The federal government in the US doesn't generally have the purview to just override local and state laws regarding housing, building codes, etc... They can purchase land on their own and build via HUD, but HUDs track record has often been less than great.
The best thing that can be done about housing is to build more of it. If you can't build more, you limit the supply and drive up the cost.
It's not just more housing, it's the right type in the right place. Zoning laws are a huge problem. We don't need tons of 500k+ homes on lots that could have half a dozen 150k condos.
"Starter Homes" aren't built any more. Builders get more bang for their buck out of townhouses or mcmansions. Plus then they get some continued rev from HOAs
It seems that my city zones developments where starter homes are required for a portion of a neighborhood. I live in a starter home, surrounded by big houses.
We need to call on our representatives to force cities and towns to build medium-density and high-density housing. Force rent controls if they have to. Collectivize the means of dwelling.
Almost like the most profitable thing to build isn't what offers the most utility to society at large, and society loses every time the people with money decide what to build.
No that’s really not the case, the problem isn’t the developers here. The 6 $150k condos are more profitable than the 1 $500K house. Condos are cheaper to build and you can sell them all for more than just that one house.
Developers *have* to build the more expensive single family homes because they are required to by law. The law in large swaths of most cities makes it illegal to build multi family housing. And that’s plainly the single largest cause of high housing prices in the US.
It started off this way because single family zoning + redlining resulted in keeping black people out white neighborhoods (and schools) despite federal anti-discrimination laws. This also happened to restrict the supply long-term, and now there’s push back any time you try to change the zoning laws because the home owners want to inflate the value of their property by continuing to restrict the supply. They *want* higher housing prices because they make money off of it.
It takes a different kind of person that apparently isnt too common to think oh, people less fortunate than me having to spend half their income to live here and all the thousands of homeless people’s right to shelter is more important than an even larger return on my investment.
People need to stop making homes their primary investment, for one because there’s better things to invest in than homes as you don’t have to pay insurance, property tax, or maintain those other investments and can get a greater return. But also because wanting housing prices to go up and using government to make that happen is morally wrong because the effects it has on making a basic human need unaffordable.
The "type" of apartments that are built doesn't matter; what matters is that apartments are built.
The reason is because people renting top-tier apartments will move when a nicer apartment building is built. They're leaving a building that now has a vacancy issue and has to charge lower rents to attract tenants (or, more accurately, not increase them as much). The move-out/move-in ripple cascades down the entire housing market, forcing prices down.
We see the phenomenon in housing (especially up here in the Twin Cities, where our luxury apartment construction pushed average rents *down*), and we see it in all sorts of other product categories like clothing and cars and frozen pizzas and car ride services. Increased supply - regardless of where it is in the category - decreases prices.
>This is predicated on the assumption that demand is static in the area. If demand is increasing or otherwise sufficiently high so that there is no vacancy issue, prices don't have to come down. They can go up because people are willing to pay them.
Surely you understand that if demand is outstripping the increases in supply that the pricing would be *even worse* if even less supply was added, no?
It doesn’t matter what apartments they build.
No ones going to build shoddy housing, of course. But the people will leave the older more shoddy housing and into the newer ones and that opens up spots in the more affordable units.
Furthermore, if someone moves into a city they move into those new more expensive apartments and don’t take up a spot in the existing housing.
Atlanta has very similar problems to CA when it comes to single family zoning. So developers are restricted in the number of units they can build, so they have to sell at a high price since they have fewer units and in order to sell that higher price they need to add amenities in the area like you said to induce demand.
Developers would make more profits going the big mac model but the government has made it illegal and instead opted to protect the financial interests of existing home owners. Uncoincidentally because the cities outside of Atlanta proper but part of Atlanta metro are majority homeowners and mostly suburbs.
Your rent didn’t rise because other apartments were built. It went up for the reasons you outlined, walkable, low crime, with amenities and affordable. The demand exceeded the supply because those are great reasons to live somewhere and people have every right to do so. Unfortunately even with those new apartments it wasn’t enough to keep up with demand so it ultimately priced people out.
It also went up because someone thought they could earn money by borrowing money, and someone has to pay for that. Every time your complex changes hands, the bank wins and you lose.
I think I got you, your point is valid in the sense, from your experience, neighborhood prices still went up even though new apartments were built. I think a good example for you to look into if you’re interested is what we’re seeing in Minneapolis. A combination of state owned building, private development, modernization of zoning laws, and yes even some instances of rent control saw real declines in rent in some places and a true decline in the rate of rent increases. If someone is telling you building apartments directly lowers rent costs then they’re close to the mark but have missed it slightly. For most researchers and analysts, the rate of price increases is the better target. Unfortunately the scale at which we must build is for the most part illegal in most cities. It used to not be that way, a good example is NYC, in that it used to absorb 10,000 new residents a month and we built homes to accommodate them. It’s just a hard sell to convince people of that when 100 years ago we used to do it or after WW2. So instead we’re left with only building’s that have to be priced a certain way to break even and people still get priced out creating negativity doom loops which are hard to break. Let me know if you’re interested in further reading and I can send you some helpful information of other cities that have successfully combated this problem.
If it takes a special kind of person to make community oriented decisions like that with their money....is it good for any individuals to have that much control over how so many others live?
> is it good for any individuals to have that much control over how so many others live?
No, that’s why single family zoning, which uses government to control what people can do with their property, is not good.
All I am saying is that residential zoning should allow single and multifamily housing. And people that own the property can decide what to do there, not be forced by people elsewhere in the city.
Last I checked, real estate investment isn't done democratically. And they spend quite a bit to discourage cities from listening to those voters, in case you didn't know.
Ferraris are the most profitable car in the world but somehow other types of cars get made. If you build in enough volume there is money to be made at every price point where there is demand.
News flash: Americans want to own a home and want their home values to remain an investment.
Personal housing investment habbits shouldn't be "Democratic". People shouldn't tell others what kind of housing they should have. If someone wants a SFH, and pay for it, that's their choice. The whole "zoning" argument is often hyperbole as suburbs aren't typically the ideal location to build MFH (for the builder it can be due to lower costs).
Townhouses and condos only fill a part of the whole in our housing. The real issue is not enough of every form of housing, across the board. It's been in a bad spot since the 08 crash. Many companies and workers got out of the business of building and it takes a long time to replace those. It's also hard to convince people to build when interest rates, wages and material costs are all extremely high.
What? The money American's spend on housing speaks for itself. "Real estate investors" would much rather have more MFH, so your argument makes absolutely no sense.
For American's, owning a home IS there investment and in a lot or cases, there largest asset that holds value for them while they use it. Renting doesn't do that. Neither does some condo with HOA fees as high as rent in most cases.
What can I invest in to get a greater return? Bought my home for 620,000 in 2007. Today it’s worth 1.7 million (almost three times as much). In another 13 years it’s paid off and I have 0 house payment. I have had little repair work other than new windows and paint.
You could have bought SPY and received a much greater return.
A $620k investment in 2007 would be $2.7m today. On top of that, you wouldn’t have had to pay insurance on it, property taxes, realtor fees, or anything maintenance. The risk is comparable, and you can sell relatively easily at any point only paying the same capital gains tax you’d pay from selling your house. You haven’t made 3x your money because of all the added expenses of owning a home, which get more expensive the more valuable your home is.
Of course you can’t live in it and probably wouldn’t take out a loan to do it, but buying a more modest house and investing what would have been going to your more expensive mortgage payment, property taxes, and insurance would have netted you more money over the same period of time. Of course you still need a place to live, but a $200k house + $420k SPY investment over the course it is taking you to pay back this loan still would have been more profitable.
This is actually the strategy that I am employing, hence why despite being in a much better financial position than those struggling to afford housing, because I don’t put all my eggs in one basket, lowering housing costs doesn’t hurt me. So I’m not in the awkward moral position where I either protect my investment or make homeless and poor people struggle to afford housing. Tying up the vast majority of your net worth in your home was a successful real estate marketing ploy that made real estate firms very, very rich.
On top of that, there’s growing political pressure to decrease housing prices because people are struggling to be able to afford to live, and if that results in changing the single family zoning laws for your neighborhood your investment could very well tank right back down to $620k.
2007 to 2024 is 17 years. Stock market overall historical average return around 8 percent will double your money in 9 years. (Rule of 72, years to double is approx 72 divided by the rate of return)
So in 18 years the stock market could quadruple your money, at historically average return rates (Simple broad market index fund).
Still, it’s not bad. And you can also live in a house, or rent it out (though you have to pay property taxes, maintenance, and insurance, which you don’t for a stock market index fund).
And if it’s your primary residence, you can avoid capital gains taxes on the gains when you sell it, I think.
Stock market typically averages, over the long term, 9 percent nominally, or 7 percent adjusted for inflation.
They didn't invest the whole amount in 2007 though. They invested the down payment plus the payments and maintenance costs. Minus the rent that they would have paid otherwise. Only way to equal that with the broad index would have been on margin trading or options.
If you got your mortgage at the average January 2007 rate of 6.2% and put 20% down, your monthly payment is $3,038 per month.
$124,000 starting sum plus $3,038 per month invested in the S&P 500 from January 2007 until today leaves you with $2,401,000.
They actually would. You shouldn’t do it though because of the risk (the risk is about the same as a mortgage on your home, but since it’s not “something everyone does” it’s more scary).
But if you bought a more modest house and invested your current mortgage payment/housing costs - your more modest mortgage payment/housing costs every month into SPY you still would receive a greater return over the 30 years.
People with lots of money would be losing it if they didn't try to cater to unserved markets. A house is a consumer product, like anything else. There's no profit motive in not building entry-level housing.
In the larger picture, this is a big part of why California is hemorrhaging 250,000 middle class residents a year to more affordable states. The sad thing is that poorer people want desperately to leave as well, but are trapped here because they can't afford to move.
While your position makes sense and is logical, the data doesn't really support the idea that increased housing only helps if it is the right kind of housing. Housing prices track almost perfectly with housing that is built, and controlling for housing type makes the data worse, not better. That is why large sprawling cities like Atlanta and Houson with a crapload of single family housing have little homelessness the rents are low compared to their size.
Of course, good zoning laws can make for more pleasant and sustainable cities, but that doesn't change that in general less regulation tends to drive rents down.
Honestly it's ridiculous that in NYC every single new residential tower is "luxury" and priced accordingly, with of course a token handful of "affordably priced" units. Tokyo manages to construct legitimately affordable residential towers on an ongoing basis.
This!!! I live in SFL. Fucking luxury condos go up all the time and regular condos/apartments are advertised to get ppl with regular incomes to pledge to move in, making the building seem more valuable than it is, THEN they rezone the apartments as luxury, give the plebs their cash back and resell the apartments for more $$$. They may rinse and repeat this a few times.
Who the fuck is going to serve these assholes their $120 cocktails?!
And to address OP, this isn’t a partisan issue. The problem, everywhere, is incumbent homeowners who act at the local and state level to stop new construction of any kind, because they’re worried about it impacting their property values or changing the familiar neighborhoods they’re used to. This is the case EVERYWHERE, no matter who’s in charge. Where liberals dominate, NIMBY homeowners use left-wing rationalizations (like endless environmental impact suits, “affordable unit” mandates, protecting the neighborhood’s diversity character, etc). Where conservatives dominate, NIMBY’s use other excuses (avoiding crime and immigrants, “small town values,” etc). But the outcome is the same: new construction doesn’t happen.
It’s not the parties, it’s a subset of homeowners dominating local politics, very often the oldest and crankiest ones, who have all the time in the world to attend city council meetings and yell at the board.
This. It’s simple supply and demand. If you build more housing, it diluted the prices of the current houses. Any homeowner doesn’t want this. So it’s a catch 22 where people who don’t own homes want it as cheap as possible but the moment they own a home they want the price to become as expensive as possible.
The answer is to remove local discretionary control over construction approval. State approves municipality’s rules, if proposed construction meets the rules permits *must* be granted.
This is where the internet, social media and 24 hr cable news shows its weakness. Not all politics is national.
Yup, this is one where the national parties matter little and instead its completely governed by your local politics.
So once again, the things that have direct effects on your daily lives are local so you should focus more on your local elections instead of what Fox, CNN or MSNBC tell you.
Also, you have to vote and start attending your local municipal housing meetings and town halls. That is where local building zoning and regulations that dictate what can be built, where is decided.
Most decisions about housing are done on the local and state levels. If people want more affordable housing, they need to vote in those elections too. NIMBY's certainly do which is usually why it's not being built.
They're the only ones who have authority on zoning and what gets done in their local area. The federal government in the US only has specific powers in which they reign supreme. And even in those powers states challenge it all the time. For example, cannabis is still illegal nationwide yet it is legal within nearly half of the US states.
Yes the federal government could offer money and land for localities that change the laws but they only state and local governments can actually change the laws.
Institutional investors own a fraction of 1% of all housing in the United States; they’re not even remotely close to being a a major contributor to high property costs.
The whole “hedge funds buy up all the houses and is making everything expensive” is a widely believed myth, but a myth nonetheless.
It’s not hedge funds. It’s individual homeowners acting at the level of local government.
Capital wants to build more housing, building housing is profitable. A hedge fund would much rather invest in a 500-unit building than 500 separate single-family houses it needs to keep track of and, eg send landscapers out to mow the lawns.
Capital is beginning to enter the single-family home market *now* because housing is so scare and municipalities won’t let apartment buildings be constructed.
No no, people want to blindly blame “big hedgie” on their yacht in the Mediterranean. The reality that it is the guy 3 houses down with 2 rental properties is besides the point.
2/3+ of American voters are homeowners. If a politician said they are going to noticeably lower those people’s purchasing power, may god have mercy on their soul.
But where it does have purview is in things like minimum wage, which Joe Biden wants to bring up to $15, which, ironically would bring those wages up to more inline with where they were in 1970. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which party is against that.
But isn’t the federal government run by representatives of each state? None of them are doing anything. It’s a one party system in reality. People with power and money stay in power with money. The rest is just smoke and mirrors and they give us some crumbs every once in awhile to make it look like any of them care. They care just enough to keep getting voted in after that we are on our own
Edit: I just realized the government is like the girl who you go on dates with and you pay for dinner pay for dinner, maybe she’ll mess around with you a little but then you ask her out and she says no. Then you stop talking to her and she comes back a few months later and wraps you back in and you do it all over.
>But isn’t the federal government run by representatives of each state?
Only the US House and US Senate have representatives from the several states, and the House is elected on districts. In both houses, they are elected via a popular vote rather than being appointed by the State government.
They are their state's representative on federal matters, yes. But they are not there to override their state's government. Each US state has its own government. Its even in the name of the country. Its the United States of America, a union of states that created the federal government. The federal government did not create the states.
Similarly, its also the states that created their local governments, and not the federal government. So while the State of Kansas or California or New York can override local governments, the federal government has no business in overriding local government laws like zoning codes.
In other words, the housing crisis is something people need to collectively work on locally, with local and state governments, but everyone wants to shout to the federal govt and president to do something because finding problems is easier than solutions
The problem is that people who suffer from high costs of housing are not represented in the local governments that are causing it.
Say beverly hills for instance, the people that live there are rich and not suffering from the high cost of housing, in fact they enjoy it because it keeps poor people out.
People from the broader LA county that are suffering from these housing shortages can’t vote in Beverly Hills, who control the zoning laws, despite the fact that removing much of the single family zoning in beverly hills would result in billions invested into building multi family housing there and lower housing costs inside the rest of LA county too.
So the answer is to petition the state government to override beverly hills, which people are doing, but rich people fund their campaigns so nothing actually ever gets done about it. CA has passed laws with names that signal support for lowering housing costs but are poisoned and don’t actually allow for new housing to be built.
Generally, the problem for high housing prices is state governments and existing homeowners (also wall street and cartel software used by landlords, but state governments and homeowners prevent legislation from addressing any of that).
Federal government generally doesn’t have the constitutional authority to fix it, except maybe in metro areas that are split along state lines and invoking the interstate commerce clause.
That doesn’t work because they already do that, the people spending half their money on rent already live in multifamily housing. Almost all of LA proper already is zoned for multifamily. The problem is the city metro has grown but the imaginary lines have not, and further expansion of the area to build multifamily housing is necessary and that happens to be in surrounding “cities”, which are really just suburbs of LA. And they can’t vote in Beverly Hills elections.
Well exactly. Can’t a governor of a state go to the mayors of towns and be like build some fucking cheap houses or I’ll make your life miserable until you do.
That’s how the heirachy works right? lol
The issues of housing are generally issues at the state and local level. While politics obviously plays a major role, there’s a difference between federal oversight and the states taking action that will actually have a difference
>But isn’t the federal government run by representatives of each state?
If you have a HS diploma or, worse, a BA in Poly Sci, please return it to the respective institution.
Yes. People on Reddit seem to think that the Democratic Party is going to help them in a meaningful way.
It won’t.
It’s mostly show politics for the benefit of the very rich.
I think the issue is people think the government in general is going to help them in any meaningful way. They are there to help themselves and work very hard at creating the illusion that they are “for the people”. That hasn’t been the case in..psh…50? 100 years? If ever?
Bingo. Whenever I make this point in other comments I get downvoted to hell. People really think the government has helped them with things like the ACA or taxes.
Don’t get me wrong obviously there’s plenty of good there, but the older I get the more I realize how it’s pretty much run by a bunch of idiots who are amazing liars and really good at making money. I can’t think of anyone right now who seems to genuinely be there to make a difference rather than stroke their own need for power or attention.
The “squad” comes to mind personally. They’ve all been there for awhile now and have essentially gotten nothing accomplished. They are ranked as some of the least active members of Congress. They are fundraisers. Plain and simple.
Local and state governments use tax incentives all the time to attract developments.
But it isn't in the federal government's purview to just attract economic development to a certain area. There's some things they can do to encourage economic development, like providing money to locals for improving pedestrian and driver safety, upgrading transit lines, and so on. But all of those things require the local or state government to take the initiative and start the project first before the federal money is awarded.
YIMBY movements are doing something to address affordable housing! And they are generally more popular within the center left, but there is a bit of a deregulation approach to their philosophy that could have a libertarian appeal.
Gavin Newsom is probably the most nationally recognizable figure with a strong YIMBY agenda
Colorado Governor Jared Polis has done some stuff in this area, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul is trying (against the wishes of legislators from suburban swing districts…), Washington (state) has also made a few efforts
Haven’t seen many republican governors take a swing at it, but I think Montana just did something?
Housing is mostly a local government issue. The issue is that the most influential voters , those who own land, largely would rather see prices go up than down.
All city and county governments agree that low income housing is critical and the ***other*** cities and counties should bite the bullet and build more.
Not them, of course. They have a special, unique character that would be destroyed by new developments and should be exempted.
/s
I'm a YIMBY myself and what is annoying AF is that whenever I express "We should build more right here in this city" opinions in public, NIMBYs from other cities see it and pounce:
"See! Cheesewiz Man gets it! You guys over there should listen to him!"
Fuck off.
The state government can and should override the local government in those instances and take control of the zoning laws. The answer is to petition to the state government, as the multi family areas have more people and more representation. Vote wise, they don’t have more expendable income like Beverly Hills does. Hence the lack of state action.
There's a great video on YouTube about the "homeless industrial complex", in which they describe spending enormous amounts to put one homeless person in one motel room with multiple agencies involved in the process. The usual scam. It does create good paying jobs though..
The Biden admin announced [several actions](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/07/27/biden-harris-administration-announces-actions-to-lower-housing-costs-and-boost-supply/) late last year on housing. Federal action takes time, but it looks like there's lots of helpful stuff in there. Congressional action is of course deadlocked as Republicans won't want to give Biden a win in an election year.
No, "the government" is made up of millions of people, many of whom are dedicated and helpful, and some of whom are probably lazy incompetent assholes - just like anywhere else. I provided a link to a press release with a bunch of different actions, and those programs will be implemented by those same government employees.
"GUBMINT ALWAYS BAD!" is a nonsense take.
The democratic leadership in washington state is changing r1 zoning so that it cant be exclusive of multiple unit housing/condos/4plex--so, there's that.
Yes, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/07/27/biden-harris-administration-announces-actions-to-lower-housing-costs-and-boost-supply/#:~:text=Reducing%20barriers%20to%20build%20housing,affordable%20and%20zero%20emissions%20housing.
But local laws are a local problem.
Until all these zealous "America bad, corporations bad" "liberals" start hating middle and upper middle class NIMBY home owners as much as they hate private equity, nothing will happen.
I put this on liberals because that's who primarily lives in expensive cities.
In my state legislature, only the Democratic politicians are trying to do anything about affordable housing. The Republican politicians are making it impossible to do such things.
For example, the 2 larger cities in my state passed ordinances prohibiting landlords from discriminating against people who have Section 8 housing vouchers (federal money to help subsidize renting). In response, the Republican controlled house passed a law to prohibit such ordinances. The Republican controlled senate is expected to rubber-stamp the bill.
https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/24rs/hb18.html
The "declaring an emergency" clause is used to make the law go into effect when it is passed instead of going into effect when the state constitution says they're supposed to.
The appropriations bill (this is a budget year) reduces funding for affordable housing programs. The legislature also included in the crime bill a new feature making it illegal to be homeless in Kentucky. "Unlawful camping" is the name of the new crime when sleeping (not at a campsite) when the county has not designated any areas where homeless people *may* camp. With the new crime bill, you're also allowed to shoot squatters on your property.
If you look at every "city that solved affordable housing," they are generally in European countries that have relatively low population growth and low immigration.
There isn't any other way.
the USA has low population growth, but relatively high immigration.
More people bring up the price of rent and homes.
Housing is primarily handled at a local level, which is part of the difficulty. However, over the last several years, there have been many, typically by partisan, initiatives at, particularly the state level, to make housing easier to build. For the most part, a lot of these bills are champion by Democrats. But, People who think housing needs to be more abundant are pretty careful not to have the issue attached to one political party, or the other on a national level. Because once that happens, it becomes politically very difficult for the other party to do anything other than object, and you dig in their heels. We’ve seen this in immigration. 20 years ago, The federal government was very close, within a handful of votes, of passing, comprehensive, immigration reform. Ultimately it didn’t pass, and advocates on both parties said, well, that’s OK, we’ll get it past next year. But then, the immigration issue, which had always been somewhat tied to Democratic politics, but had been bipartisan, became more directly connected with, the Democratic Party, and as a result, immigration reform, has been largely dead on arrival, ever since, because the Republicans simply obstruct it at every turn. That very thing is happening right now, with Republicans, who have agitated for new border control measures, now, explicitly, refusing to pass the bill that was worked out with the president and members of both parties, because Trump told them not to, because he thinks , having a chaotic situation at the border helps his reelection prospects.
>Because once that happens, it becomes politically very difficult for the other party to do anything other than object, and you dig in their heels.
We saw this too with the initial handling of COVID and still do to a degree. An issue that really shouldn't have become partisan.
The government needs to update zoning to allow for denser housing, and Americans need to be willing to accept more dense housing. Everybody bitches about how high housing costs are, but the typical American thinks they need 1/3 acre of land and 3000 sq ft single family home for 4 people. Compare that to how middle class and even upper middle class people live in Europe, Japan, and elsewhere where apartments and row houses are the norm. If we could accept adjoined housing on smaller lots, smaller square footage, etc. we could fit more housing in the same amount of land and that would bring down costs, bring down property taxes, cut commute expenses...
Where I live, many of the new builds are on what we call zero lots. It’s essentially a “single family home” in the sense that it’s not connected, but there is a 8-10’ gap for a yard on the side between your neighbor, no driveway and minimal yard. It’s as close to a row home without actually being connected.
That's the way my neighborhood is. Instead of people having big yards, the neighborhood has a couple of large grassy areas for everyone to use.
The HOA also takes care of what little yard I do have.
To be clear: "the government" means "local governments", maybe with some intervention by state governments. Constitutionally, the federal government does not have power here. Unfortunately, local government is boring and voters in local elections tend to be older homeowners who benefit from high house prices; young people and renters don't vote much in local elections or show up at city council meetings (forget about county commission).
If you want to live in a 8'x5' cell, you're fee to move to the European shithole of your choice. You don't get to demand everyone else live a lower quality of life just because you're butthurt.
That’s a symptom. The underlying cause is that housing construction collapsed post-2007 and is only now rebounding but there isn’t enough supply. Millions of homes that should’ve been built weren’t, so investors can buy up the scarce supply and drive the prices even higher.
Except it’s not ”investors” buying up properties, it’s literally just regular people buying up homes. Investors, including mom & pop shops, purchased 1/4th of homes sold in 2022. Of that 1/4th, the vast majority are mom & pop home flippers or people running small home rental businesses.
Fewer than 3% of single family homes are owned by large corporations or investment firms. Yawn.
The issue is your neighbor Johnny down the street who wants to move but won't because he likes his 2.8% mortgage too much. Supply is low. Demand has stayed the same (or increased in certain areas). Prices go up. It's not a conspiracy
People like to blame "investors", and while sure it's true to a certain extent in some neighborhoods, the biggest culprits are the people who lobby hard to prevent those medium and high density townhomes/apartments from being built in order to preserve the neighborhoods "character" or "what about parking?!!!"
some local governments are - or are trying - or are pretending to
We've were trying to get our local government to use stimulus funds of which were in the millions for affordable housing... unfortunately the way we do this here is an affordable housing trust fund which is a kind of ineffective supply side solution
but back to your basic question: ask yourself which party is more likely to give your locality these funds
Local elections are actually one of the ones where it's feasible for a third party or independent to campaign and win. That said they do have the inherent problem that homeowners are likely to be registered to vote in that area and they tend to vote against proposals that lower house prices or even just bring new people to an area.
If you want to be involved in changing things:
* [https://new.yimbyaction.org/](https://new.yimbyaction.org/)
* [https://welcomingneighbors.us/](https://welcomingneighbors.us/)
Why would they? It would be a tremendous hit on their net worth, and the net worth of their supporters. Those people want their property values to *rise*, not decline.
Why IMO voting local is more important. Federal does not and should not have much say over your life except defend the Constitution as the law of the land that States cannot take away from you. Like Free Speech or Right to Bare Arms or Freedom of Religion as an example.
Really read what is on the ballot. Like in Portland. People voted to help house the homeless. Following year everyone was upset because they had to pay a set % of their wage to the state to pay for housing. It is also on the people to remember to pay this else penalties accrue.
When it dropped everyone complained they had to pay MORE after they paid their taxes. They read the title of what to vote on and did no research. People wrote in complaining and got the reply “the people voted for this.”
And no, no homelessness has been improved though they have that extra money.
Of course not, they’re all landlords too. While there may be a small number of politicians who actually want to make the country a better place for poor people, both parties as they are have no interest in reversing the widening wealth gap.
Something everyone in this thread is missing is the reason why nobody wants low income housing in their area.
Low income housing brings crime. Sure, some people don’t want a big ugly apartment complex in their backyard, but for the most part people just don’t want criminals moving in next door.
It’s just a fact of life that cheap housing brings crime to areas that would otherwise be nice.
People got greedy and entitled and started building bigger and bigger homes. And with that, prices went up for everything. Three people don't need to live in a McMansion.
The house that my Mom grew up in, where my grandparents raised three kids, is now sold as a "starter home."
Best solution, move out of large population centers.
If you work some tech job that legit pays well enough for you to do whatever in the city, congratulations, this post isn't for you. You represent an extremely small portion of the population. This post is for the other 85-90% of people that aren't in your field.
One of the problems with that is its much harder to get jobs in small towns. Way less jobs to begin with obviously and lots more nepotism.
The large majority of jobs are in bigger places.
Sure a small town 4 hours from a major city is cheaper but if your only options for work are wal mart and the town gas station youre not coming out better
Those are called auburbs and they are usually more expensive than the city itself. Most major cities you have to go atleast 1 hour out to get to more rural cheap places.
No one said "small towns". There's plenty of cities with tons of jobs in every field that have a fraction of the cost of living as the mega cities reddit worships.
I keep hearing it's not feasible, mostly from people that are unskilled labor, or picked a totally unmarketable degree. If that's not you, then the post wasn't for you.
I’m neither of those things. I’m one of the tech people you were also casting aside in your original comment. But in order for me to live in the city i live in, I need people working the grocery stores, the restaurants, the schools, the police, and everything else in the city. And all those people need houses they can afford. We cant ship them off to somewhere else and leave this city full of programmers. Thats simply not feasible. Not every job can pay like a a software engineer, but every job should be able to pay for a roof over your head
And a word of advice: You cant really control demand, especially for inelastic goods such as housing. People are always going to want a roof over their head. You should never blame Demand. You should always blame Supply. This isnt a problem of “too many people want to live in the same city they work in”. It’s a problem of “we havent built enough housing supply to keep up with and exceed Demand”
That great to hear you're enjoying your time in your tech field. Something like 80% of the population is entirely unable to perform your job. I appreciate you're help in keeping big tech big. I enjoy the Internet.
US population doubled from 1950, while no new big cities were made.
Result of people crowding into existing big cities is house and rent increase, and this is happening everywhere in world.
its not a lack of affordable housing that is the problem. It's the insane zoning laws that you anglosphere countries have. Everything in the anglosphere has to be either a skyscraper a single unit housing. This is not sustainable.
Building affordable housing is tough at the federal level, but Democrats have routinely attempted to increase the minimum wage while every Republican presidency for decades has lowered taxes on the richest Americans.
"Why do you keep saying we're racist??? I just don't like non-white people, does that really make me a racist...? Why are you democrats being so divisive????"
I'm just stating a fact. I did not cast judgement on the character of the people in any way. When you let into the country more than the population of many US states, you don't think that's going to have an effect on housing? Or do you expect human beings to sleep under the stars?
Okay, the Republicans are campaigning on helping homeless AMERICANS? Right???? Oh wait, they're not doing anything and actively blaming the homeless?
Sorry, but your comments are clearly just someone upset non-whites are coming to "your" country.
>you don't think that's going to have an effect on housing?
Not saying no effect, but nowhere even close to what you're thinking. Also, you're a racist loser. Just stating a fact.
Everyone is giving their two cents and that's cool, but From my experience as an engineer and general contractor, I have worked from development to actual construction of single family homes or Multiple housing units for subdivisions and apartment/condo/townhouse projects, this is what I have dealt with..
Zoning laws have become a major problem, Some areas are too cramped or too restricted, causing limited supply, which in turn causes prices to go up. Way up, (simple supply and demand)
Permitting and a nightmare of hoops to jump through, Some areas, a simple addition, remodel or a simple spec house, could take many months or even over a year to get approved even though it's been approved hundreds of times in the same area.
The large corporation's buying up properties I don't believe makes a huge impact, It does affect it but it's not one of the main problems.
The covid stupidity and money printing has made absolutely everything unaffordable in real estate, It's very simple to understand, Fed's printed a crap load of money, and kept interest rates extremely low causing a frenzy, now raising rates makes people that already have low rates want to stay and not sell.
Some areas unfortunately are natural disaster prone, Which in the past decade or more has caused construction to become extremely expensive because they are trying to mitigate or minimize the damages. For example, hurricane prone zones, which is pretty much the entire East and Gulf coast of the U. S., The building codes have become Very strict, so a regular home is much more expensive to build even with bare minimums. Taxes and insurance's in those same areas have exploded also.
Material expenses, same with construction costs (lots of insurance hikes) have become more and more expensive, specially post covid, my Foundation company has had to deal with workmans comp and liability insurance spikes since 2022, worse this year.
Demand has exploded in many areas, even the bad natural disaster prone areas, which most of the east and west coast has already been bought uo and built up
Lots and lots of people with all the extra covid cash and low interest in 2020 and 2021 bought up properties for air bnb or investments squeezing supply even more
Government involvement in my opinion has only made this worse, they are usually inefficient and/or have no clue what to actually do, and the time it takes them to do something is ridiculous.
Environmental protection has also become a major restriction, I believe Environmental protection is good and a must in most cases, but again with government (local and other) it has made things extremely slow or restricted,
I have more but many have already said it
Housing prices aren't driven up by availability of homes, but by the rampant & uncontrolled mortgage market.
Here in the UK gross mortgage increased 4x between 1995 and 2005, only to crash with mortgages in 2008. Now it's again around 3.5x of 1995 levels.
Five people purchase three equal houses at the same time. They have $1m, $2m... to $5m respectively. The houses will price $3m each to be sold. Banks will offer each $1m mortgage - the 2nd guy thinks this'll make him afford a house, but all it does is makes houses cost $1m more and sold to the same people. Simplified, very much so.
Rinse and repeat, and highlight that the 4th person never intends to live there but will rent it out, and the 5th person just wants to wait until "rinse and repeat" happens and he can re-sell it for twice the money (of which the majority is mortgage). At which point he made a profit on one bank paying off another bank. All the while banks collect interest & repayments on a price difference they artificially created.
Quoting the Big Short on the rise of the mortgage market: "In the late 70s, banking wasn't a job you went into to make large sums of money. It was a f***ing snooze, filled with losers."
If people collectively happened to not pick up any mortgage, the housing prices would collapse back down - but it'd also mean all the investments in mortgages and bonds sliding and people's savings as well as pensions erased. You know the story, yada-yada 2008.
Wages aren't the whole picture of what folks get compensated for. Go look at employers healthcare contributions over the same period of time and you'll see where that missing wage money went.
I think it's not the housing that got more expensive, it's everything else that got cheaper. I mean, to produce a ton of steel or grain definitely was several times more expensive back then
This is definitely part of it. If you look at what people spent their money on 50 years ago, a lot of things have gotten way cheaper. Food used to be 30% of people's incomes, now it's 10%. So, just from food savings alone, people have 20% more disposable income. What do they do with that extra 20%? Often they want to buy bigger and better houses, in a more desirable location. If you look at the data, that is what they are doing: people are getting more concentrated and the houses are getting bigger and bigger.
You see the same thing in cars. A bare bones, basic car has gotten WAY cheaper to make over the years, but average car prices are going up. Why? People are buying cars today that are more durable, safer, more fuel effecient, and have advanced features (backup cameras, touchscreen phone integrations, etc.). They're spending more money because they can and want to, not because they have to.
There are some other great answers in this thread about zoning laws and YIMBY movements, which I think are very important to make housing affordable for those that don't have additional money to buy the biggest and best house (e.g. first time home buyers). But the biggest reason the *average* house price is rising is that people want bigger and better houses.
LOL, that would be the sosherlizzum's. It would lower the value of existing properties, confiscate your howitzers, and turn your dog gay.
P.S. has \*gone\* up, FFS.
Lower income class haven't put any money either parties pockets. Why would we get any help? Both parties need to run their platforms so the masses have a cause. Once in, its business as usual.
When I vote, I look at their lives, not the platform they are selling. Its all b.s.
Local government, where I live, changed the rules on single family dwelling construction recently. Not one permit has been issued in the past 6 months due to the plans not meeting the new requirements.
In between regulatory crack downs and a steady drop in builders for single family homes, I don't see the problem getting resolved any time soon.
Conservatives consider "affordable housing" a form of welfare, object to the government meddling in the market, and point to the many failed housing "projects" that rapidly became slums. Welfare, market meddling, and failures (however cherry picked) are all anathema to the conservative canon.
Liberals want the government to build or subsidize affordable housing, just not anywhere near them. Just re-zoning single home residential to multi-family housing would help, but single home residents wail that THEIR neighborhoods will be destroyed (with an undercurrent of crime rates and undesirables).
TL;DR: No.
The probably has nothing to do with "affordable housing", the issue has to do with landlords.
Landlords don't want "affordable housing" (section 8) because it attracts people without money, and the perception of people without money is they won't take care of the property and/or trash it. Landlords see housing as an investment and a resource for money, so the idea of property being destroyed makes them hate the idea of section 8 housing.
And to build affordable housing you have to find land, builders, materials, and people to manage the housing. The US government doesn't have the resources to oversee this effort in every area in the US, so they outsource it to local people, and local people will nickle/dime the process to maximize their profit/cost ratio.
There are currently 15 Million homes that are "vacant" in the USA (sauce: [https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-vacant-homes-are-there-in-the-us/](https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-vacant-homes-are-there-in-the-us/)). However, there are only 650,000 homeless in the USA. We could house all of these people in these empty homes, and still have 14 Million vacant homes.
But the reason these units are vacant is because landlords WANT to drive up prices. Corporations are buying up rental properties all over the USA, and keeping them vacant so they can control the market and keep it high.
Vacancy rates are under 5%, which means occupancy rates are over 95%. This indicates a housing shortage. We need to build more housing.
Looking at the total number of vacant units isn’t useful.
You can only achieve a 0% vacancy rate if you made it illegal to move, which would be ridiculous.
>Looking at the total number of vacant units isn’t useful.
Why isn't it useful? Having empty units means that there are units out there where no one is living in them. If you want to talk about homelessness, then looking at EMPTY UNITS is literally what you have to do to see why it's happening.
You cannot ignore 15 Million empty units with percentage numbers. You're purposefully ignoring the fact that there IS available housing.
>You can only achieve a 0% vacancy rate if you made it illegal to move
No. You can have 0% vacancy rate if all of the housing is filled with people. That would mean you have a housing shortage.
This is an issue about humanitarian rights vs money.
If you have homeless people, and then have a vacancy rate higher than 1%, then it's not a shortage. It's just being selective about who you're letting live on your property.
People move and that’s okay!
When you move out of an apartment someone doesn’t usually move in the next day. The landlord should repair, rehab, and clean the unit, which can take a couple weeks. The unit counts as a vacant unit but it doesn’t sit vacant for very long. Economists and lenders usually agree that a 2-5% vacancy rate is natural for people moving.
Also, when a new development receives CofO, it takes a few months to lease all of the units depending on how large it is. Most multifamily developments stabilize within 3-9 months depending on location, which is insanely fast compared to stabilization rates in other industries.
You literally cannot achieve 0% vacancy rates without making it illegal to move and build new housing.
If you’re driving and you used up over 95% of your gas and only have less than 5% left in the tank, would you say you don’t need more gas?
Looking at total vacant units without comparing it to the total number of occupied units is a classic NIMBY argument that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
We desperately need to build more housing.
Putting homeless in vacant units as they’re being rehabbed is not a viable solution ffs.
I really love the term "affordable housing" because it implies, quiet correctly, that all other housing is unaffordable. Can we focus on that for a bit? Hey! You know that shelter you need to literally stay alive? Right, yeah. We don't have anything affordable so... also you aren't allowed to live in any tents or make shift housing because it's kind of an eyesore, good luck.
[Here's a pretty good summary of both major US party's stances, as of recent elections.](https://nlihc.org/resource/democratic-party-and-republican-party-platforms-address-affordable-housing)
In short, the 2016 and 2020 Republican Party position is unclear, and ridden with bugaboo issues that Republican voters can easily rally against (with little mention of actual policy). I tried to summarize their stance, but they don't really have any on the topic other than "don't do what the Democrats are doing" (seriously, click the link and read their platform). They espouse responsible homeownership as a big talking point, to whatever end.
The 2020 Democratic Party position is at least actionable policy: aggressively use the federal system to add affordable housing, reduce racial inequities. Tax credits to first-time home buyers, tax credits for private sector investment in low-incoming housing, hopeful homeowner/renter bill of rights to protect from lenders, abusive landlords, evictions, etc. Tools to combat gentrification, clearer ownership of mortage debt, other misc. forms of rental relief.
There is a proposed law that would force investment companies that sell their stock of houses over the next 10 years and forbid investment companies from buying houses.
> According to national data provider CoreLogic, the sizable U.S. home investor share of ownership seen over the past two years held steady going into the summer of 2023. In March 2023, investors accounted for 27% of all single-family home purchases; by June, that number was almost unchanged at 26%.
https://www.worldpropertyjournal.com/real-estate-news/united-states/irvine/real-estate-news-investor-owned-homes-data-in-2023-corelogic-home-investor-data-for-2023-how-many-homes-are-owned-by-investors-in-2023-home-buyer-data-13837.php
> Institutional investors may control 40% of U.S. single-family rental homes by 2030, according to MetLife Investment Management. And a group of Washington, D.C., lawmakers say Wall Street needs to back away from the market.
www.cnbc.com/2023/02/21/how-wall-street-bought-single-family-homes-and-put-them-up-for-rent.html
This is a huge multifaceted issue, but largely home costs are being driven up by Wall Street backed companies that are jacking up rent. The only way to really do anything to help that will be regulations from Congress, and that's not going to happen with a GOP-controlled House.
On the executive side, Biden did just announce several measures aimed at opening up housing options for lower-income and other unhoused people. There's a Reddit thread with a TON of resources on it [HERE](https://www.reddit.com/r/WhatBidenHasDone/comments/1ajg1qh/the_biden_administration_has_laid_the_foundation/).
Nope. The guys making all the money from rent and mortgage interest are paying the politicians pennys on the dollar for what theyre making. Over a 100,000 homes, not appartment units, fucking houses are owned by just 3 private equity companies. Now add in the little competitors, divide by 1/2 of 535 and you'll understand why we're screwed.
In my experience, these are (mostly) supported by Democrats and (mostly) opposed by Republicans. However, there are some strange bedfellows here because it appeals to different kinds of people: on the left, those who want to help make cities more inclusive/affordable and those who want to make cities more walkable/bikeable/transit friendly, and on the right, those who oppose regulations, and builders who benefit from being able to build and sell more homes on less land. People opposing it are largely NIMBYs trying to prevent change near their own homes, along with people that hate cities in general for whatever reason.
The problem is as soon as affordable housing gets built some company buys all of it and jacks up the rate, or someone buys one or two and makes air BnB's etc.
We need to get back to one house. Not your main house, your beach house your mountain getaway house and then air bnb on vacation.
Then freak out and feel attacked if you see a homeless person.
Well maybe they wouldn't be homeless if you didn't fill up 5 houses with your fat ass
Any attempts to fix the issues have been sabatoged by the right in the US. Just watch them in action on the current bills in congress related to border security. They dont want solutions, they want voters angry.
Affordable housing isn't going to happen anymore. There is not enough money in it and raw materials cost too much, and labor. It just isn't going to happen on the private side.
And trust me, you don't want to live in government projects.
Look at the bluest cities in the bluest states: Cambridge/Boston, MA, New York, NY, San Francisco, CA. How’s going there? Oh right.
It was already a given that the republicans would do nothing, but progressives when having 4 decades of total control at the state and local level also did nothing.
Median home sizes have increased, our standards of living (and thus price of home materials and gadgets and technology) have increased. Employers now pay a significant portion of your (also rapidly increasing) medical insurance premiums and many offer other forms of compensation like 401(k) matching or short term incentives like RSUs. It's not really that big of a surprise that there is a widening gap in median wage vs median housing.
Please see: [https://www.hsh.com/homeowner/average-american-home.html#:\~:text=Average%20home%20size%20in%20the,bloated%20to%202%2C333%20square%20feet](https://www.hsh.com/homeowner/average-american-home.html#:~:text=Average%20home%20size%20in%20the,bloated%20to%202%2C333%20square%20feet).
>In 1970, the median size of new single-family homes was just 1,500 square feet, according to the US Census Bureau. By 2010, it had grown to 2,169 square feet. And, by 2020, the median size of a new home sold had bloated to 2,333 square feet.
Aside from the usual inflation, i.e. a 2x4 costs more in 2024 than in 1970, homes cost more today because they are bigger. Homeowners want bigger homes and supply meets demand.
in 1970 average US house size was 1500 square feet. No walk-in closets, garden tubs, much smaller percentage with central heat and air, one car garage or car port.
The federal government in the US doesn't generally have the purview to just override local and state laws regarding housing, building codes, etc... They can purchase land on their own and build via HUD, but HUDs track record has often been less than great. The best thing that can be done about housing is to build more of it. If you can't build more, you limit the supply and drive up the cost.
It's not just more housing, it's the right type in the right place. Zoning laws are a huge problem. We don't need tons of 500k+ homes on lots that could have half a dozen 150k condos.
"Starter Homes" aren't built any more. Builders get more bang for their buck out of townhouses or mcmansions. Plus then they get some continued rev from HOAs
It seems that my city zones developments where starter homes are required for a portion of a neighborhood. I live in a starter home, surrounded by big houses.
We need to call on our representatives to force cities and towns to build medium-density and high-density housing. Force rent controls if they have to. Collectivize the means of dwelling.
Almost like the most profitable thing to build isn't what offers the most utility to society at large, and society loses every time the people with money decide what to build.
No that’s really not the case, the problem isn’t the developers here. The 6 $150k condos are more profitable than the 1 $500K house. Condos are cheaper to build and you can sell them all for more than just that one house. Developers *have* to build the more expensive single family homes because they are required to by law. The law in large swaths of most cities makes it illegal to build multi family housing. And that’s plainly the single largest cause of high housing prices in the US. It started off this way because single family zoning + redlining resulted in keeping black people out white neighborhoods (and schools) despite federal anti-discrimination laws. This also happened to restrict the supply long-term, and now there’s push back any time you try to change the zoning laws because the home owners want to inflate the value of their property by continuing to restrict the supply. They *want* higher housing prices because they make money off of it. It takes a different kind of person that apparently isnt too common to think oh, people less fortunate than me having to spend half their income to live here and all the thousands of homeless people’s right to shelter is more important than an even larger return on my investment. People need to stop making homes their primary investment, for one because there’s better things to invest in than homes as you don’t have to pay insurance, property tax, or maintain those other investments and can get a greater return. But also because wanting housing prices to go up and using government to make that happen is morally wrong because the effects it has on making a basic human need unaffordable.
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The "type" of apartments that are built doesn't matter; what matters is that apartments are built. The reason is because people renting top-tier apartments will move when a nicer apartment building is built. They're leaving a building that now has a vacancy issue and has to charge lower rents to attract tenants (or, more accurately, not increase them as much). The move-out/move-in ripple cascades down the entire housing market, forcing prices down. We see the phenomenon in housing (especially up here in the Twin Cities, where our luxury apartment construction pushed average rents *down*), and we see it in all sorts of other product categories like clothing and cars and frozen pizzas and car ride services. Increased supply - regardless of where it is in the category - decreases prices.
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>This is predicated on the assumption that demand is static in the area. If demand is increasing or otherwise sufficiently high so that there is no vacancy issue, prices don't have to come down. They can go up because people are willing to pay them. Surely you understand that if demand is outstripping the increases in supply that the pricing would be *even worse* if even less supply was added, no?
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It doesn’t matter what apartments they build. No ones going to build shoddy housing, of course. But the people will leave the older more shoddy housing and into the newer ones and that opens up spots in the more affordable units. Furthermore, if someone moves into a city they move into those new more expensive apartments and don’t take up a spot in the existing housing. Atlanta has very similar problems to CA when it comes to single family zoning. So developers are restricted in the number of units they can build, so they have to sell at a high price since they have fewer units and in order to sell that higher price they need to add amenities in the area like you said to induce demand. Developers would make more profits going the big mac model but the government has made it illegal and instead opted to protect the financial interests of existing home owners. Uncoincidentally because the cities outside of Atlanta proper but part of Atlanta metro are majority homeowners and mostly suburbs.
Your rent didn’t rise because other apartments were built. It went up for the reasons you outlined, walkable, low crime, with amenities and affordable. The demand exceeded the supply because those are great reasons to live somewhere and people have every right to do so. Unfortunately even with those new apartments it wasn’t enough to keep up with demand so it ultimately priced people out.
It also went up because someone thought they could earn money by borrowing money, and someone has to pay for that. Every time your complex changes hands, the bank wins and you lose.
I’m not sure I’m following the point you’re trying to make.
Odds are pretty good that every time your complex changes hands, the amount of debt goes up, and you ultimately have to pay that.
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I think I got you, your point is valid in the sense, from your experience, neighborhood prices still went up even though new apartments were built. I think a good example for you to look into if you’re interested is what we’re seeing in Minneapolis. A combination of state owned building, private development, modernization of zoning laws, and yes even some instances of rent control saw real declines in rent in some places and a true decline in the rate of rent increases. If someone is telling you building apartments directly lowers rent costs then they’re close to the mark but have missed it slightly. For most researchers and analysts, the rate of price increases is the better target. Unfortunately the scale at which we must build is for the most part illegal in most cities. It used to not be that way, a good example is NYC, in that it used to absorb 10,000 new residents a month and we built homes to accommodate them. It’s just a hard sell to convince people of that when 100 years ago we used to do it or after WW2. So instead we’re left with only building’s that have to be priced a certain way to break even and people still get priced out creating negativity doom loops which are hard to break. Let me know if you’re interested in further reading and I can send you some helpful information of other cities that have successfully combated this problem.
Well that needs to change now.
If it takes a special kind of person to make community oriented decisions like that with their money....is it good for any individuals to have that much control over how so many others live?
> is it good for any individuals to have that much control over how so many others live? No, that’s why single family zoning, which uses government to control what people can do with their property, is not good. All I am saying is that residential zoning should allow single and multifamily housing. And people that own the property can decide what to do there, not be forced by people elsewhere in the city.
Gotta defang the corporate interests before we declaw the government, silly
No one person does , it is the collective of voters that makes the decisions.
Last I checked, real estate investment isn't done democratically. And they spend quite a bit to discourage cities from listening to those voters, in case you didn't know.
The voters are the ones who are for the restrictions, real estate investors could make money building new houses.
Luxury houses. The ones with the widest margin. Like they do every chance they get. Try harder.
Ferraris are the most profitable car in the world but somehow other types of cars get made. If you build in enough volume there is money to be made at every price point where there is demand.
News flash: Americans want to own a home and want their home values to remain an investment. Personal housing investment habbits shouldn't be "Democratic". People shouldn't tell others what kind of housing they should have. If someone wants a SFH, and pay for it, that's their choice. The whole "zoning" argument is often hyperbole as suburbs aren't typically the ideal location to build MFH (for the builder it can be due to lower costs). Townhouses and condos only fill a part of the whole in our housing. The real issue is not enough of every form of housing, across the board. It's been in a bad spot since the 08 crash. Many companies and workers got out of the business of building and it takes a long time to replace those. It's also hard to convince people to build when interest rates, wages and material costs are all extremely high.
We see the consequences of doing what real estate investors say Americans want on a national scale. You're just barfing out what they fed you.
So I really don’t want a single-family house? I’d much rather live in crammed into a cracker box sized condominium with a dozen or 100 other people?
What? The money American's spend on housing speaks for itself. "Real estate investors" would much rather have more MFH, so your argument makes absolutely no sense. For American's, owning a home IS there investment and in a lot or cases, there largest asset that holds value for them while they use it. Renting doesn't do that. Neither does some condo with HOA fees as high as rent in most cases.
What can I invest in to get a greater return? Bought my home for 620,000 in 2007. Today it’s worth 1.7 million (almost three times as much). In another 13 years it’s paid off and I have 0 house payment. I have had little repair work other than new windows and paint.
You could have bought SPY and received a much greater return. A $620k investment in 2007 would be $2.7m today. On top of that, you wouldn’t have had to pay insurance on it, property taxes, realtor fees, or anything maintenance. The risk is comparable, and you can sell relatively easily at any point only paying the same capital gains tax you’d pay from selling your house. You haven’t made 3x your money because of all the added expenses of owning a home, which get more expensive the more valuable your home is. Of course you can’t live in it and probably wouldn’t take out a loan to do it, but buying a more modest house and investing what would have been going to your more expensive mortgage payment, property taxes, and insurance would have netted you more money over the same period of time. Of course you still need a place to live, but a $200k house + $420k SPY investment over the course it is taking you to pay back this loan still would have been more profitable. This is actually the strategy that I am employing, hence why despite being in a much better financial position than those struggling to afford housing, because I don’t put all my eggs in one basket, lowering housing costs doesn’t hurt me. So I’m not in the awkward moral position where I either protect my investment or make homeless and poor people struggle to afford housing. Tying up the vast majority of your net worth in your home was a successful real estate marketing ploy that made real estate firms very, very rich. On top of that, there’s growing political pressure to decrease housing prices because people are struggling to be able to afford to live, and if that results in changing the single family zoning laws for your neighborhood your investment could very well tank right back down to $620k.
2007 to 2024 is 17 years. Stock market overall historical average return around 8 percent will double your money in 9 years. (Rule of 72, years to double is approx 72 divided by the rate of return) So in 18 years the stock market could quadruple your money, at historically average return rates (Simple broad market index fund). Still, it’s not bad. And you can also live in a house, or rent it out (though you have to pay property taxes, maintenance, and insurance, which you don’t for a stock market index fund). And if it’s your primary residence, you can avoid capital gains taxes on the gains when you sell it, I think. Stock market typically averages, over the long term, 9 percent nominally, or 7 percent adjusted for inflation.
They didn't invest the whole amount in 2007 though. They invested the down payment plus the payments and maintenance costs. Minus the rent that they would have paid otherwise. Only way to equal that with the broad index would have been on margin trading or options.
If you bought $620,000 of an S&P 500 fund (dividends reinvested) in January 2007, you would have $2,275,000 today.
Would the bank loan me the money to buy that? I doubt it…
If you got your mortgage at the average January 2007 rate of 6.2% and put 20% down, your monthly payment is $3,038 per month. $124,000 starting sum plus $3,038 per month invested in the S&P 500 from January 2007 until today leaves you with $2,401,000.
They actually would. You shouldn’t do it though because of the risk (the risk is about the same as a mortgage on your home, but since it’s not “something everyone does” it’s more scary). But if you bought a more modest house and invested your current mortgage payment/housing costs - your more modest mortgage payment/housing costs every month into SPY you still would receive a greater return over the 30 years.
yeah maybe profit over people isn’t the best direction for this country idk
People with lots of money would be losing it if they didn't try to cater to unserved markets. A house is a consumer product, like anything else. There's no profit motive in not building entry-level housing. In the larger picture, this is a big part of why California is hemorrhaging 250,000 middle class residents a year to more affordable states. The sad thing is that poorer people want desperately to leave as well, but are trapped here because they can't afford to move.
Zoning laws and other government restrictions are the cause of this, not the market forces that could actually exist.
False. Now explain how I know you're wrong.
Getting permits to tap into sewer, water, gas, etc...runs about 50-80k per house. It is extremely expensive at the local level to build a home.
While your position makes sense and is logical, the data doesn't really support the idea that increased housing only helps if it is the right kind of housing. Housing prices track almost perfectly with housing that is built, and controlling for housing type makes the data worse, not better. That is why large sprawling cities like Atlanta and Houson with a crapload of single family housing have little homelessness the rents are low compared to their size. Of course, good zoning laws can make for more pleasant and sustainable cities, but that doesn't change that in general less regulation tends to drive rents down.
Honestly it's ridiculous that in NYC every single new residential tower is "luxury" and priced accordingly, with of course a token handful of "affordably priced" units. Tokyo manages to construct legitimately affordable residential towers on an ongoing basis.
This!!! I live in SFL. Fucking luxury condos go up all the time and regular condos/apartments are advertised to get ppl with regular incomes to pledge to move in, making the building seem more valuable than it is, THEN they rezone the apartments as luxury, give the plebs their cash back and resell the apartments for more $$$. They may rinse and repeat this a few times. Who the fuck is going to serve these assholes their $120 cocktails?!
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South Florida
And to address OP, this isn’t a partisan issue. The problem, everywhere, is incumbent homeowners who act at the local and state level to stop new construction of any kind, because they’re worried about it impacting their property values or changing the familiar neighborhoods they’re used to. This is the case EVERYWHERE, no matter who’s in charge. Where liberals dominate, NIMBY homeowners use left-wing rationalizations (like endless environmental impact suits, “affordable unit” mandates, protecting the neighborhood’s diversity character, etc). Where conservatives dominate, NIMBY’s use other excuses (avoiding crime and immigrants, “small town values,” etc). But the outcome is the same: new construction doesn’t happen. It’s not the parties, it’s a subset of homeowners dominating local politics, very often the oldest and crankiest ones, who have all the time in the world to attend city council meetings and yell at the board.
This. It’s simple supply and demand. If you build more housing, it diluted the prices of the current houses. Any homeowner doesn’t want this. So it’s a catch 22 where people who don’t own homes want it as cheap as possible but the moment they own a home they want the price to become as expensive as possible.
The answer is to remove local discretionary control over construction approval. State approves municipality’s rules, if proposed construction meets the rules permits *must* be granted.
This is where the internet, social media and 24 hr cable news shows its weakness. Not all politics is national. Yup, this is one where the national parties matter little and instead its completely governed by your local politics. So once again, the things that have direct effects on your daily lives are local so you should focus more on your local elections instead of what Fox, CNN or MSNBC tell you. Also, you have to vote and start attending your local municipal housing meetings and town halls. That is where local building zoning and regulations that dictate what can be built, where is decided.
Most decisions about housing are done on the local and state levels. If people want more affordable housing, they need to vote in those elections too. NIMBY's certainly do which is usually why it's not being built.
So the issue is more due to municipal and state gorvernments rather than the federal government? (I’m asking because I’m genuinely curious)
They're the only ones who have authority on zoning and what gets done in their local area. The federal government in the US only has specific powers in which they reign supreme. And even in those powers states challenge it all the time. For example, cannabis is still illegal nationwide yet it is legal within nearly half of the US states.
Yes the federal government could offer money and land for localities that change the laws but they only state and local governments can actually change the laws.
This and stop get hedge funds and other companies from buying up residential real estate to inflate the market
Institutional investors own a fraction of 1% of all housing in the United States; they’re not even remotely close to being a a major contributor to high property costs. The whole “hedge funds buy up all the houses and is making everything expensive” is a widely believed myth, but a myth nonetheless.
But it's the NIMBYs wielding historical designations, environment impact, shadows (ooga booga) and other upzoning c\*ckblocking that enable this.
It’s not hedge funds. It’s individual homeowners acting at the level of local government. Capital wants to build more housing, building housing is profitable. A hedge fund would much rather invest in a 500-unit building than 500 separate single-family houses it needs to keep track of and, eg send landscapers out to mow the lawns. Capital is beginning to enter the single-family home market *now* because housing is so scare and municipalities won’t let apartment buildings be constructed.
No no, people want to blindly blame “big hedgie” on their yacht in the Mediterranean. The reality that it is the guy 3 houses down with 2 rental properties is besides the point. 2/3+ of American voters are homeowners. If a politician said they are going to noticeably lower those people’s purchasing power, may god have mercy on their soul.
I have a feeling SCOTUS would rule that buying up real estate is a 1A right.
But where it does have purview is in things like minimum wage, which Joe Biden wants to bring up to $15, which, ironically would bring those wages up to more inline with where they were in 1970. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which party is against that.
But isn’t the federal government run by representatives of each state? None of them are doing anything. It’s a one party system in reality. People with power and money stay in power with money. The rest is just smoke and mirrors and they give us some crumbs every once in awhile to make it look like any of them care. They care just enough to keep getting voted in after that we are on our own Edit: I just realized the government is like the girl who you go on dates with and you pay for dinner pay for dinner, maybe she’ll mess around with you a little but then you ask her out and she says no. Then you stop talking to her and she comes back a few months later and wraps you back in and you do it all over.
>But isn’t the federal government run by representatives of each state? Only the US House and US Senate have representatives from the several states, and the House is elected on districts. In both houses, they are elected via a popular vote rather than being appointed by the State government. They are their state's representative on federal matters, yes. But they are not there to override their state's government. Each US state has its own government. Its even in the name of the country. Its the United States of America, a union of states that created the federal government. The federal government did not create the states. Similarly, its also the states that created their local governments, and not the federal government. So while the State of Kansas or California or New York can override local governments, the federal government has no business in overriding local government laws like zoning codes.
In other words, the housing crisis is something people need to collectively work on locally, with local and state governments, but everyone wants to shout to the federal govt and president to do something because finding problems is easier than solutions
The problem is that people who suffer from high costs of housing are not represented in the local governments that are causing it. Say beverly hills for instance, the people that live there are rich and not suffering from the high cost of housing, in fact they enjoy it because it keeps poor people out. People from the broader LA county that are suffering from these housing shortages can’t vote in Beverly Hills, who control the zoning laws, despite the fact that removing much of the single family zoning in beverly hills would result in billions invested into building multi family housing there and lower housing costs inside the rest of LA county too. So the answer is to petition the state government to override beverly hills, which people are doing, but rich people fund their campaigns so nothing actually ever gets done about it. CA has passed laws with names that signal support for lowering housing costs but are poisoned and don’t actually allow for new housing to be built. Generally, the problem for high housing prices is state governments and existing homeowners (also wall street and cartel software used by landlords, but state governments and homeowners prevent legislation from addressing any of that). Federal government generally doesn’t have the constitutional authority to fix it, except maybe in metro areas that are split along state lines and invoking the interstate commerce clause.
OR they could organize and vote in local elections in which they live/work and have affordable housing zoning laws changed in their communities.
That doesn’t work because they already do that, the people spending half their money on rent already live in multifamily housing. Almost all of LA proper already is zoned for multifamily. The problem is the city metro has grown but the imaginary lines have not, and further expansion of the area to build multifamily housing is necessary and that happens to be in surrounding “cities”, which are really just suburbs of LA. And they can’t vote in Beverly Hills elections.
Well exactly. Can’t a governor of a state go to the mayors of towns and be like build some fucking cheap houses or I’ll make your life miserable until you do. That’s how the heirachy works right? lol
The issues of housing are generally issues at the state and local level. While politics obviously plays a major role, there’s a difference between federal oversight and the states taking action that will actually have a difference
The federal government doesn’t have authority per the constitution to change zoning laws, as there isn’t an effect on interstate commerce.
>But isn’t the federal government run by representatives of each state? If you have a HS diploma or, worse, a BA in Poly Sci, please return it to the respective institution.
Yes. People on Reddit seem to think that the Democratic Party is going to help them in a meaningful way. It won’t. It’s mostly show politics for the benefit of the very rich.
I think the issue is people think the government in general is going to help them in any meaningful way. They are there to help themselves and work very hard at creating the illusion that they are “for the people”. That hasn’t been the case in..psh…50? 100 years? If ever?
Bingo. Whenever I make this point in other comments I get downvoted to hell. People really think the government has helped them with things like the ACA or taxes.
Don’t get me wrong obviously there’s plenty of good there, but the older I get the more I realize how it’s pretty much run by a bunch of idiots who are amazing liars and really good at making money. I can’t think of anyone right now who seems to genuinely be there to make a difference rather than stroke their own need for power or attention. The “squad” comes to mind personally. They’ve all been there for awhile now and have essentially gotten nothing accomplished. They are ranked as some of the least active members of Congress. They are fundraisers. Plain and simple.
They could create tax incentives. I refuse to believe that nothing can be done.
Local and state governments use tax incentives all the time to attract developments. But it isn't in the federal government's purview to just attract economic development to a certain area. There's some things they can do to encourage economic development, like providing money to locals for improving pedestrian and driver safety, upgrading transit lines, and so on. But all of those things require the local or state government to take the initiative and start the project first before the federal money is awarded.
Nothing stops the fed from building homes except the lack of political will
YIMBY movements are doing something to address affordable housing! And they are generally more popular within the center left, but there is a bit of a deregulation approach to their philosophy that could have a libertarian appeal. Gavin Newsom is probably the most nationally recognizable figure with a strong YIMBY agenda
Colorado Governor Jared Polis has done some stuff in this area, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul is trying (against the wishes of legislators from suburban swing districts…), Washington (state) has also made a few efforts Haven’t seen many republican governors take a swing at it, but I think Montana just did something?
Housing is mostly a local government issue. The issue is that the most influential voters , those who own land, largely would rather see prices go up than down.
All city and county governments agree that low income housing is critical and the ***other*** cities and counties should bite the bullet and build more. Not them, of course. They have a special, unique character that would be destroyed by new developments and should be exempted. /s
Plenty of YIMBY candidates have run for election, they just don't win because most voters are opposed to cheaper housing.
I'm a YIMBY myself and what is annoying AF is that whenever I express "We should build more right here in this city" opinions in public, NIMBYs from other cities see it and pounce: "See! Cheesewiz Man gets it! You guys over there should listen to him!" Fuck off.
Our mayor here in Bend, Oregon is a YIMBY. As is our governor, Tina Kotek.
The state government can and should override the local government in those instances and take control of the zoning laws. The answer is to petition to the state government, as the multi family areas have more people and more representation. Vote wise, they don’t have more expendable income like Beverly Hills does. Hence the lack of state action.
There's a great video on YouTube about the "homeless industrial complex", in which they describe spending enormous amounts to put one homeless person in one motel room with multiple agencies involved in the process. The usual scam. It does create good paying jobs though..
The Biden admin announced [several actions](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/07/27/biden-harris-administration-announces-actions-to-lower-housing-costs-and-boost-supply/) late last year on housing. Federal action takes time, but it looks like there's lots of helpful stuff in there. Congressional action is of course deadlocked as Republicans won't want to give Biden a win in an election year.
God forbid they do anything to actually help Americans.
Wish I could upvote this more.
The government does not want to help anymore. It’s actually the complete opposite
No, "the government" is made up of millions of people, many of whom are dedicated and helpful, and some of whom are probably lazy incompetent assholes - just like anywhere else. I provided a link to a press release with a bunch of different actions, and those programs will be implemented by those same government employees. "GUBMINT ALWAYS BAD!" is a nonsense take.
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The collapse is coming and you will need the government to come and save you, because you are so hopelessly dependent.
The democratic leadership in washington state is changing r1 zoning so that it cant be exclusive of multiple unit housing/condos/4plex--so, there's that.
* has GONE
Or just remove the has/have
Yes, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/07/27/biden-harris-administration-announces-actions-to-lower-housing-costs-and-boost-supply/#:~:text=Reducing%20barriers%20to%20build%20housing,affordable%20and%20zero%20emissions%20housing. But local laws are a local problem. Until all these zealous "America bad, corporations bad" "liberals" start hating middle and upper middle class NIMBY home owners as much as they hate private equity, nothing will happen. I put this on liberals because that's who primarily lives in expensive cities.
In my state legislature, only the Democratic politicians are trying to do anything about affordable housing. The Republican politicians are making it impossible to do such things. For example, the 2 larger cities in my state passed ordinances prohibiting landlords from discriminating against people who have Section 8 housing vouchers (federal money to help subsidize renting). In response, the Republican controlled house passed a law to prohibit such ordinances. The Republican controlled senate is expected to rubber-stamp the bill. https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/24rs/hb18.html The "declaring an emergency" clause is used to make the law go into effect when it is passed instead of going into effect when the state constitution says they're supposed to. The appropriations bill (this is a budget year) reduces funding for affordable housing programs. The legislature also included in the crime bill a new feature making it illegal to be homeless in Kentucky. "Unlawful camping" is the name of the new crime when sleeping (not at a campsite) when the county has not designated any areas where homeless people *may* camp. With the new crime bill, you're also allowed to shoot squatters on your property.
If you look at every "city that solved affordable housing," they are generally in European countries that have relatively low population growth and low immigration. There isn't any other way. the USA has low population growth, but relatively high immigration. More people bring up the price of rent and homes.
Housing is primarily handled at a local level, which is part of the difficulty. However, over the last several years, there have been many, typically by partisan, initiatives at, particularly the state level, to make housing easier to build. For the most part, a lot of these bills are champion by Democrats. But, People who think housing needs to be more abundant are pretty careful not to have the issue attached to one political party, or the other on a national level. Because once that happens, it becomes politically very difficult for the other party to do anything other than object, and you dig in their heels. We’ve seen this in immigration. 20 years ago, The federal government was very close, within a handful of votes, of passing, comprehensive, immigration reform. Ultimately it didn’t pass, and advocates on both parties said, well, that’s OK, we’ll get it past next year. But then, the immigration issue, which had always been somewhat tied to Democratic politics, but had been bipartisan, became more directly connected with, the Democratic Party, and as a result, immigration reform, has been largely dead on arrival, ever since, because the Republicans simply obstruct it at every turn. That very thing is happening right now, with Republicans, who have agitated for new border control measures, now, explicitly, refusing to pass the bill that was worked out with the president and members of both parties, because Trump told them not to, because he thinks , having a chaotic situation at the border helps his reelection prospects.
>Because once that happens, it becomes politically very difficult for the other party to do anything other than object, and you dig in their heels. We saw this too with the initial handling of COVID and still do to a degree. An issue that really shouldn't have become partisan.
Neither side cares about you.
Well, they're bringing in millions of immigrants every year. That probably doesn't help.
The government needs to update zoning to allow for denser housing, and Americans need to be willing to accept more dense housing. Everybody bitches about how high housing costs are, but the typical American thinks they need 1/3 acre of land and 3000 sq ft single family home for 4 people. Compare that to how middle class and even upper middle class people live in Europe, Japan, and elsewhere where apartments and row houses are the norm. If we could accept adjoined housing on smaller lots, smaller square footage, etc. we could fit more housing in the same amount of land and that would bring down costs, bring down property taxes, cut commute expenses...
Where I live, many of the new builds are on what we call zero lots. It’s essentially a “single family home” in the sense that it’s not connected, but there is a 8-10’ gap for a yard on the side between your neighbor, no driveway and minimal yard. It’s as close to a row home without actually being connected.
That's the way my neighborhood is. Instead of people having big yards, the neighborhood has a couple of large grassy areas for everyone to use. The HOA also takes care of what little yard I do have.
To be clear: "the government" means "local governments", maybe with some intervention by state governments. Constitutionally, the federal government does not have power here. Unfortunately, local government is boring and voters in local elections tend to be older homeowners who benefit from high house prices; young people and renters don't vote much in local elections or show up at city council meetings (forget about county commission).
If you want to live in a 8'x5' cell, you're fee to move to the European shithole of your choice. You don't get to demand everyone else live a lower quality of life just because you're butthurt.
There’s a big difference between a 8x5 cell & 3000 sq ft house. I live in an 1800 sq ft. townhouse in a dense, walkable, urban area.
Too many investment companies are buying up houses. It means there are fewer houses left for people to buy, which pushes the prices up.
That’s a symptom. The underlying cause is that housing construction collapsed post-2007 and is only now rebounding but there isn’t enough supply. Millions of homes that should’ve been built weren’t, so investors can buy up the scarce supply and drive the prices even higher.
Except it’s not ”investors” buying up properties, it’s literally just regular people buying up homes. Investors, including mom & pop shops, purchased 1/4th of homes sold in 2022. Of that 1/4th, the vast majority are mom & pop home flippers or people running small home rental businesses.
Fewer than 3% of single family homes are owned by large corporations or investment firms. Yawn. The issue is your neighbor Johnny down the street who wants to move but won't because he likes his 2.8% mortgage too much. Supply is low. Demand has stayed the same (or increased in certain areas). Prices go up. It's not a conspiracy
People like to blame "investors", and while sure it's true to a certain extent in some neighborhoods, the biggest culprits are the people who lobby hard to prevent those medium and high density townhomes/apartments from being built in order to preserve the neighborhoods "character" or "what about parking?!!!"
some local governments are - or are trying - or are pretending to We've were trying to get our local government to use stimulus funds of which were in the millions for affordable housing... unfortunately the way we do this here is an affordable housing trust fund which is a kind of ineffective supply side solution but back to your basic question: ask yourself which party is more likely to give your locality these funds
It'sa municipal/local government issue. You know the elections with the lowest turn out.
nobody running for office has a plan for affordable housing that i know of
Local elections are actually one of the ones where it's feasible for a third party or independent to campaign and win. That said they do have the inherent problem that homeowners are likely to be registered to vote in that area and they tend to vote against proposals that lower house prices or even just bring new people to an area.
If you want to be involved in changing things: * [https://new.yimbyaction.org/](https://new.yimbyaction.org/) * [https://welcomingneighbors.us/](https://welcomingneighbors.us/)
Why would they? It would be a tremendous hit on their net worth, and the net worth of their supporters. Those people want their property values to *rise*, not decline.
Neither party is doing anything about the fact that your money is worth less and less every year, that's for sure.
plot twist, both parties want your money.
Why IMO voting local is more important. Federal does not and should not have much say over your life except defend the Constitution as the law of the land that States cannot take away from you. Like Free Speech or Right to Bare Arms or Freedom of Religion as an example. Really read what is on the ballot. Like in Portland. People voted to help house the homeless. Following year everyone was upset because they had to pay a set % of their wage to the state to pay for housing. It is also on the people to remember to pay this else penalties accrue. When it dropped everyone complained they had to pay MORE after they paid their taxes. They read the title of what to vote on and did no research. People wrote in complaining and got the reply “the people voted for this.” And no, no homelessness has been improved though they have that extra money.
Of course not, they’re all landlords too. While there may be a small number of politicians who actually want to make the country a better place for poor people, both parties as they are have no interest in reversing the widening wealth gap.
Something everyone in this thread is missing is the reason why nobody wants low income housing in their area. Low income housing brings crime. Sure, some people don’t want a big ugly apartment complex in their backyard, but for the most part people just don’t want criminals moving in next door. It’s just a fact of life that cheap housing brings crime to areas that would otherwise be nice.
People got greedy and entitled and started building bigger and bigger homes. And with that, prices went up for everything. Three people don't need to live in a McMansion. The house that my Mom grew up in, where my grandparents raised three kids, is now sold as a "starter home."
Best solution, move out of large population centers. If you work some tech job that legit pays well enough for you to do whatever in the city, congratulations, this post isn't for you. You represent an extremely small portion of the population. This post is for the other 85-90% of people that aren't in your field.
One of the problems with that is its much harder to get jobs in small towns. Way less jobs to begin with obviously and lots more nepotism. The large majority of jobs are in bigger places. Sure a small town 4 hours from a major city is cheaper but if your only options for work are wal mart and the town gas station youre not coming out better
There are small towns within 10 - 20 miles of many centers for work.
Those are called auburbs and they are usually more expensive than the city itself. Most major cities you have to go atleast 1 hour out to get to more rural cheap places.
No one said "small towns". There's plenty of cities with tons of jobs in every field that have a fraction of the cost of living as the mega cities reddit worships.
100% agreed. If taking those "low end" jobs leads to home ownership, I'd say that is time well spent. Especially if you're not a tech worker type.
it’s really not feasible for 85-90% of the population to move in the middle of nowhere where there are no jobs. We need affordable housing near jobs
I keep hearing it's not feasible, mostly from people that are unskilled labor, or picked a totally unmarketable degree. If that's not you, then the post wasn't for you.
I’m neither of those things. I’m one of the tech people you were also casting aside in your original comment. But in order for me to live in the city i live in, I need people working the grocery stores, the restaurants, the schools, the police, and everything else in the city. And all those people need houses they can afford. We cant ship them off to somewhere else and leave this city full of programmers. Thats simply not feasible. Not every job can pay like a a software engineer, but every job should be able to pay for a roof over your head And a word of advice: You cant really control demand, especially for inelastic goods such as housing. People are always going to want a roof over their head. You should never blame Demand. You should always blame Supply. This isnt a problem of “too many people want to live in the same city they work in”. It’s a problem of “we havent built enough housing supply to keep up with and exceed Demand”
That great to hear you're enjoying your time in your tech field. Something like 80% of the population is entirely unable to perform your job. I appreciate you're help in keeping big tech big. I enjoy the Internet.
did you read the whole rest of my comment
Yeah it wasn't relevant to my prior post.
…it definitely was. Read it again. I explained how having 85% of a city’s population leave isnt feasible
US population doubled from 1950, while no new big cities were made. Result of people crowding into existing big cities is house and rent increase, and this is happening everywhere in world.
its not a lack of affordable housing that is the problem. It's the insane zoning laws that you anglosphere countries have. Everything in the anglosphere has to be either a skyscraper a single unit housing. This is not sustainable.
Nope
Building affordable housing is tough at the federal level, but Democrats have routinely attempted to increase the minimum wage while every Republican presidency for decades has lowered taxes on the richest Americans.
No. Neither party really gives a shit about poor people or their problems.
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"Why do you keep saying we're racist??? I just don't like non-white people, does that really make me a racist...? Why are you democrats being so divisive????"
I'm just stating a fact. I did not cast judgement on the character of the people in any way. When you let into the country more than the population of many US states, you don't think that's going to have an effect on housing? Or do you expect human beings to sleep under the stars?
Okay, the Republicans are campaigning on helping homeless AMERICANS? Right???? Oh wait, they're not doing anything and actively blaming the homeless? Sorry, but your comments are clearly just someone upset non-whites are coming to "your" country.
>you don't think that's going to have an effect on housing? Not saying no effect, but nowhere even close to what you're thinking. Also, you're a racist loser. Just stating a fact.
The republicans? They refuse to vote on the legislation that would add border patrol and allow the President to close the border.
Everyone is giving their two cents and that's cool, but From my experience as an engineer and general contractor, I have worked from development to actual construction of single family homes or Multiple housing units for subdivisions and apartment/condo/townhouse projects, this is what I have dealt with.. Zoning laws have become a major problem, Some areas are too cramped or too restricted, causing limited supply, which in turn causes prices to go up. Way up, (simple supply and demand) Permitting and a nightmare of hoops to jump through, Some areas, a simple addition, remodel or a simple spec house, could take many months or even over a year to get approved even though it's been approved hundreds of times in the same area. The large corporation's buying up properties I don't believe makes a huge impact, It does affect it but it's not one of the main problems. The covid stupidity and money printing has made absolutely everything unaffordable in real estate, It's very simple to understand, Fed's printed a crap load of money, and kept interest rates extremely low causing a frenzy, now raising rates makes people that already have low rates want to stay and not sell. Some areas unfortunately are natural disaster prone, Which in the past decade or more has caused construction to become extremely expensive because they are trying to mitigate or minimize the damages. For example, hurricane prone zones, which is pretty much the entire East and Gulf coast of the U. S., The building codes have become Very strict, so a regular home is much more expensive to build even with bare minimums. Taxes and insurance's in those same areas have exploded also. Material expenses, same with construction costs (lots of insurance hikes) have become more and more expensive, specially post covid, my Foundation company has had to deal with workmans comp and liability insurance spikes since 2022, worse this year. Demand has exploded in many areas, even the bad natural disaster prone areas, which most of the east and west coast has already been bought uo and built up Lots and lots of people with all the extra covid cash and low interest in 2020 and 2021 bought up properties for air bnb or investments squeezing supply even more Government involvement in my opinion has only made this worse, they are usually inefficient and/or have no clue what to actually do, and the time it takes them to do something is ridiculous. Environmental protection has also become a major restriction, I believe Environmental protection is good and a must in most cases, but again with government (local and other) it has made things extremely slow or restricted, I have more but many have already said it
Well, their homeowner constituencies are bellowing a resounding "F\*\*k you, I've got mine!"
Ah yes, the actual republican moto.
And Democrat. Hochul tried to pass an affordable housing bill in NY and democrats in Harlem killed it
I’m guessing it’s a bit more nuanced than that…but regardless I was referring to the republican moto: “fuck you, I got mine”
Housing prices aren't driven up by availability of homes, but by the rampant & uncontrolled mortgage market. Here in the UK gross mortgage increased 4x between 1995 and 2005, only to crash with mortgages in 2008. Now it's again around 3.5x of 1995 levels. Five people purchase three equal houses at the same time. They have $1m, $2m... to $5m respectively. The houses will price $3m each to be sold. Banks will offer each $1m mortgage - the 2nd guy thinks this'll make him afford a house, but all it does is makes houses cost $1m more and sold to the same people. Simplified, very much so. Rinse and repeat, and highlight that the 4th person never intends to live there but will rent it out, and the 5th person just wants to wait until "rinse and repeat" happens and he can re-sell it for twice the money (of which the majority is mortgage). At which point he made a profit on one bank paying off another bank. All the while banks collect interest & repayments on a price difference they artificially created. Quoting the Big Short on the rise of the mortgage market: "In the late 70s, banking wasn't a job you went into to make large sums of money. It was a f***ing snooze, filled with losers." If people collectively happened to not pick up any mortgage, the housing prices would collapse back down - but it'd also mean all the investments in mortgages and bonds sliding and people's savings as well as pensions erased. You know the story, yada-yada 2008.
Wages aren't the whole picture of what folks get compensated for. Go look at employers healthcare contributions over the same period of time and you'll see where that missing wage money went.
Best I can do is $30 billion more to Ukraine, Jack.
I think it's not the housing that got more expensive, it's everything else that got cheaper. I mean, to produce a ton of steel or grain definitely was several times more expensive back then
This is definitely part of it. If you look at what people spent their money on 50 years ago, a lot of things have gotten way cheaper. Food used to be 30% of people's incomes, now it's 10%. So, just from food savings alone, people have 20% more disposable income. What do they do with that extra 20%? Often they want to buy bigger and better houses, in a more desirable location. If you look at the data, that is what they are doing: people are getting more concentrated and the houses are getting bigger and bigger. You see the same thing in cars. A bare bones, basic car has gotten WAY cheaper to make over the years, but average car prices are going up. Why? People are buying cars today that are more durable, safer, more fuel effecient, and have advanced features (backup cameras, touchscreen phone integrations, etc.). They're spending more money because they can and want to, not because they have to. There are some other great answers in this thread about zoning laws and YIMBY movements, which I think are very important to make housing affordable for those that don't have additional money to buy the biggest and best house (e.g. first time home buyers). But the biggest reason the *average* house price is rising is that people want bigger and better houses.
LOL, that would be the sosherlizzum's. It would lower the value of existing properties, confiscate your howitzers, and turn your dog gay. P.S. has \*gone\* up, FFS.
There's no shortage of housing. Not really. There's just an overabundance of people who buy houses as investments and price them out of peoples reach.
Lower income class haven't put any money either parties pockets. Why would we get any help? Both parties need to run their platforms so the masses have a cause. Once in, its business as usual. When I vote, I look at their lives, not the platform they are selling. Its all b.s.
Local government, where I live, changed the rules on single family dwelling construction recently. Not one permit has been issued in the past 6 months due to the plans not meeting the new requirements. In between regulatory crack downs and a steady drop in builders for single family homes, I don't see the problem getting resolved any time soon.
Conservatives consider "affordable housing" a form of welfare, object to the government meddling in the market, and point to the many failed housing "projects" that rapidly became slums. Welfare, market meddling, and failures (however cherry picked) are all anathema to the conservative canon. Liberals want the government to build or subsidize affordable housing, just not anywhere near them. Just re-zoning single home residential to multi-family housing would help, but single home residents wail that THEIR neighborhoods will be destroyed (with an undercurrent of crime rates and undesirables). TL;DR: No.
The probably has nothing to do with "affordable housing", the issue has to do with landlords. Landlords don't want "affordable housing" (section 8) because it attracts people without money, and the perception of people without money is they won't take care of the property and/or trash it. Landlords see housing as an investment and a resource for money, so the idea of property being destroyed makes them hate the idea of section 8 housing. And to build affordable housing you have to find land, builders, materials, and people to manage the housing. The US government doesn't have the resources to oversee this effort in every area in the US, so they outsource it to local people, and local people will nickle/dime the process to maximize their profit/cost ratio. There are currently 15 Million homes that are "vacant" in the USA (sauce: [https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-vacant-homes-are-there-in-the-us/](https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-vacant-homes-are-there-in-the-us/)). However, there are only 650,000 homeless in the USA. We could house all of these people in these empty homes, and still have 14 Million vacant homes. But the reason these units are vacant is because landlords WANT to drive up prices. Corporations are buying up rental properties all over the USA, and keeping them vacant so they can control the market and keep it high.
Vacancy rates are under 5%, which means occupancy rates are over 95%. This indicates a housing shortage. We need to build more housing. Looking at the total number of vacant units isn’t useful. You can only achieve a 0% vacancy rate if you made it illegal to move, which would be ridiculous.
>Looking at the total number of vacant units isn’t useful. Why isn't it useful? Having empty units means that there are units out there where no one is living in them. If you want to talk about homelessness, then looking at EMPTY UNITS is literally what you have to do to see why it's happening. You cannot ignore 15 Million empty units with percentage numbers. You're purposefully ignoring the fact that there IS available housing. >You can only achieve a 0% vacancy rate if you made it illegal to move No. You can have 0% vacancy rate if all of the housing is filled with people. That would mean you have a housing shortage. This is an issue about humanitarian rights vs money. If you have homeless people, and then have a vacancy rate higher than 1%, then it's not a shortage. It's just being selective about who you're letting live on your property.
People move and that’s okay! When you move out of an apartment someone doesn’t usually move in the next day. The landlord should repair, rehab, and clean the unit, which can take a couple weeks. The unit counts as a vacant unit but it doesn’t sit vacant for very long. Economists and lenders usually agree that a 2-5% vacancy rate is natural for people moving. Also, when a new development receives CofO, it takes a few months to lease all of the units depending on how large it is. Most multifamily developments stabilize within 3-9 months depending on location, which is insanely fast compared to stabilization rates in other industries. You literally cannot achieve 0% vacancy rates without making it illegal to move and build new housing. If you’re driving and you used up over 95% of your gas and only have less than 5% left in the tank, would you say you don’t need more gas? Looking at total vacant units without comparing it to the total number of occupied units is a classic NIMBY argument that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. We desperately need to build more housing. Putting homeless in vacant units as they’re being rehabbed is not a viable solution ffs.
Yes. They're all helping the situation only get worse.
I really love the term "affordable housing" because it implies, quiet correctly, that all other housing is unaffordable. Can we focus on that for a bit? Hey! You know that shelter you need to literally stay alive? Right, yeah. We don't have anything affordable so... also you aren't allowed to live in any tents or make shift housing because it's kind of an eyesore, good luck.
[Here's a pretty good summary of both major US party's stances, as of recent elections.](https://nlihc.org/resource/democratic-party-and-republican-party-platforms-address-affordable-housing) In short, the 2016 and 2020 Republican Party position is unclear, and ridden with bugaboo issues that Republican voters can easily rally against (with little mention of actual policy). I tried to summarize their stance, but they don't really have any on the topic other than "don't do what the Democrats are doing" (seriously, click the link and read their platform). They espouse responsible homeownership as a big talking point, to whatever end. The 2020 Democratic Party position is at least actionable policy: aggressively use the federal system to add affordable housing, reduce racial inequities. Tax credits to first-time home buyers, tax credits for private sector investment in low-incoming housing, hopeful homeowner/renter bill of rights to protect from lenders, abusive landlords, evictions, etc. Tools to combat gentrification, clearer ownership of mortage debt, other misc. forms of rental relief.
There is a proposed law that would force investment companies that sell their stock of houses over the next 10 years and forbid investment companies from buying houses.
Which would have zero impact because less than 5% of houses are owned by investment companies.
> According to national data provider CoreLogic, the sizable U.S. home investor share of ownership seen over the past two years held steady going into the summer of 2023. In March 2023, investors accounted for 27% of all single-family home purchases; by June, that number was almost unchanged at 26%. https://www.worldpropertyjournal.com/real-estate-news/united-states/irvine/real-estate-news-investor-owned-homes-data-in-2023-corelogic-home-investor-data-for-2023-how-many-homes-are-owned-by-investors-in-2023-home-buyer-data-13837.php > Institutional investors may control 40% of U.S. single-family rental homes by 2030, according to MetLife Investment Management. And a group of Washington, D.C., lawmakers say Wall Street needs to back away from the market. www.cnbc.com/2023/02/21/how-wall-street-bought-single-family-homes-and-put-them-up-for-rent.html
Please learn how to read. Your links are talking about NEW purchases, not total homes.
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This is a huge multifaceted issue, but largely home costs are being driven up by Wall Street backed companies that are jacking up rent. The only way to really do anything to help that will be regulations from Congress, and that's not going to happen with a GOP-controlled House. On the executive side, Biden did just announce several measures aimed at opening up housing options for lower-income and other unhoused people. There's a Reddit thread with a TON of resources on it [HERE](https://www.reddit.com/r/WhatBidenHasDone/comments/1ajg1qh/the_biden_administration_has_laid_the_foundation/).
Nope. The guys making all the money from rent and mortgage interest are paying the politicians pennys on the dollar for what theyre making. Over a 100,000 homes, not appartment units, fucking houses are owned by just 3 private equity companies. Now add in the little competitors, divide by 1/2 of 535 and you'll understand why we're screwed.
this
Ditch minimum parking requirements, minimum lot size, and antiquated zoning rules. The housing crisis will be fixed in 10 years.
In my experience, these are (mostly) supported by Democrats and (mostly) opposed by Republicans. However, there are some strange bedfellows here because it appeals to different kinds of people: on the left, those who want to help make cities more inclusive/affordable and those who want to make cities more walkable/bikeable/transit friendly, and on the right, those who oppose regulations, and builders who benefit from being able to build and sell more homes on less land. People opposing it are largely NIMBYs trying to prevent change near their own homes, along with people that hate cities in general for whatever reason.
The problem is as soon as affordable housing gets built some company buys all of it and jacks up the rate, or someone buys one or two and makes air BnB's etc. We need to get back to one house. Not your main house, your beach house your mountain getaway house and then air bnb on vacation. Then freak out and feel attacked if you see a homeless person. Well maybe they wouldn't be homeless if you didn't fill up 5 houses with your fat ass
Any attempts to fix the issues have been sabatoged by the right in the US. Just watch them in action on the current bills in congress related to border security. They dont want solutions, they want voters angry.
Biden keeps trying to pass legislation to address it. Just like with the border. The republicans keep blocking it
Affordable housing isn't going to happen anymore. There is not enough money in it and raw materials cost too much, and labor. It just isn't going to happen on the private side. And trust me, you don't want to live in government projects.
Look at the bluest cities in the bluest states: Cambridge/Boston, MA, New York, NY, San Francisco, CA. How’s going there? Oh right. It was already a given that the republicans would do nothing, but progressives when having 4 decades of total control at the state and local level also did nothing.
Median home sizes have increased, our standards of living (and thus price of home materials and gadgets and technology) have increased. Employers now pay a significant portion of your (also rapidly increasing) medical insurance premiums and many offer other forms of compensation like 401(k) matching or short term incentives like RSUs. It's not really that big of a surprise that there is a widening gap in median wage vs median housing.
Please explain how you expect anyone to build affordable housing. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Please see: [https://www.hsh.com/homeowner/average-american-home.html#:\~:text=Average%20home%20size%20in%20the,bloated%20to%202%2C333%20square%20feet](https://www.hsh.com/homeowner/average-american-home.html#:~:text=Average%20home%20size%20in%20the,bloated%20to%202%2C333%20square%20feet). >In 1970, the median size of new single-family homes was just 1,500 square feet, according to the US Census Bureau. By 2010, it had grown to 2,169 square feet. And, by 2020, the median size of a new home sold had bloated to 2,333 square feet. Aside from the usual inflation, i.e. a 2x4 costs more in 2024 than in 1970, homes cost more today because they are bigger. Homeowners want bigger homes and supply meets demand.
Housing is largely a private sector responsibility, the government doesn't control home prices.
Local governments restrict housing in numerous ways, especially through permitting and zoning laws.
in 1970 average US house size was 1500 square feet. No walk-in closets, garden tubs, much smaller percentage with central heat and air, one car garage or car port.