Surprised there aren’t more comments here. This is great news for affordable housing right?
EDIT: However, I have some personal experience in single family zoned housing in the Bay Area, but I would really need to read up on the proposed changes first...
That said, I can say I felt very out of place and wish I had found a better, smaller place to live, for less.
Meanwhile, my first apt in SF was clearly built in a rush, the light switches were leaking, and homeless people would shoot up by the door. All for just over $3k/mo.
No thanks.
I imagine if this wound up higher on the page it would be flagged out
In the places I lived, new construction of big apartment complexes was correlated with prices going up. The new buildings charged more for rent, people paid it, and the surrounding housing followed.
https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/rdp/2018/pdf/rdp2018-03....
The mechanism is clear cut. Restrict supply, price goes up. There's quite a bit of empirical support as well.
I don't doubt what you've observed but I think it needs to be addressed rigorously.
What I haven’t seen is a case study or anecdote of something actually resulting in lower prices. (besides tech busts and covid in SF)
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3507803
The bar that you're asking for is too high. Relaxing zoning laws in a specific locale shouldn't lead to lower prices necessarily. It should lead to a smaller price increase than what would have otherwise occurred due to supply still being restricted elsewhere and the relative fungibility of low to mid income housing.
But I agree that it would be good to see an event study of a natural experiment in addition to the correlational studies. However given the existing evidence we have, as well as the underlying economic logic, we shouldn't pretend as though there's no basis for bringing up zoning as a major cause of high real estate prices.
I am seriously disappointed that you wrote such an awful comment.
Not sure about Houston, but our price increases here in Seattle have been anything but "slower than average." But that isn't to say that the price increases wouldn't have been worse if they didn't build housing like crazy here.
- Builders build because if high demand.
- Landlords raise rent because of high demand.
- High demand is based on the localities productivity. Places that are in high demand have lots of jobs that pay high wages.
The only way to relieve the pressure is to build faster than existing demand or to lower the productivity of the region.
I.e. it wasn’t demand but normalizing higher prices that people willing to pay high prices.
What I am asking for is actual demonstrated evidence of changing policies leading to changing housing supply leading to lower prices.
It's really telling when people look at the first 1-5 years of a building and ignore that this building will stand several decades there and with each decade that building becomes more affordable.
Seriously, how difficult is this to understand? High prices -> people build more -> more old stock -> more affordable housing.