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Comment by foxfired | Hacker News Reader

For once, this directly affect me. I've been looking for a place since November 2022 in Los Angeles and it's the opposite that I see.

In November, I'd find 4 bedrooms for $3800 (2000+sqf). I thought it was expensive, but someone always got it before me. Now we are in March and I can't find anything reasonably close with 4 bedrooms for less than $4,500. And again, someone is always snatching these before I get them.

Maybe when you average out all the prices it seems to be going down. But browsing through the zill/apt/red/etc. does feel like prices are going up.

... still looking for a place by the way

View on HN

4br isn't exactly a common scenario in the apartment market. I doubt there are enough of them to even make a dent in overall statistical analysis.

The latest episode of the Odd Lots Podcast (Feb. 27, 2023) titled "Why We Don't Build More Apartments for Families"

> On this episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we explore the hidden incentives and regulations that deter builders from making more family-friendly buildings.

I have friend who own apartments for rent. They have a rule that they’ll never buy large apartments and they’ll never rent to families. Their reasoning was that:

1. Families who rent are likely unstable because, all else equal, a family would prefer to own due to the stability owning provides.

2. It’s too heartbreaking to evict a family.

Just a random anecdote

I just want to point out that, in the US, it is illegal to not rent to families. More specifically, it is illegal to discriminate based on familial status. Whether anyone is actually enforcing that in a particular area may be a different matter.

That's not what the parent comment was saying. They were saying that there is a reasonable explanation to not develop properties that cater to families - e.g. 4 bedrooms. The alternative is that the 4-bedroom that you conceivably might construct would rent out to 4 individuals who would split the bill...which also introduces a whole bunch of other challenges.

Overall point still seems valid - which is there is little financial advantage to renting out a 4-bedroom property and thus a limited supply.

They said “they have a rule that they’ll never buy large apartments *and they’ll never rent to families*.”

The second part is the illegal discrimination.

People get around this by never putting themselves in the position of having to refuse. If, as a landlord, you only ever buy single bedroom apartments and studios, you aren’t going to run into families that need 4 bedrooms. It’s not illegal for the landlord to discriminate as to what sort of properties they buy.

I mean, gp recounted a story about someone who has a policy against renting to families, so so it sounds like they do refuse sometimes. Also, where I live, lots of families live in one or two bedroom apartments.

Whether anyone is actually enforcing that in a particular area may be a different matter.

And whether or not it actually is enforceable is yet another. Who would know if a small landlord passed over an applicant because they had a family? Maybe big landlords could be monitored, but I’ve Had a single rental house for 5 years and I’ve been through 2 tenants in that time, no one could detect any trends in that small sample.

It is weird to force a landlord to take customers they know they don't want. Especially when it comes to renting, where the behaviour of your customers does make a big difference. Looking at my current house, we have 10 appartments, and one family. Guess who is contributing to the noise the most? If I were a landlord, I'd also not take any families.

> It is weird to force a landlord to take customers they know they don't want.

What you call "weird" others call discrimination. Many racist folks didn't want to rent to black people or other minorities bc they "didn't want them". Others didn't want to rent to see senior citizens or people with disabilities.

Protected classes exist for a reason! It is socially optimal to not allow businesses to discriminate against many groups of people.

There's also an incredibly high bar to prove housing discrimination. It's not like all housing applications are reviewed by an enforcement agency and statistical anomalies in approval rates are investigated. Protected classes are really only protected from the most blatant forms of discrimination.

Is the opposite disallowed in the US? In Germany, we have plenty of housing coops and state run builders that e.g. discriminate against single (young?) men. I've tried half a dozen of these not-for-profit entities before I found one that said "we don't care who you are. If you want to live here and you can pay the rent, we're fine with it".

The "no discrimination allowed" is often just "no discrimination allowed that we don't approve of".

one day maybe all groups will be protected groups

Sure, I get it. However, as a person with a disability, I can tell you one thing for sure: I much prefer knowing that someone doesnt want me. Imagine someone was forced by law to take you as a customer, but doesn't like you at all. Can you imagine how you are going to be treated? Doy ou really think insisting does improve things? I very much doubt that. I very much prefer living somewhere where there is no hate towards me.

So, given that personal observation, I really ask myself: What good does it do to force people to cooperate with humans they dont like?

Imagine someone was forced by law to take you as a customer, but doesn't like you at all

I don’t care if the pharmacy clerk likes me or approves of my lifestyle, but I do expect them to fill my prescription even if it’s against their feelings or religious beliefs. I don’t see how a fair society can exist without anti-discrimination laws.

Your comparison isn't really appropriate. In a shop, I can walk in, get my stuff, and walk out in a few minutes. If you rent, your landlord will always be your landlord, and there are plenty of opportunities for ongoing conflict. As a person with disability, I know that I will loose if someone picks a fight with me.

Maybe you should try to put yourself in the position of someone with lower priviledges before blindly insisting that anti-discrimination laws are all we need to fix things.

They don’t suggest they actually fixed things, just that they were necessary. In a true profit maximizing meritocracy many disabled people would not be able to survive because nobody would employ them etc. The degree of accommodation required by law isn’t about the disabled so much as the issues should people be allowed to systematically exclude them.

> In a true profit maximizing meritocracy many disabled people would not be able to survive because nobody would employ them etc.

Just give them money?

Giving people money isn't profitable

Duh. Neither is going to the cinema or displaying paintings in your living room.

You can see charity as a form of (possibly conspicuous) consumption, if you will.

The person I'm replying to replied to someone discussing a profit maximizing entity which is the context. I understand there is value to other behaviors but corporations don't

Corporations are supposed to do whatever their shareholders want.

The default assumption is that shareholders want to maximize profit, but shareholders can also want different things.

In any case, even the most ruthless capitalist society imaginable is not made out of corporations alone. Corporations are just a legal shell. People work for them, people own them, people buy their products, etc.

In a true profit maximizing meritocracy some disabled people might not get a job (though they still might, at lower pay commensurable with their productivity). [0]

But there's nothing stopping people from (a) charitable giving, or (b) enacting laws to give tax payer funded assistance to disabled people.

(You might argue with (b), but you can't really argue with (a).)

[0] Compared to eg someone like John von Neumann, I'm an idiot, but I can still find work even with my comparatively weak intellect. I just can't expect as much pay as John von Neumann would warrant. Of course, that pay might in principle be low enough that people can't survive on it. That's where charity and/or public assistance comes in.

That's the default assumption because I'd you analyze the behavior of corporations, that's literally what they do. It doesn't matter if they could do other things. The fact is that they don't

People work for them because generally they don't have a choice. Not everyone has decision making power and 95% of workers need to follow what their boss says. Most Americans can't lose their job because they don't have savings, they barely make enough to survive

You’re actually arguing for the opportunity to be excluded from the housing market entirely? Or you can’t imagine that would happen, and you’re just in favor of being forced to pay more for worse housing? Because we don’t have to do this as a hypothetical with spherical cows - it used to be legal, for all kinds of disadvantaged groups, and it wasn’t better for them. Women, black people, parents, people with criminal histories, people who were unemployed, or Chinese, Irish, Jewish, etc…

So, maybe you should stop assuming that you are the only person in the conversation who knows what they are talking about.

Sounds like in at least 6 states, your pharmacist can indeed not to give you medicine?

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/2152/religious-...

It's not a matter of hatred in the vast majority of the cases, but convenience and profits. In a society where discrimination on the basis of disability is permitted, you may find that as people with disabilities cannot get a taxi or get on an airplane: the disability makes such a service more expensive to run and capitalism and profit maximization eliminates it naturally, no hate needed. Perhaps at some point an enterprising entity decides to break into the market of providing services for people with disabilities, at three times the cost of a normal fare. That would be somewhat better, but still not ideal.

I know this would happen because I moved from a country without anti-discrimination laws to a country with. I encountered more people on wheelchairs in the public during my first month in the latter than the previous 20-something years in the former. In the absence of anti-discrimination laws, all avenues for participation of people with disabilities in the society, even things as simple as going grocery shopping, was all but non-existent. As far as I know it still is like that in the old country. Not because people hate everyone needing a wheelchair: people are reasonably nice and thoughtful in the old country too. But in the absence of laws forcing accommodations, no accommodations are made, with obvious results.

> I moved from a country without anti-discrimination laws to a country with

Maybe the country you moved to was also rich and with a functioning free-market economy?

Capitalism naturally incentivizes entrepreneurs to seek and serve niche markets while doing everything to accept and accommodate potential customers.

In contrast, planned, state-run economies don't care in the slightest and just do the bare minimum required by law. Here is your job to jump through the hoops and manage to give them your money.

> Maybe the country you moved to was also rich and with a functioning free-market economy?

Yes, but the economy of the old country, while poorer, was not exactly state-run. All grocery stores were private businesses created by entrepreneurs. Same with taxis. Yet neither accommodated people with disabilities. It was not like grocery stores were owned by the government and those who ran them were disinterested government employees. They were private businesses who made their own decisions and still they did not accommodate people with disabilities.

I find it strange that people seem to think serving people with disabilities at "three times the price" is reasonable. In this so called free market economy, disabled people likely wouldn't have money to pay for those services because nobody would employ them. It would also likely be much more difficult for them to start their own businesses. There would be essentially no customers, so it wouldn't be a profitable business model.

Regulation is important, regulation literally creates and shapes the markets and allows people to participate in society where they would otherwise be unable to

Everything has a cost. Serving special needs may costs more. A rich society can decide and afford to cover that cost and that is perfectly fine. A developing economy on the other hand, may decide to impose that cost on its businesses, thus unwittingly weakening itself.

Regulation is not free and doesn't magically make our wishes come true. It just moves costs around, hiding them and often preventing the free market from minimizing them.

There is no such thing as a free market without regulation. Governments create money, they regulate it. Without the regulation of how business is conducted and how things are transacted there would be no market, do you realize that?

Who said anything about a complete lack of regulations?

Generally in rich countries, it is not "the society" that covers the cost. For example, government does not give money to grocery stores to create ramps and accessible bathrooms—they fine the stores that don't have them. That's the core of accessibility regulations in rich countries, like ADA in the US.

The difference between rich countries, the government forces the businesses to accommodate people with disabilities at the cost to the business. In poor countries, at least the one I came from, they leave it to the businesses to make that decision themselves. The result is that in rich countries are much more accessible than poor countries.

I don't know if your model (where "the society", which I guess means the government pays for this stuff) is tested in any jurisdiction. If it has, I would appreciate a link to an article about the results. But the model where businesses are forced by regulations to cover the costs works very well, as evidenced by how accessible US is thanks to ADA.

The money always comes from the citizens, no matter who pays. If the government pays - it is taken through increased taxes. If the business pays - it is taken through increased prices. But it's always the people's money - lifted from you and me.

The difference is whether the whole society pays (via taxes or higher overall prices at the till because of the higher cost of doing business) or the person needing the extra service does. In the countries without anti-discrimination laws, those in discriminated groups (like people with disabilities) tend to have a much lower quality of life—they cannot get hired, even if they get hired they earn much less, they cannot access services, even if they can they must pay much more. In the societies that have these sorts of regulations, the whole society bears the extra cost, so everyone's individual burden is lower and manageable.

My point still stands—unless the society via regulations forces businesses to accommodate groups like people with disabilities, those groups will be excluded from society, as they are in my old country.

Because you could end up with a scenario where there is nothing available.

It would only be weird if we did not live in a society. We as a society have decided it is wrong, for example, to not hire someone because they have a disability and it would be an inconvenience to accommodate their disability, or to pay them less to account for the extra inconvenience, or to charge people with disabilities more for services (such as a plane ticket) because of those extra costs or inconveniences. We as a society have made similar decisions about treatment of people based on their ethnicity, gender, and many more criteria, including family status.

Keep in mind the accommodation has to be reasonable - which is, largely intentionally, left up for the courts to decide on a case-by-case basis.

That’s textbook discrimination. The reason it is banned is because people have a right to housing regardless of familial status and business owners desire to avoid inconvenience.

Its often surprised me how anti-children many of the people in the West are. Children make noise, children are the future of your society. You make it difficult for families to live and children to be children and then are surprised when demographics are getting worse with no young folks. Interestingly, in India, the discrimination is the other way round and bachelors and unmarried folks find it harder to rent. Here there is no protection against that and a lot of listings, especially in good neighborhoods will explicitly specifiy, families only. People will conjure up parents and bring them over for a few months sometimes to make it look like they are a 'family'.

It's not just the west. It's even worse in Chinese cities, for example. Maybe has something to do with age demographics.

I don't mind children, but I prefer to not live around dysfunctional families that make the children run their household. People who say stuff like "children noise is the music of the future" have never lived below a family with children that really made noise (or I guess maybe they have, but they've lived in a bunker). I have, and you no longer live alone, you live with the constant noise that's sometimes higher, sometimes lower, but it's never gone unless you get ear plugs.

I'm fine with children, but they need to have adults that reign them in. That's a coin flip, so I wouldn't ever move anywhere again, knowing that families with children live above/below/next to me.

Full ACK. However, we are quite a minority. However, parents dont want to hear about their responsibilities...

ACK==acknowledge?

I'd argue the parents of said children are anti-children, because they are living in an apartment building without any possibility to play for the children nearby. There is nothing they can use outdoors to get rid of excess energy. Parents could have found something a few kilometers away, but apparently did not care about their chldren. I dont see why I should be especially understanding if the parents are unwilling to live somewhere where their children can have fun. The fact remains that they are very loud and parents apparently are bad at parenting.

> I'd argue the parents of said children are anti-children, because they are living in an apartment building without any possibility to play for the children nearby.

What do you have to say about the fact that apartments are the only option?

It feels to me that you're trying to depict not living in a nice suburban villa as subjecting children to abuse, as if this was a whimsical decision of egotistical parents.

Meanwhile, moving to the suburbs is a luxury that's way out of the reach of working class families, not to mention the fact that outside of the US it's outright unthinkable.

And all the time wasted commuting is not considered abuse why?

To me it reads you're claiming "let them eat cake", followed up by "not letting children eat cake is anti-children."

I know for a fact that child-friendly-suburbian appartments are actually cheaper then the city-center-appartment they have now. But you can go on and assume all sorts of bad things about me, that doesnt change my opinion about egotistical parents.

A proper city has plenty of places for children to play even in its center. But maybe I'm just an outdated european.

You seem to be living in a proper city, good for you. Move on, there is nothing to see here.

Most cities aren't proper by that definition. So congrats on being the exception but that's not really helpful to the broader discussion.

> Most cities aren't proper by that definition.

OP is not the exception. I have at least two playgrounds in a 300m radius. Perhaps I'm lucky but I don't recall ever living in a place that didn't had at least a playground in walking distance.

Might I strongly suggest, as a person who recognizes outsized emotional reactions to sound in myself… you may have misophonia? Maybe address that for yourself if that’s the case, because it’s bound to affect more than your relationship with families living in your midst.

Are you suggesting that everyone who doesnt approve of aggravating families is actually ill? Seriously?

I’m suggesting that there’s a name for feeling outsized emotional reactions to noise (whether particular sounds, or in general). I don’t know if that applies to you, but it helped me learning there is a word for it and that other people experience it too. In no way was I trying to suggest anything negative about you.

> bachelors and unmarried folks find it harder to rent.

Muslims as well

Your argument would be better if there was better, more available social housing. As there isn’t, and shelter should be considered a human right, discrimination must be discouraged.

Objectively it’s not weird where the law contradicts what you might prefer. If you want to discriminate you can discuss that without characterizing what’s normal or weird. But I suspect that doesn’t make you sound like a very good prospective landlord.

Some landlords are stupid enough to put it in writing.

You are allowed to discriminate when renting out your rental house assuming it’s a single family house and you’re the owner and not using an agent (under federal law, maybe not under state). So it’s not a lack of enforcement against small time landlords like you, it’s that it’s probably not illegal.

> it is illegal to discriminate based on familial status.

I think the point was why you can't find 4 bedroom apartments for rent.

People don't want to rent to families, they don't buy 4 bedroom apartments and they don't rent them. It's not that they actively discriminate against families, they just don't buy properties that would cater to families.

I am not a landlord and probably won't ever be one, but looking at it from a financial standpoint, it seems smarter to have 2 2br 1ba apartments for rent than 1 4br 2ba apartment. They would take up roughly the same space, albeit maybe with smaller rooms, but 2 $1500 incomes would provide a more stable income than 1 $3,000 apartment if for no other reason than it is unlikely both tenants would leave at the same time.

Worst case you drop to $1,500 for a month or so instead of losing all $3,000 income while you wait for a new tenant to appear.

> They would take up roughly the same space

Each apartment has 1 bedroom, 1 living room, 1 entryway.

Because you are maintaining two boilers, heating systems, plumbing, etc.

While you’re generally correct it’s important to note that the Fair Housing Act’s discrimination provisions don’t apply to all housing so it is actually sometimes legal to discriminate based on familial status. It’s probably not relevant here because we’re talking apartments it seems (although a 4BR is a huge apartment).

Huh, TIL. https://rentprep.com/blog/legal/landlords-refuse-rent-famili...

People rent detached homes to families all the time. My sister does it and I live next to a family who rents a detached home. Why would the viewpoint of owners be any different with renting apartments to families??

Detached homes are more isolated noise-wise, that's often not the case in apartments. If you rent out apartments, you want low-trouble tenants, not someone you might get a lot complaints about. That's also why many try to exclude people with dogs, they don't want to deal with dogs howling all day and neighbors complaining.

Additionally, families can be very stable tenants but that is a negative if your city has rent control. It is better to have turn over to stay at market rates.

I have the opportunity to build soon and it will all be 1 bedrooms. If rent control wasn't a thing I would gladly build for families. That is the city I want to live in.

Edit: You can downvote the truth all you want but it is still the truth.

While I understand their argument, on a social point of view this is utterly immoral.

It would be like saying "I do not want to rent to African Americans because they tend to be engage in more petty crime than White American people." And we all know there are very sad yet true stats to prove this.

Off topic disclaimer: Please do not read my comment as racist, as it is markedly egalitarian in nature: discriminating against families is still discrimination and is immoral and should be illegal.

What I am saying is that the social mesh in the United States is so fcuked up that many minorities tend to have a lower quality of life and thus have to resort to unsavoury ways to pay rent. The problem is structural and political, not them. See The Wire for more details.

Let's discuss the rent problem, not my example to prove the immorality of it please.

While that makes total sense, I think the market has been changing a lot. I suspect many more families are renting now where they might not have previously. Owning a place has become more difficult in many areas of the country.

Not sure of the numbers though. Just a feeling, could be totally wrong. Would love to know if there is data for this.

> person owns apartments for rent

That's problem right there.

Because families want homes with backyards.

4br are often listed as 3br with an office or similar, but at that point you’re probably looking at renting a house.

But if I want to live in a walkable downtown location, houses aren't usually an option either.

So you're in a niche market that may behave differently than the wider ones.

(I have no idea if that's the case or not BTW)

It's kind of disappointing how much pigeonholing sibling commenters are doing in this thread. If I had kids, I sure as hell wouldn't raise them in the suburbs. Less people are having kids in-part because more people live in cities in NA and the calculation is made that not only is it unaffordable to raise a family, but there's no availability either. The suburbs would be my choice if I already had the kids and ran out of viable options to house them where I live, in an urban area.

People planning to have kids want to live in the suburbs because the U.S., in its infinite wisdom, funds schools from local property taxes. If you live where there are nice houses, you get to send your kids to nice schools.

In many cities some of the most expensive real estate is in or adjacent to the downtown area because those areas were built before cars and so they’re walkable and appropriately dense. Since they are rare now and illegal to rebuild, the value of those neighborhoods is quite high and they are often considered the nicer homes. Architecturally there is little doubt. Only a custom build can compare.

Most in the suburbs don’t live in a “nice home”. There are more expensive homes dictated by tiers where you have more square footage and maybe a pool or something but these homes aren’t particularly nice either and aren’t well designed in the interior or exterior. Typically this is because there is too much space to do anything neat or useful.

Of course you’re right that many states fund schools through property tax and why I’m bemused by Republican efforts to initiate school voucher programs because based on typical policy relying on home ownership and property taxes to fund schools “keeps the undesirables out”. Once you go the voucher route you can’t do that anymore. Of course you can say well they’ll charge extra fees and such, but that’s assuming that families in the suburbs can afford extra monthly payments on top of everything else and I just don’t see it.

On the other hand vouchers can be a nice tool. Why should someone be forced to go to a bad school because they can only afford rent or a mortgage in the cheaper part of town? Maybe every kid gets a voucher to attend any public school they wish and the schools have to adjust. Finding a way to create competition within the public school system should be examined. Districting and property taxes for schools are probably regressive, especially for a child who has very little agency in the matter but has the most need.

Houses in the suburbs end up costing more than they contribute in property taxes. I'd guess though that it's a possible inequity that the suburbs pay directly into local school in those suburbs, and more efficient housing developments subsidize their infrastructure for them instead of funding schools.

The U.S in it's infinite wisdom is great at siphoning money away from people who have the least of it.

4br are very common in specific markets e.g. college towns, but yeah in professional areas probably not. Families needing to rent will probably look for houses more than apartments.

> 4br isn't exactly a common scenario in the apartment market.

On the builders side maybe not, because it's less profitable to build a highrise or large block with few but large units that have low churn and so less opportunities to raise rent.

On the demand side however? Completely hot market, because families want their children to have separate rooms (a fact that has been correlated with learning success even in 2006 [1], and most obviously during the pandemic years). A 3BR is barely enough for a family with two children, but now with the rise of home-office/fully remote work you'll need a 4 or even 5 BR simply to have enough room.

[1] https://taz.de/Enge-macht-dumm/!409005/

I think prices are mainly going down in smaller areas where rents went up A TON (which is something like 30-40% of the country by population).

This is because the amount of new units deployed was staggering.

In some towns in the Texas Triangle, there were literally more new units delivered this year than existing supply.

Doing something like that in LA or NYC would be absurd, given how much existing supply there is... Nevermind the Nimbyism.

And yet, Orlando has something like a 1/3rd increase in supply coming. So there are some big cities that are exceptions.

If you're in a place like NYC or LA or Chicago - where the increase in supply is like 2% - don't expect much relief from new supply...

Where do you determine that on a city level? Is there an article

https://www.reddit.com/r/realestateinvesting/comments/11dnrl...

There's a few companies that sell data on stabilized units, units under construction, and units expected to deliver in the year.

I don't know of anyone that makes the data public - but maybe someone else does???

Hey made this account to share my experience…

My wife and I have been looking to buy something in LA and we’ve been outbid by $100k+ twice already.

The LA market is simply insane whether you’re buying or renting. The only “deals” I’ve seen are on properties with clear flaws (e.g. poor location, bad floor plan, etc.)

I’m not sure where you’re looking exactly, but all I can do is wish you luck and say yes, LA real estate is tough.

Find something with a flaw that can be mitigated for $100k maybe. Like a foundation issue or something.

from personal experience... i would be careful with that idea. at least in NYC anything that seems like it surely cant cost more than 100k will cost you 250

Yeah, you really need to be certain on the cost.

I've seen many with gotchas. Pictures look fantastic, first visit looks great, and then on the lease it says this is just the model unit. The actual unit available is the one facing the freeway.

With these prices I'd love to buy, but it takes a while to gather the deposit with a new job. If all fails, orange county it is.

Wish you luck as well :)

Is Orange County any cheaper?

I think it is less about price and more about availability.

The Metrolink has been fairly-improved and more lines are actually being built to service more area. If everything you need to do is near one of their stations, I'd try to find cheaper housing out in an area close to one of those stations (Riverside, San Bernardino, Fontana, Corona, etc.) I lucked out in that my job and home are very close to Metrolink stations, and if I'm on my e-bike I can just use the bike trail in the Santa Ana river and go home/get to work that way. I still drive because it is usually faster (and cheaper) than taking the train, but trains are an option.

Ha yes, always the freeways! That’s such a common thing 9 times out of 10 something looks too good to be true, it’s the freeway driving down the price.

I grew up in OC and it’s not bad, depending on where you are exactly and what your interests are.

Honestly, I don’t blame people that get up and leave for another state. But silly me, I’m not willing to leave my friends and family (and of course the weather).

I bought a fixer-upper house in Santa Clarita last year. If you don't mind being 20 minutes north of the valley it's a pretty awesome place and the prices don't bite (as much) like the rest of LA.

there's nothing "insane" about renting in LA

I see 1 bedroom apartments for $2k-ish everywhere. 2 bedroom apartments for less than $3500. that's just normal if not below average for a major metro.

Dunno that seems pretty nuts to me. I live in Australia: known to have one of the most unaffordable and bonkers property markets in the world, and I live 1.5km from the centre of Brisbanes CBD, and pay $2800 for a 3/2/2 townhouse with a backyard…

Different markets have different realities. People have to compare their relative markets.

I live in Israel near Tel Aviv. Your $2800 (I'm assuming AUD) is 10% more than my mortgage. I live 10 minutes from the beach (and downtown), 2 minutes from a forest, and have a 5+.

If your value was USD then everything I just wrote holds true fro Tel Aviv, one of the most expensive markets in the world. OPs original post would get him a fantastic place here ~15 minutes from the beach and 15 minutes from work.. on foot. But salaries also don't match that.

That sounds perhaps normal for New York or California metros. But even in Portland, which is not renowned for it's affordable housing options, a two bedroom apartment downtown can be had for $1800/mo, and a three bedroom for $2800/mo.

I respectfully disagree. LA is one of the least affordable metros when factoring in income. It gets even worse when you start looking for a place with a specific commute, washer/dryer, adequate off street parking, etc.

It's not. Median rents in NYC is over $4k. LA is nowhere near that.

"Factoring income" is also a non-sensical qualifier for how expensive a metro is. Using that measure then Miami would be considered far and away the most expensive metro in the country.

> I’ve seen are on properties with clear flaws (e.g. poor location, bad floor plan, etc.)

How do you determine these?

Look at where the house is, and look inside the house, respectively.

some examples:

For location it’s common for a property to be in a generally desirable area, but situated right next to a freeway (noise and bad for health) or located right on a busy street (not quite as bad as a freeway, but in certain cases it could be difficult to even get out of your own driveway).

For floor plan, the biggest offenders I’ve seen are configurations that limit the usability of the space.

Narrow bathrooms and kitchens that feel almost claustrophobic. In one case I saw a bathroom that was barely wider than the toilet! I’ve seen kitchens that two people cooking would barely be able to maneuver around. I’ve seen bedrooms that are basically closet sized, which is strictly worse than just having one less bedroom. I’ve seen large lot sizes, but half the lot is on a slope and not able to be used as a backyard.

This could be observation bias because the above-median listings are going to sit longer. So you scroll through, and that's what you see. The at-market or below-market listings will be quickly filled and removed. The same thing happens in the for-sale market too.

The same thing is true for order books for stocks. Anything that matches the buyer and seller at an agreeable price is fulfilled. The people selling too high or bidding too low sit on the order book longer.

The rental market varies considerably from market to market. Where I live, there seems to be no end in sight for rental increases.

I own a few rental properties. During my last renewal cycle, I kept rent flat and every single tenant renewed no questions asked. A friend was competing with 30 other people for a townhouse rental for them and their two kids.

Obviously this is one stranger’s uninformed opinion, but I do believe this situation will change faster than people would think.

So much money has been put into real estate as an investment due to unprecedentedly cheap debt over many years that it’s only beginning to unwind now.

Prices are falling, at least regionally. I don’t see how the real estate market can support small falls without a full crash, as unless there are substantial gains each year, landlords are facing mounting adjusted losses due to interest rate rises. Given the amount of leverage in real estate, most won’t be able to weather this storm without becoming insolvent, and those that can won’t be willing to do so.

tldr; I have high confidence this is just the beginning of a severe correction. (Again, just an armchair observer with an opinion).

> I don’t see how the real estate market can support small falls without a full crash, as unless there are substantial gains each year, landlords are facing mounting adjusted losses due to interest rate rises.

In the US at least, this is unlikely to happen as mortgages are almost all fixed-rate. In fact, with inflation pushing up rents and reducing everyone's relative amount of debt, it's probably a great time to be a landlord.

Different markets can behave wildly differently. Not just different states/cities but different kind of homes too (appartment vs single family, size, standing, etc).

So talking about the overall market always hides big differences in each market.

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