When markets work they are very good at finding prices. But when they fail you get this sort of thing.
There needs to be a lot of planned intervention in the housing sector. Entities with a lot of capital need to build the houses that people need to live in where they need to live in them and then let them live in them.
The market will not do that.
People who are pro-market forces (such as myself) believe strongly that if you were allowed to build apartment buildings in neighborhoods like this that enough capital absolutely would be raised to raise supply. After all, you could take the current house I rent now and put in two walls for under 50k and start renting it out as a duplex two families but that is currently illegal. Hard to blame the market forces for this.
Though as a maximalist on this I'm still upset this is the best compromise we can get since the lot of this house is definitely big enough for more than just 2/4 units.
The house I live in is rented which means it actually wouldnt be eligible since the owner must live in the house for 3 years after turning it into a duplex.
Maybe this will incentivize owners of houses like this to sell to people who are willing to divide it in two? I hope so! But not sure.
Ha, did not know about the three year ownership requirement, classic CA NIMBYism. Still progress.
If you took government control out of the market prices would plummet. Any plank will do, supply, financial backing or interest rates and the whole thing comes crashing down. That’s the real problem, how to cause a 20% “correction” and not 80%.
My house is 8 hours from Vancouver, 8 hours from Calgary, 5 hours from Banff, it’s a town of 10,000 people, it was built in 1904 and is 2500 sqft. It’s been modestly renovated and is worth $950,000. The market is insane.
If so, revelstoke like Vancouver is actually pretty hemmed in by water and mountains. There isn’t an infinite amount of easy to build on land like the on the prairies.
Quality of life in revelstoke is probably amazing! Small town, ski hill, mountains, biking, snowmobiling, fishing, lakes, rivers, airport, and lots of jobs
Demand will always exceed supply in desirable locations, that is part of what makes them desirable. Would you spend 30% of you and your wife’s income to secure a plot in such a paradise? 40%? 50%? Lots of people will take the bet and risk. If you lose and go bankrupt well then you move to the easily affordable town in the equivalent of the fly over states. Odds are the million dollar mortgage will get inflated away you just have to tread water while interest rates are historically low until you can juice your income or hourly rate up enough to make the million dollars you are in debt seem trivial.
Oh it’s already inflated away 30% in less than a year. It was 30% of my income.
What is happening in Dallas which has no zoning rules? (Or am I thinking of Austin Texas?)
I do not know, but it would be useful for this debate
Houston is booming I hear.
They're cheaper because they can still expand outward more than SF, LA, NY, etc before hitting inconvenient geography. Lots of other places that benefit from this too, of course, not just Texas.
So I guess it works.
In any case, all three have rampant HOAs which serve the same purpose as zoning.
I was defending a "planned intervention".