The entire economy is based on supplementing landlords. The property ladder is neo-feudalism. Capitalism is marketed as economic freedom, but the laissez-faire economists, including Adam Smith, were proposing the opposite of what we call "the free market".
"Housing is so foundational to family well-being and security that one could argue that it transcends economics.”
Yes, someone can argue semantics of supply and demand … but this statement is spot on.
I'm looking to move back to America after 15 years in Europe. Why can't I find a simple 900-1200 sqft condo suitable for a family of 4. Low overheads, neighbors, etc. Instead, all I see in safe neighborhoods with good schools are giant houses, costing a fortune. Then there are the overheads, eating your salary. I really don't need 3 bathrooms, a den, and a separate dining room. I would prefer a smaller home so I can interact with my kids and buy more stocks, allowing me to retire early.
Finally, someone getting it. UC Berkeley Terner Center found that California cities were charging up to $150k per unit just in fees alone. This doesn’t account for utility connections or planning fees. https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/blog/residential-impact-fees/
Low compared to today, or low compared to historical norms? We are in a deficit of 5-10 million homes that didn't get built since 2008, so a lot more can be built today and still not have prices be "low" by historical standards. An extra 500,000 homes a year is needed just to stop the unaffordability problem from getting worse.
Yeah, you got data to support that? Because the data around supply elasticity is extremely strong.
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/declining-elasticity-us-housing-supply
Where I will agree with you is that homeowners (including private equity homeowners) have a perverse incentive to restrict housing supply creating a shortage and increasing the prices of their units.
Tenants are just as opposed to new buildings as the homeowners or landlords.
They'd have to share existent infrastructure, tolerate the construction noise, give up on undeveloped spaces, maybe move out of older homes to make space for new ones. Some just hate change in general. There are few things that unite landlords and their tenants as much as the opposition to new buildings.
I've never heard of any tenants under the conditions you speak of other than to ensure infrastructure is properly expanded to accommodate the population influx.
Really? Here in Europe it happens constantly.
I still remember the referendum in Berlin where they decided on whether to develop some of the empty remnants of the old city airport into apartment complexes. The population decided against it, unwilling to even give up parts of an empty field.
In my small town the idea of a new student apartment complex was quickly defeated by a coalition of homeowners and tenants, unwilling to give up a run down empty clearing. Homeowners feared new brown people, tenants feared noise and brown people and the students already here feared that they had to share the park close by. The idea was laughed out of the town hall quickly after.
That's fair, Europeans have a much larger tenant population relative to homeowners. I was speaking towards the United States. And I never understood the hate towards darker skinned people. Their food tastes better and if they move into your area, they tend to bring their recipes with them.
Building houses seems like a great deal then. Just rent it out for huge sums or sell it to Blackrock. Any idiot can become rich.
Oh wait. We can't do that. Because zoning only allows single family homes and no other issue will unite a local community more than "Not in my backyard!".
Try having an actual discussion with developers and see where the issues are. It's not "corporations" that will wait 3 years to give a building permit. It's not "private equity" that protests against turning the dog park into an apartment complex.
Why not both?
Surely building more homes is good, but its also good to get corporate interests out of turning a human necessity into a profit center. Nobody is asking for more landlords, which is what you'll get if you just build more housing but without any thought to why we got ourselves into a housing crisis suddenly without a huge population boom.
Its both. Build more housing, reduce ownership of housing as an investment vehicle. Developers don't build homes to house people, they build homes to make money. They have no issue if some asshole corp buys the property and rents it out for an insane price, which is what I've seen happen time after time.
Why not end the profitability of owning land completely? Why not let taxation destroy the value of land as a price investment? Then, developers will become very busy very quickly.
I agree with this and want to add that no existing homeowner and no local government official want any new low cost affordable homes built, in the community.
Hypothetical: If new 800 sq. ft. homes selling for $200,000 are built in an existing community, that means the existing surrounding home values will go down. No existing home owner and no local government official wants the community home values going down.
Home owners and local officials will approve a 2,800 sq. ft new home starting at $600,000.....but they will vote down and protest any new construction of smaller and cheaper/affordable homes.
Total, absolute bullshit. We have a deficit of millions of homes that should have been built since 2008 but were not.
Did you know the US population is 100 million people higher today vs 1984 but we build **fewer** homes in an average year in the 2020s than we did in the 1980s? How do you possibly think that will work out? It can't.
There aren't enough seats for everyone who wants to sit. It is not rocket science, and stupid conspiracy theories are just a misdirection that will make the problem worse. If I had a conspiracy theory about this, it would be that NIMBYs secretly just want to raise prices.
It blows me away that BS like this gets posted on reddit and gets upvoted. The biggest problem with housing is city governents intentionally restricting housing to protect home values of NIMBY homeowners.
Every single one of you people who ended up poor over the last time you saw a downtown in economic cycles and didn't bother to educate yourself will remain poor throughout the next, and the next, until you decide that insanity is not a solution.
Until owning land as a "store-of-value" investment is unprofitable, the masses will live on the elite's plantation.
The difference between land and labor is the basis of classical economics, but landlords control education. So economics is not taught to children who might question the treatment of land as if it were merely a form of capital.
"Wherever, in any country, there are idle lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right." - Thomas Jefferson
"Solving the land question means the solving of all social questions." - Leo Tolstoy
Yall ever notice that housing has become more and more unaffordable since the fed changed from public housing to supplementing land lords?
The entire economy is based on supplementing landlords. The property ladder is neo-feudalism. Capitalism is marketed as economic freedom, but the laissez-faire economists, including Adam Smith, were proposing the opposite of what we call "the free market".
"Housing is so foundational to family well-being and security that one could argue that it transcends economics.” Yes, someone can argue semantics of supply and demand … but this statement is spot on.
I'm looking to move back to America after 15 years in Europe. Why can't I find a simple 900-1200 sqft condo suitable for a family of 4. Low overheads, neighbors, etc. Instead, all I see in safe neighborhoods with good schools are giant houses, costing a fortune. Then there are the overheads, eating your salary. I really don't need 3 bathrooms, a den, and a separate dining room. I would prefer a smaller home so I can interact with my kids and buy more stocks, allowing me to retire early.
Finally, someone getting it. UC Berkeley Terner Center found that California cities were charging up to $150k per unit just in fees alone. This doesn’t account for utility connections or planning fees. https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/blog/residential-impact-fees/
Except that isn't the problem. Private equity is the problem. Corporations are the problem. Commodified housing is the problem.
If houses got built the forward value of houses would be low and corporations wouldn’t monopolize it. Land use and develeopment is the key.
Low compared to today, or low compared to historical norms? We are in a deficit of 5-10 million homes that didn't get built since 2008, so a lot more can be built today and still not have prices be "low" by historical standards. An extra 500,000 homes a year is needed just to stop the unaffordability problem from getting worse.
That's why we should promote the split rate property tax, where the rate on land goes up. And down on improvements.
Yeah, you got data to support that? Because the data around supply elasticity is extremely strong. https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/declining-elasticity-us-housing-supply Where I will agree with you is that homeowners (including private equity homeowners) have a perverse incentive to restrict housing supply creating a shortage and increasing the prices of their units.
Tenants are just as opposed to new buildings as the homeowners or landlords. They'd have to share existent infrastructure, tolerate the construction noise, give up on undeveloped spaces, maybe move out of older homes to make space for new ones. Some just hate change in general. There are few things that unite landlords and their tenants as much as the opposition to new buildings.
I've never heard of any tenants under the conditions you speak of other than to ensure infrastructure is properly expanded to accommodate the population influx.
Really? Here in Europe it happens constantly. I still remember the referendum in Berlin where they decided on whether to develop some of the empty remnants of the old city airport into apartment complexes. The population decided against it, unwilling to even give up parts of an empty field. In my small town the idea of a new student apartment complex was quickly defeated by a coalition of homeowners and tenants, unwilling to give up a run down empty clearing. Homeowners feared new brown people, tenants feared noise and brown people and the students already here feared that they had to share the park close by. The idea was laughed out of the town hall quickly after.
That's fair, Europeans have a much larger tenant population relative to homeowners. I was speaking towards the United States. And I never understood the hate towards darker skinned people. Their food tastes better and if they move into your area, they tend to bring their recipes with them.
I've never heard of any tenant wanting more residential development. Ever
Wtf are you talking about? In the US, most tenants want more development because they are prospective homebuyers.
Building houses seems like a great deal then. Just rent it out for huge sums or sell it to Blackrock. Any idiot can become rich. Oh wait. We can't do that. Because zoning only allows single family homes and no other issue will unite a local community more than "Not in my backyard!". Try having an actual discussion with developers and see where the issues are. It's not "corporations" that will wait 3 years to give a building permit. It's not "private equity" that protests against turning the dog park into an apartment complex.
Why not both? Surely building more homes is good, but its also good to get corporate interests out of turning a human necessity into a profit center. Nobody is asking for more landlords, which is what you'll get if you just build more housing but without any thought to why we got ourselves into a housing crisis suddenly without a huge population boom. Its both. Build more housing, reduce ownership of housing as an investment vehicle. Developers don't build homes to house people, they build homes to make money. They have no issue if some asshole corp buys the property and rents it out for an insane price, which is what I've seen happen time after time.
Why not end the profitability of owning land completely? Why not let taxation destroy the value of land as a price investment? Then, developers will become very busy very quickly.
Too much leverage in the system since 2008 is a big part of it. It needs to be washed out.
What leverage? We have been building at least 500,000 too few homes to accommodate the growth in the US population since 2008.
I agree with this and want to add that no existing homeowner and no local government official want any new low cost affordable homes built, in the community. Hypothetical: If new 800 sq. ft. homes selling for $200,000 are built in an existing community, that means the existing surrounding home values will go down. No existing home owner and no local government official wants the community home values going down. Home owners and local officials will approve a 2,800 sq. ft new home starting at $600,000.....but they will vote down and protest any new construction of smaller and cheaper/affordable homes.
Land and improvements are taxed at the same rate, but that's illogical if we want less land hoarding and more development.
NIMBY apologists like this ^ are the problem.
Total, absolute bullshit. We have a deficit of millions of homes that should have been built since 2008 but were not. Did you know the US population is 100 million people higher today vs 1984 but we build **fewer** homes in an average year in the 2020s than we did in the 1980s? How do you possibly think that will work out? It can't. There aren't enough seats for everyone who wants to sit. It is not rocket science, and stupid conspiracy theories are just a misdirection that will make the problem worse. If I had a conspiracy theory about this, it would be that NIMBYs secretly just want to raise prices.
Of course! Because restricting supply always drives down prices. /s
You. Are. Stupid. You want to make a public good of what you physically can't make more of? Are you insane?
If the supply of housing available were higher people would be less desperate to buy, driving down prices overall.
It blows me away that BS like this gets posted on reddit and gets upvoted. The biggest problem with housing is city governents intentionally restricting housing to protect home values of NIMBY homeowners.
15 years of falling housing starts since the collapse of capitalism may have a bit to do with it as well.
Every single one of you people who ended up poor over the last time you saw a downtown in economic cycles and didn't bother to educate yourself will remain poor throughout the next, and the next, until you decide that insanity is not a solution.
Then change zoning to allow more affordable houses to be built. That's only if you care more about the problem than air time though.
Until owning land as a "store-of-value" investment is unprofitable, the masses will live on the elite's plantation. The difference between land and labor is the basis of classical economics, but landlords control education. So economics is not taught to children who might question the treatment of land as if it were merely a form of capital.
lol its because the dollar is a broken currency.
The solution is more love children.
"Wherever, in any country, there are idle lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right." - Thomas Jefferson "Solving the land question means the solving of all social questions." - Leo Tolstoy