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Comment by Pet_Ant | Hacker News Reader

Generally the presence of other people devalues places. You want just enough of the right number of people and that’s it.

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Thought experiment.

What is worth more?

The average house in the country with a couple of acres of land or a 700square foot condo in Manhattan.

Generally the presence of other people tend to push up property values as it brings in a lot more amenities.

I and many others would take the house with the land, unless I'm being forced to live in the city for work. When remote work became a necessity, we saw tons of people (and speculative investors) buying up housing in cheaper states.

The real trouble with doing that, for families, is that rural & small-town schools are almost all bad, compared with suburban schools. Makes it an unrealistic (or, at least, pretty undesirable) option unless you're homeschooling, so rich you can afford boarding school (unlikely any decent private schools will be in commuting range), or simply don't have and don't plan to have kids.

I'm not saying it's a majority, but I think a lot of suburb-dwellers would rather live in one or either of the country or the city, but are stuck in the 'burbs for the public schools.

Economic value and desirability are related but different concepts, though. You'd have to pay me big bucks for me to even consider living in that 700 square foot condo. Just because other people are also willing to make a similar compromise (driving up the price) doesn't mean any of us necessarily prefer that condo over other forms of living.

I find this kind of reasoning bizzare.

Yes, the economic value and desirability are exactly the same. You just seem to discount the location of the condo as not being part of the value the condo is providing. But it is in fact the most important part of the value.

Well depends on the person. to me personally I would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a couple acres of land in the country side, and would pay exactly $0 for any property in Manhattan

> Generally the presence of other people devalues places.

That's not it.

If you have a hundred acres of land and a hundred families and you require every house to be built on an acre of land, housing will be pretty expensive, because even the poor will have to pay the price for a full acre, when you might otherwise have mix of half acre lots, two acre lots, etc.

If you have a hundred acres of land and two hundred families and you require every house to be built on an acre of land, housing will be really expensive, because building enough for everyone is prohibited by law. And relaxing the zoning to allow higher density will lower housing prices because the supply of housing increases.

That's not because people don't want to live there anymore, it's just because you don't have to outbid your neighbors in a fight over the artificially scarce housing anymore because if you get more people you can build more housing.

And there's nothing about allowing higher densities that prohibits you from paying for the lower density housing -- it just doesn't prohibit someone else from doing otherwise. Which actually makes lower density housing more affordable, because you can buy it without having to outbid people who would choose higher density housing given the option.

Totally, that's why rent in Manhattan is extremely affordable :)

> Generally the presence of other people devalues places

this is why rent is so cheap in manhattan, san fransisco, london, etc

The most valuable residential land in the world is in the most densely populated places.

The most valuable residences in the world tend to be single tenant though.

The residences that cost the most are the ones that require buying the most land in the most expensive area. That's not really contradicting my point.

What is value? You can't really use dollar price as a measure of value unless everyone were given equal buying power, every house and apartment was listed on the market at the same time, and every job could be performed from any location.

Are you proposing an alternative measure? The market price is what affects people's budgets so that's the one I use.

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