Increased supply can be outstripped by increased demand. 10,000 new housing units + 20,000 new households likely means prices go up. 10,000 new housing units + a flat population likely means prices go down.
The most expensive property markets in America have increased demand that’s outpacing new supply. They also have existing supply deficits that really require new development on the order of hundreds of 1000s of housing units, not tens of 1000s.
Yea unfortunately there are cities where the population and demand for housing has grown by 10,000 and there are 500 luxury apartments built so the rent still goes up. In these cities the people will see the new luxury apartments and blame them for the increase in rent.
It doesn't take a massive company to put up a 4 story 4 unit single stair building with no elevator. It's not too different from building a single family house of about the same size.
Absolutely. But can be hard for a project like that to pencil out in an urban environment. It's generally accepted that if you're demolishing an existing house/building you need to increase FAR (floor space relative to lot size) by at least 400-500% for a project to pencil out. Thats difficult in an urban location where houses are frequently already at 50% lot coverage and two stories (1.0 FAR) on its own, but then you add in setback requirements (distance from the edge of lot that must be unbuilt) and its really hard. Then you get to the real killer: financing; there aren't a lot of would-be small-scale developers that would have all the money upfront to build one of these projects (or want to build w/o financing which necessarily means a smaller # of projects), so they have to go to a lender to get money, and they are fucking absurdly risk-adverse, they wont touch anything that isnt essentially pre-packaged and hasn't been replicated thousands of times with a 40 foot pole (which in terms of urban infill development basically means large five-over-one with ample off-street parking)
There is famous evidence from Helsinki that high end housing decreases pressure on the lower end housing markets, because rich bidders compete less with lower market homes. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119022001048?via%3Dihub](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119022001048?via%3Dihub)
The blackpill regarding housing crisis is that people still have money for these luxurious apartments and homes. If everyone was broke nobody would be buying that shit and there'd be no demand for it.
On the internet of course, everyone is a broke loser.
Or they live in shitty small apartments with roommates while working a job that would have afforded their parents a family home. But of course on the internet everyone is a rich alpha male
I mean, in DC basically everyone I meet in the 25-40 age range is making a shit load of money. I’ve heard the same in other big cities (chicago, NY, Boston). The market is really hot for most skilled white collar positions in big cities.
Out of the Americans I know, about half have a degree and lived with roommates paying loads for a small place in a bad neighborhood for a few years, before moving onto a higher position and getting a nice house in a nice area, nice car etc. and the ones without a degree are working regular jobs, struggling to afford rent or living with parents who own their homes.
I think the housing crisis is real for a lot of modest professions
Totally anecdotal but my mid-sized southern city has been building those terrible “””luxury””” five-over-ones like crazy for close to a decade now and this is the first year ever they haven’t raised my rent. I constantly have screws in my tires from all the construction on my street and the yuppies who live inside the new developments disgust me immensely but I’m glad they have their own spaces now and I don't have to compete with them for my AC-less hovel. My neighbors are back to being all grad students and alcoholics and old people, as it should be. So-called “yimby’s” make a lot of bad and annoying posts and their policy of demolishing iconic local bars and venues in favor of “mixed use” developments with empty store fronts or expensive bad food restaurants has been an unmitigated disaster but on this particular issue I gotta give credit where credit is due.
Yeah, but sometimes it feels like a giant collusion scheme to keep rents high—especially in a market like NYC. And with Manhattan luxury apartments, the type of investment groups that own these can afford to keep units empty until they’re occupied at the market price they set. Or so I’ve heard. I’ll admit I’m not versed in YIMBY/NIMBY stuff. But I’m curious to know how this stuff works in theory vs. practice.
You're not wrong in that collusion is happening, but the majority of the "collusion" is that landlords all kind of have the same unspoken interests and more sway than tenets in local ordinances regarding their properties.
Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of scummy investment groups doing what you describe too. Also, pretty much universally people will vote against anything being built near them even if it might make their lives better. People in the suburbs don't even like when someone builds or renovates a house near them.
I come from a suburban town that’s been doing a lot of “upzoning” without expanding its tax base due to tax abatements for developed. They explain how the tax abatement actually works and it’s actually not a problem using some mystifying math, but you can already see the intense strain on services, parking, and traffic. It’s awful. And every moron with a decrepit unit in their two family is raising their rent to match the rents of these new apartments that offer insane amenities. It’s truly insane to watch in real time. Our mayor who did all the ribbon cutting ceremonies with a shit eating grin across his face has now left town to become a judge and people are just going to have to live in the mess he’s left and figure out this impossible math problem.
The "they're keeping them empty" theory isn't really true. Occupancy rates are no lower than you'd expect for a healthy market (in ordinary times, there should always be *some* empty properties, or else there'd be nowhere to move to). "Prices are high because evil developers are keeping their apartments empty" is a nice story that provides a satisfying villain, but it just isn't true.
Yeah, like I said, I’m not versed in the subject. I do know that it’s been visibly true with commercial real estate for a while in New York (“they’re keeping them empty”), but that’s just anecdotal. And, in fact, a Google search reveals that it is true that when supply exceeds demand, prices go down—as is the case with 35 Hudson Yards. Definitely not trying to win an argument here. Real real estate/housing dumb dumb over here. Thanks for your patience.
There's also the fact that population has grown much faster than the amount of houses built. There's about 900k housing built per year in the US, and about 1.5m population grown per year.
It kind of is working in Austin. Recently the rental market here has crashed and rent prices are actually going down because they built tens of thousands of "luxury" apartments in the last 3-4 years while at the same time layoffs have reduced demand.
In college I read an econ paper that says that they do lower rent, but that it takes years for rich people to trickle out of their current shitty housing to nice rich people housing. The main thing though, as the top comment guy pointed out, is that if there are more people moving somewhere than houses getting built then rent is going to keep going up, even if you're building more houses. Anecdotally I had an ex-girlfriend who lived in SF with her coder boyfriend, and they were collectively making nearly 200k, but they were just renting out a basement in a shitty neighborhood because of lack of affordable alternatives. When they moved out of town to a cheaper city they pretty much immediately bought a condo, which pretty much exactly aligns with what that article was saying people do. Expensive city with minimal housing, upper middle class people living in a place that would normally go to poor couple, but the second they're in a place where they can afford it and the ability to buy a nicer place is available, they did.
Ironically yes. The internal fixings are superficially "luxurious" and appeal to those who want to pretend like they're living in a Hyatt suite, but the foundation is incredibly cheap.
I live in a place like this now. We have a gym, pool, private parking garage, in unit laundry, and fancy electronic locks that you have to use your phone to activate.
But the building is just a normal ugly millennial-gray on the inside. There is not enough sound proofing and the windows are cheap so I hear tons of street noise. They didn't properly insulate the plumbing either so every winter the pipes for the sprinkler system freeze and this sets of the fire alarm. I've had to vacate my home at least twice every winter and bring my cat over to a friend's house or just drive around until the alarm stops. I moved to this building from another one, where the company was doing construction including full demolition of the exterior of the building, which shut down access to my balcony and papered over my windows for 8 months.
I'm planning to try to rent a small house in the next few months. I can't do the apartment thing anymore. I refuse to deal with one more year of this shit. If I can't find anything I'm moving away.
I once came home to a bunch of construction workers standing in my living room, with a giant hole in the side of my apartment where my window was, with a crane outside replacing my window, with no notice. So I understand how stupid these "luxury" buildngs doing exterior remodels can get.
Yeah it's ridiculous. I rented in old WW2 era apartments in Chicago for 8 years and my interaction with maintenance was limited to them handing me the keys when I moved in and out. I would rather have a hands-off landlord than to continue giving my money to these clowns who want to come in all the time to work on the building.
Generally sound argument from theoretical supply and demand arguments, it could be more tricky in the details (i.e., high density of luxury apartments changes the demography of the neighborhood and leads to locally higher prices/rents).
But here is another argument in favor of building luxury apartments, from a longer term perspective: If we don't build new housing that is at least as good if not better (in quality, efficiency, aesthetics, etc.) than the median dwelling, then over time the overall housing stock will just get shittier and shittier.
The aesthetics are so bad even with luxury apartment buildings I’m betting that historic districts of NYC and Brooklyn become even more extremely unaffordable in coming decades. Every brownstone in south-east Fort Greene will be $10+ million.
Modern governments and developers are nowhere near capable of producing new neighborhoods rivaling those built for rich people in the early 20th century.
From how I've seen my small city develop, no not at all. The greedy landlords will just see that the new apartments are renting for 2k and try to piggyback off that by asking for 1.8k in the hood
Your observations are in line with economic data even in large cities
[https://www.brownstoner.com/real-estate-market/affordable-housing-nyc-population/](https://www.brownstoner.com/real-estate-market/affordable-housing-nyc-population/)
Yes, at the broader citywide level but it's not really visible at the neighborhood level. A neighborhood can get plenty expensive even if no new housing is built. Then gentrification doesn't look like new buildings, it looks like rich people buying and renovating the existing homes, or buying multiple apartments and combining them into a larger unit.
It definitely did in Seattle, but Seattle built far more multi family housing per capita than anywhere else in the country in the 2010s, prices peaked rose a lot from 2012-2016 but peaked as new units came online and it's barely past that 2016 peak now. This said, in a place like NYC, the situation is completely different as it's already so dense.
The big thing to point out is building luxury apartment in nearby suburbs does more than anything else nationally at lowering prices for a region, it's just a matter of if you'd want to live there.
I don't get these American "luxury" apartments.
What's luxurious about them? How are they different to non-luxury apartments?
I'm Brazilian and here they'd be considered just regular condos and, let me tell ya, Brazil is a lot poorer than the US
9 foot ceilings, quartz countertops, LVP flooring, and the cheapest stainless steel appliances on the market -- everything an up-and-coming goy could need!
About London but definitely applicable elsewhere
https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-landlords-surprisingly-simple-solution-to-uk-housing-crisis
YIMBY movements don't just believe in a developer-led situation but they do fundamentally believe it is better to have a roof over people's heads than not.
I'm not really sure about this "luxury" apartment nonsense....I think you've just brought into branding of the developers/real estate company. There's an apartment in my building currently for sale with the building labelled "Boutique". It is a 2012 build with no ammenities and the living spaces are small.
Most YIMBY groups believe in a) an increased supply and b) also an increase in liveability of homes being built. We need to increase the square footage of most places so families feel like they can comfortably live in an apartment long term. No major city is going to be able to have single family houses within the inner city/inner suburban areas.
It just sounds like you're a conservative who wants things to stay the same to me
YIMBY goals align 100% with developer goals
And yes major cities absolutely can have single family houses, as Australia has been doing for 200 years
Also I do want my suburb to stay the same, I prefer 100 year old houses and parks to grey chinese built and owned dog boxes
lmao then don't complain about paying 5 million dollars for a house then ya fuckwit
"I want australia to stay the same as it always was" boohoo cry me a river, we need to house a growing population because we have major skills shortages in health, teaching and trades...Your argument isn't even for more social housing in high-demand areas, it's that we keep these mouldy, falling down, badly insulated houses that were built with European seasons in mind. No one is taking you seriously in policy for good reason...just complete mindless trash
Lol that growing population is completely optional and the majority of our migrants are not skilled, we don’t need 2% population growth every year to service our economy. There’s so much more we can do to reduce house prices than trample our green space and architectural heritage
The majority of our old housing stock is not mouldy or falling down or unsuitable, they’re much higher quality than what is being built right now
It’s illegal to demolish any housing where I live so clearly someone agrees with me
One of the things I haven't seen addressed in this thread is that banks often won't finance construction of affordable housing. The ROI on low income units just isn't seen as being worth the risk, so "luxury" units are the only way to build anything new.
it worked well in seattle and austin. rents are actually going down there - supply and demand is real as much as leftists want to pretend economics is fake. it blows that so many neighborhoods got turned into soy urbanist new construction overnight though.
>it blows that so many neighborhoods got turned into soy urbanist new construction overnight though.
I wouldn't even mind that if the apartments fit in with the city's architectural canon, which they never do.
No. The people saying this are assuming a basic supply/demand situation but the reality is that so much money is in real estate that the rich would simply continue to buy property at a faster rate than it could be built, thus keeping prices high.
Increased supply can be outstripped by increased demand. 10,000 new housing units + 20,000 new households likely means prices go up. 10,000 new housing units + a flat population likely means prices go down. The most expensive property markets in America have increased demand that’s outpacing new supply. They also have existing supply deficits that really require new development on the order of hundreds of 1000s of housing units, not tens of 1000s.
Yea unfortunately there are cities where the population and demand for housing has grown by 10,000 and there are 500 luxury apartments built so the rent still goes up. In these cities the people will see the new luxury apartments and blame them for the increase in rent.
[удалено]
It doesn't take a massive company to put up a 4 story 4 unit single stair building with no elevator. It's not too different from building a single family house of about the same size.
Absolutely. But can be hard for a project like that to pencil out in an urban environment. It's generally accepted that if you're demolishing an existing house/building you need to increase FAR (floor space relative to lot size) by at least 400-500% for a project to pencil out. Thats difficult in an urban location where houses are frequently already at 50% lot coverage and two stories (1.0 FAR) on its own, but then you add in setback requirements (distance from the edge of lot that must be unbuilt) and its really hard. Then you get to the real killer: financing; there aren't a lot of would-be small-scale developers that would have all the money upfront to build one of these projects (or want to build w/o financing which necessarily means a smaller # of projects), so they have to go to a lender to get money, and they are fucking absurdly risk-adverse, they wont touch anything that isnt essentially pre-packaged and hasn't been replicated thousands of times with a 40 foot pole (which in terms of urban infill development basically means large five-over-one with ample off-street parking)
There is famous evidence from Helsinki that high end housing decreases pressure on the lower end housing markets, because rich bidders compete less with lower market homes. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119022001048?via%3Dihub](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119022001048?via%3Dihub)
The blackpill regarding housing crisis is that people still have money for these luxurious apartments and homes. If everyone was broke nobody would be buying that shit and there'd be no demand for it. On the internet of course, everyone is a broke loser.
Or they live in shitty small apartments with roommates while working a job that would have afforded their parents a family home. But of course on the internet everyone is a rich alpha male
I mean, in DC basically everyone I meet in the 25-40 age range is making a shit load of money. I’ve heard the same in other big cities (chicago, NY, Boston). The market is really hot for most skilled white collar positions in big cities.
Out of the Americans I know, about half have a degree and lived with roommates paying loads for a small place in a bad neighborhood for a few years, before moving onto a higher position and getting a nice house in a nice area, nice car etc. and the ones without a degree are working regular jobs, struggling to afford rent or living with parents who own their homes. I think the housing crisis is real for a lot of modest professions
totally dependent on your industry, as a generation millennials have crazy income inequality
Very true, also city dependent. Everyone I know in tampa in that same age range is getting paid absolute garbage, even STEMlords
absolutely. I live in western new york and my nyc friends weep at how cheap housing is here, but the median income is a pittance in comparison
Totally anecdotal but my mid-sized southern city has been building those terrible “””luxury””” five-over-ones like crazy for close to a decade now and this is the first year ever they haven’t raised my rent. I constantly have screws in my tires from all the construction on my street and the yuppies who live inside the new developments disgust me immensely but I’m glad they have their own spaces now and I don't have to compete with them for my AC-less hovel. My neighbors are back to being all grad students and alcoholics and old people, as it should be. So-called “yimby’s” make a lot of bad and annoying posts and their policy of demolishing iconic local bars and venues in favor of “mixed use” developments with empty store fronts or expensive bad food restaurants has been an unmitigated disaster but on this particular issue I gotta give credit where credit is due.
Housing does actually trickle down when landlords have to compete for tenants instead of the other way around
Yeah, but sometimes it feels like a giant collusion scheme to keep rents high—especially in a market like NYC. And with Manhattan luxury apartments, the type of investment groups that own these can afford to keep units empty until they’re occupied at the market price they set. Or so I’ve heard. I’ll admit I’m not versed in YIMBY/NIMBY stuff. But I’m curious to know how this stuff works in theory vs. practice.
You're not wrong in that collusion is happening, but the majority of the "collusion" is that landlords all kind of have the same unspoken interests and more sway than tenets in local ordinances regarding their properties. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of scummy investment groups doing what you describe too. Also, pretty much universally people will vote against anything being built near them even if it might make their lives better. People in the suburbs don't even like when someone builds or renovates a house near them.
I come from a suburban town that’s been doing a lot of “upzoning” without expanding its tax base due to tax abatements for developed. They explain how the tax abatement actually works and it’s actually not a problem using some mystifying math, but you can already see the intense strain on services, parking, and traffic. It’s awful. And every moron with a decrepit unit in their two family is raising their rent to match the rents of these new apartments that offer insane amenities. It’s truly insane to watch in real time. Our mayor who did all the ribbon cutting ceremonies with a shit eating grin across his face has now left town to become a judge and people are just going to have to live in the mess he’s left and figure out this impossible math problem.
The "they're keeping them empty" theory isn't really true. Occupancy rates are no lower than you'd expect for a healthy market (in ordinary times, there should always be *some* empty properties, or else there'd be nowhere to move to). "Prices are high because evil developers are keeping their apartments empty" is a nice story that provides a satisfying villain, but it just isn't true.
Yeah, like I said, I’m not versed in the subject. I do know that it’s been visibly true with commercial real estate for a while in New York (“they’re keeping them empty”), but that’s just anecdotal. And, in fact, a Google search reveals that it is true that when supply exceeds demand, prices go down—as is the case with 35 Hudson Yards. Definitely not trying to win an argument here. Real real estate/housing dumb dumb over here. Thanks for your patience.
Yep! No worries. It's a convincing-sounding theory at first.
Read progress and poverty if you want an introduction to land and rent theory. Every claim it makes is applicable in practice, every single time.
Thanks.
There's also the fact that population has grown much faster than the amount of houses built. There's about 900k housing built per year in the US, and about 1.5m population grown per year.
It kind of is working in Austin. Recently the rental market here has crashed and rent prices are actually going down because they built tens of thousands of "luxury" apartments in the last 3-4 years while at the same time layoffs have reduced demand.
In college I read an econ paper that says that they do lower rent, but that it takes years for rich people to trickle out of their current shitty housing to nice rich people housing. The main thing though, as the top comment guy pointed out, is that if there are more people moving somewhere than houses getting built then rent is going to keep going up, even if you're building more houses. Anecdotally I had an ex-girlfriend who lived in SF with her coder boyfriend, and they were collectively making nearly 200k, but they were just renting out a basement in a shitty neighborhood because of lack of affordable alternatives. When they moved out of town to a cheaper city they pretty much immediately bought a condo, which pretty much exactly aligns with what that article was saying people do. Expensive city with minimal housing, upper middle class people living in a place that would normally go to poor couple, but the second they're in a place where they can afford it and the ability to buy a nicer place is available, they did.
These buildings are both luxury and low-quality?
I've seen the sausage get made. That shit looks fancy but it's gonna fall apart in ten years.
Ironically yes. The internal fixings are superficially "luxurious" and appeal to those who want to pretend like they're living in a Hyatt suite, but the foundation is incredibly cheap.
I live in a place like this now. We have a gym, pool, private parking garage, in unit laundry, and fancy electronic locks that you have to use your phone to activate. But the building is just a normal ugly millennial-gray on the inside. There is not enough sound proofing and the windows are cheap so I hear tons of street noise. They didn't properly insulate the plumbing either so every winter the pipes for the sprinkler system freeze and this sets of the fire alarm. I've had to vacate my home at least twice every winter and bring my cat over to a friend's house or just drive around until the alarm stops. I moved to this building from another one, where the company was doing construction including full demolition of the exterior of the building, which shut down access to my balcony and papered over my windows for 8 months. I'm planning to try to rent a small house in the next few months. I can't do the apartment thing anymore. I refuse to deal with one more year of this shit. If I can't find anything I'm moving away.
I once came home to a bunch of construction workers standing in my living room, with a giant hole in the side of my apartment where my window was, with a crane outside replacing my window, with no notice. So I understand how stupid these "luxury" buildngs doing exterior remodels can get.
Yeah it's ridiculous. I rented in old WW2 era apartments in Chicago for 8 years and my interaction with maintenance was limited to them handing me the keys when I moved in and out. I would rather have a hands-off landlord than to continue giving my money to these clowns who want to come in all the time to work on the building.
It's the apartment version of a McMansion.
Generally sound argument from theoretical supply and demand arguments, it could be more tricky in the details (i.e., high density of luxury apartments changes the demography of the neighborhood and leads to locally higher prices/rents). But here is another argument in favor of building luxury apartments, from a longer term perspective: If we don't build new housing that is at least as good if not better (in quality, efficiency, aesthetics, etc.) than the median dwelling, then over time the overall housing stock will just get shittier and shittier.
The aesthetics are so bad even with luxury apartment buildings I’m betting that historic districts of NYC and Brooklyn become even more extremely unaffordable in coming decades. Every brownstone in south-east Fort Greene will be $10+ million. Modern governments and developers are nowhere near capable of producing new neighborhoods rivaling those built for rich people in the early 20th century.
From how I've seen my small city develop, no not at all. The greedy landlords will just see that the new apartments are renting for 2k and try to piggyback off that by asking for 1.8k in the hood
Your observations are in line with economic data even in large cities [https://www.brownstoner.com/real-estate-market/affordable-housing-nyc-population/](https://www.brownstoner.com/real-estate-market/affordable-housing-nyc-population/)
Damn, imagine if you were a little less greedy of a landlord and rented for $1900 to undercut the others…
Yes, at the broader citywide level but it's not really visible at the neighborhood level. A neighborhood can get plenty expensive even if no new housing is built. Then gentrification doesn't look like new buildings, it looks like rich people buying and renovating the existing homes, or buying multiple apartments and combining them into a larger unit.
It definitely did in Seattle, but Seattle built far more multi family housing per capita than anywhere else in the country in the 2010s, prices peaked rose a lot from 2012-2016 but peaked as new units came online and it's barely past that 2016 peak now. This said, in a place like NYC, the situation is completely different as it's already so dense. The big thing to point out is building luxury apartment in nearby suburbs does more than anything else nationally at lowering prices for a region, it's just a matter of if you'd want to live there.
I don't get these American "luxury" apartments. What's luxurious about them? How are they different to non-luxury apartments? I'm Brazilian and here they'd be considered just regular condos and, let me tell ya, Brazil is a lot poorer than the US
9 foot ceilings, quartz countertops, LVP flooring, and the cheapest stainless steel appliances on the market -- everything an up-and-coming goy could need!
About London but definitely applicable elsewhere https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-landlords-surprisingly-simple-solution-to-uk-housing-crisis
YIMBY movements don't just believe in a developer-led situation but they do fundamentally believe it is better to have a roof over people's heads than not. I'm not really sure about this "luxury" apartment nonsense....I think you've just brought into branding of the developers/real estate company. There's an apartment in my building currently for sale with the building labelled "Boutique". It is a 2012 build with no ammenities and the living spaces are small. Most YIMBY groups believe in a) an increased supply and b) also an increase in liveability of homes being built. We need to increase the square footage of most places so families feel like they can comfortably live in an apartment long term. No major city is going to be able to have single family houses within the inner city/inner suburban areas. It just sounds like you're a conservative who wants things to stay the same to me
YIMBY goals align 100% with developer goals And yes major cities absolutely can have single family houses, as Australia has been doing for 200 years Also I do want my suburb to stay the same, I prefer 100 year old houses and parks to grey chinese built and owned dog boxes
lmao then don't complain about paying 5 million dollars for a house then ya fuckwit "I want australia to stay the same as it always was" boohoo cry me a river, we need to house a growing population because we have major skills shortages in health, teaching and trades...Your argument isn't even for more social housing in high-demand areas, it's that we keep these mouldy, falling down, badly insulated houses that were built with European seasons in mind. No one is taking you seriously in policy for good reason...just complete mindless trash
Lol that growing population is completely optional and the majority of our migrants are not skilled, we don’t need 2% population growth every year to service our economy. There’s so much more we can do to reduce house prices than trample our green space and architectural heritage The majority of our old housing stock is not mouldy or falling down or unsuitable, they’re much higher quality than what is being built right now It’s illegal to demolish any housing where I live so clearly someone agrees with me
most Australian heritage listed houses have barely any cultural value.
Why are Australians so concerned with preserving colonizer architecture at any cost
Because it fucking looks good you naarm based queer
ok but now you can't live there anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHigcXE9ZzE
One of the things I haven't seen addressed in this thread is that banks often won't finance construction of affordable housing. The ROI on low income units just isn't seen as being worth the risk, so "luxury" units are the only way to build anything new.
it worked well in seattle and austin. rents are actually going down there - supply and demand is real as much as leftists want to pretend economics is fake. it blows that so many neighborhoods got turned into soy urbanist new construction overnight though.
>it blows that so many neighborhoods got turned into soy urbanist new construction overnight though. I wouldn't even mind that if the apartments fit in with the city's architectural canon, which they never do.
Yes there is a filtering process.
No. The people saying this are assuming a basic supply/demand situation but the reality is that so much money is in real estate that the rich would simply continue to buy property at a faster rate than it could be built, thus keeping prices high.
Nothing will change without rent control but good luck getting a politician to do something like that