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Comment by hackernewds | Hacker News Reader

RE is at massive peak levels already though that buyers cannot shell out those prices, esp as mortgage prices go up.

Worst part is the utterly absurd shortage means RE is never going to meaningfully dip for any period of time without serious structural reforms. The focus on interest rates as the main RE driver is almost completely cope and I wish I could believe it.

Low-rate mortgages certainly aren't helping, but they're "not helping" in the same way that hucking an armload of kindling into an already-raging house fire is "not helping".

I'm cautiously optimistic that societal unrest from this will eventually forcibly neuter local zoning controls but short of that we're just going to keep subsidizing demand and kicking the can down the road as if people don't need places to live.

I agree that local zoning is a problem, but I've seen a trend to try to turn it into the wild west. I'm not sure people building duplexes in R1 is really a solution. It seems like we need more medium density in commercial areas (e.g. four stories of apartments on top of one floor of commercial).

That could bring down rents and improve quality of life, and improve the suburbs as well. If you drive by a poorly-maintained house in the suburbs, that's probably someone who would live in medium density if it were available.

There’s a housing emergency in most places people want to live. If society wanted to have moderate solutions, they should have tried these conservative solutions before crisis point.

It’s like saying pouring water on a house fire is too extreme, maybe try an ABC extinguisher instead. The time for half measures is long past. If NIMBY home owners don’t like that there’s an apartment in their neighborhood, they can choke.

The problem is that everyone has their own oppinion on the matter, and will block anyone from trying out any other opinion.

At some point, you just need to build. If some ideas don’t pan out… then people will move, investors will lose. At present, even in densely populated Boston, any type of housing will command a high rate.

I've heard the idea to zone for one level above the average in an area, to avoid the wild west situation. Doubtful that would fly with some very rich single family neighbourhoods near cities, but perhaps it's too late for the gradual re-zoning and a more blunt approach is necessary.

Aside... where the heck is tech in building housing faster? Where's the prefab and automated assembly? Too many building regulations? Entrenched interests? Incredibly hard problem for large scale engineering?

This sub stack has some great coverage of those questions:

https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-its-hard-to-i...

Here's a tech companies few I know of:

-www.botbuilt.com - (W21) -Canvas -Built -AutoVol -https://www.diamondage3d.com/ -Entekra -Promise Robotics -Icon -Rent my backyard (YC)

The only reason there is a shortage is because money has been so cheap.

Just watch, in a few years things will have changed quite a bit.

The more desirable areas will still have demand of course, but what counts as desirable is shifting.

Local zoning codes change on the order of decades. That will take a long time to play out.

In theory a state could force cities to allow more development?

New Zealand had a bi-partisan agreement at the national level to prevent city council level restrictions, which is going to have a massive impact on the number of apartments built. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300433304/labour-n...

New rules that mean that property owners have a mostly automatic consent, if you build within the limitations. Councils and neighbours are mostly prevented from blocking development. There are rules/constraints on height, setbacks, shadowing (recession planes) etcetera, however the restrictions are not ridiculous.

Similarly, after the Christchurch earthquake (which caused a loss of about 5% of the housing stock), the government stepped in to force the local councils to allow more new development. https://www.mbie.govt.nz/dmsdocument/1088-housing-pressures-...

I would say NZ is fairly similar to Oregon if you want to compare size, population etcetera against the US. Although looks like NZ has more population in major cities than Oregon (Greater Auckland population 1.5M, cf Portland 650k). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_New_Zealand

Government is doing everything it can to prop up the assets of voters. MBS bailouts haven't stopped, Biden housing plan is all about subsidizing buyers, mortgage forbearance is as much as ever.

Will it work idk but if there's one thing the state is scared of it's voting boomer homeowners.

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