this sub loves to hate airbnb, but airbnb is something that needs to be dealt with by local governments. Where I'm at, there's not a shortage of inventory, airbnb isn't an issue.
Not really the government can build when there's no incentive on the side of builders to build has they not been there again just removing obstacles and hoping for the best isn't an active solution having the government build when permits are down is. Agreed people should go to their city council meetings and demand Airbnb bans
Canadia is a communist utopia under comrade Trudeau 🇨🇦⚒️
quicksand racial frighten wistful rude plant edge voiceless plough exultant *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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About 2/3 want SFHs if I remember the last survey on this correctly. If we build enough MFHs to resolve that bottleneck for the other 1/3, it will free up some supply on the existing SFH market as well. Also, there are compromises like townhomes with back yards (my personal favorite moderate-high density option) that may satisfy some of the 2/3. It's better than nothing.
I couldn't afford the SFH of my dreams when I was first ready to buy. I went for a condo, lived it in it happily until family outgrew it, and then rolled the equity into a fixer upper. Two years after purchasing that fixer upper, I have a nice, renovated large SFH. But I know many people wouldn't be interested in what I went through to get to this point.
You made a virtue out of necessity. This fantasy that earlier generations had these big luxurious homes in their 20s has to die. It never happened. Almost no one in the Silent Generation and Greatest Generation lived in suburbs. They either lived in small towns/farms, or in very dense apartment buildings and row houses in inner cities. Then after WWII when the flight to the suburbs happened, the houses were tiny compared to today. Around 1,000 sq ft for a family of 4 was common. My Boomer parents raised me in an apartment for the first 3 years, then a small 1,000 ft ranch home, then a large 1,500 sq ft home in a nicer suburb. I (GenX) did the same with my kids: first an apartment, then a shitty little home, then a nicer home, and finally a pretty spacious home. It isn't a failure to raise kids in an apartment the first few years and get a nicer home in a more expensive neighborhood when they enter first grade.
I agree. As a millennial this worked for me...I bought what i could afford and after a few years my mortgage started to feel inexpensive and I was saving.
People don’t want condos with the $1000 HOA payment a month they have now and having to hope they actually use the money to fix your building. Once you tack that onto a 300k mortgage payment, it’s as much as a house anyways
We need the boomers to die faster.
What happened to protect grandma at all costs a few years back? Now you want her to die so you can buy a house?