> towns can't find employees all because housing is out of reach for the working and lower-middle class.
Why not simply increase the supply?
Why not simply increase the supply?
If you want to actually solve the housing crisis, you just have to build more housing. It really is that simple.
It's because some people here own real estate and don't want to see YIMBY policies that would cause their rental income to fall
Some people would increase density until we're all living in Blade Runner hoping it would make rents drop.
Increasing the supply means building new buildings, and that often means building huge lots of five-over-ones, priced as luxury apartments in a growing market. The people building the new supply expect to make a profit, and in a market with growing prices, they aren't selling for less than what they think they can get out of it.
We see this in big cities where vacancies are at an all-time high (aka a lot more supply), but prices aren't going down.
You are putting forward that landlords acted collectively to increase the price of realestate. This is obviously wrong. The price of homes is determined by the market. It doesn’t matter who owns those homes, they are worth what the market says they are. Landlords do not control the market and even if they banded together in a conspiracy to increase the price of homes, they couldn’t because the vast majority of homes are owned by regular people.
The high price of housing is caused by a shortage. If you don’t believe me then watch the 60 minutes segment about it. There’s no conspiracy. If there weren’t landlords building new stock it would be even worse. It’s so ironic that the hive mind spits in the face of the only people building new housing; the only people making the problem better.
Landlords and homeowners and the finance industry don't control the market... they just form a political bloc that controls zoning and taxes and transportation infrastructure and central finance, and these knobs in turn control the market. For some reason, they always vote for policies that pump their holdings. Can't imagine why. These policies do create problems, though, and it's not only reasonable to attribute the problems back to the people who voted for them, it's unreasonable to do anything else.
"It's just the market!" is on par with "Look, a squirrel!" in terms of critical thinking.
The landlords don't need to conspire - they know what's good for them and the politicians either own property themselves or are connected enough to landlords to help them out.
None of these parties have an immediate interest in the lower class affording housing or maintaining the community fabric in the long term - especially the faceless incorporated ones.
There's no super strong market force to push the price of a house down, while there is a large market force to keep it valued where it is or make it go higher.
It's also difficult to tease out the effect of general price inflation. If house prices stay stagnant but currency is devauled, prices are decreasing in real terms.
Where?
Rents go down when landlords go bankrupt.
That's what happened in 2009-2010. It took about 4 years after peak homebuilding, and 2.5 years after peak home prices, and about 12-18 months after the financial crisis started. Real estate tends to lag financial markets by about that time period. But it does happen - eventually markets respond to supply and demand, and firms that try to buck the trend get swept out of the market.
Owners make money leaving properties vacant all the time. In fact, in many markets capital gains have been much more significant than rental income for a long time now.
There are people who own vacant houses that they have zero interest in renting, and are not looking to sell. This could be a vacation home for a billionaire that they seldom get around to visiting, but want to have ready for them, and just have staff check in periodically. Renting it when not in use may be uninteresting (have to lock up their belongings, arrange some form of management company, have insurance concerns (if somebody realizes they are renting from a billionaire, they might get "hurt", hoping for a big quick payday) etc.)
Similarly there are vacant houses own by speculators that have zero interest in renting out the unit, and are not currently looking to sell, since the market isn't right yet.
This is among many other scenarios where vacant does not mean available to rent or purchase (well at least not at anything close to market rates. Some of these people may reconsider if offered way above market rates, but that generally only happens if a property is uniquely valuable to just that one buyer.)