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Comment by newbie578 | Hacker News Reader

I do wonder what country will be the first one to ‘break’ and implement restrictions on buying homes. The current situation is not sustainable, and soon something will need to give.

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Governments should just build a bunch of socialized housing and rent it at a rent just high enough to offset the expenditure (i.e. way below private market value). That would put downward pressure on rents. That is what Vienna did and they are the only popular city in Europe without a serious housing crisis.

No need. Just upzone lots of land and developers will do it for you.

I think that may depend a great deal on if you consider a years-long waiting list for socialized housing to be a serious housing crisis.

For my own part, I'm going to say that Vienna's approach has not actually solved the key supply problem.

The point is not to get the socialized housing yourself. The point is that the private market rent prices go down, which is objectively true of Vienna.

Yes, I follow the point. I am disputing your characterization of "popular city in Europe without a serious housing crisis". On the strength of available evidence, Vienna has what can be fairly described as a serious housing crisis.

That would be so perverse if the government gave itself a monopoly on building housing. Just change zoning and make it legal for the private market to meet the need. Look at all the builders remedy projects in Santa Monica to see that this works.

Builders Remedy affect on the affordability of Santa Monica is so minimal as to be irrelevant.

What definition of "monopoly" are you using here...?

It being illegal, due to restrictive zoning, for private parties to build at higher densities.

Oh, okay. I was confused because you said monopoly on housing, not dense housing.

Yes they should force more zones to allow dense housing too.

Sorry, the "private market" had a chance to fix the problem but instead chose to squeeze tenants harder and harder for decades.

Housing is more or less maxed out with respect to zoning laws in a lot of places. Those come from the government. Rezone to allow higher density and people will build. It is functionally illegal to build more housing.

Yes, because of NIMBYism. Existing property owners benefit from an undersupply of housing, so they lobby for restrictions in order to reduce competition which would drive down prices and rents.

The UK had this system (council housing) and then basically dismantled it in the 80s. Then imposed some even more stupid rules. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41324305

Woking council managed to make some terrible investments and is now bankrupt: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-65920223

It hasn't been dismantled. In fact, 20% of the private rental market is supported by the government.

All that happened is that councils stopped building homes and sold some of the ones they had to current occupants (and councils actually also have control over planning permission, so they did this and blocked anyone from building new houses at all).

There is other stuff going on (it is likely impossible for the UK to build enough housing given demographic trends atm) but this is all caused by not building enough houses (the reason why investors are buying houses in Canada is because there aren't enough of them, it is all the same problem).

I saw a YouTube video describing Singapore housing and it sounded similar to this, but for condos not rentals.

Or "break" and allow more people to WFH.

Government are some of the largest employers in most areas. You WFH as many employees as possible, and you will see a measurable decrease in traffic, improvement in air quality, and reduction in urban housing competition as WFH employees can move to lower COL areas.

But many of the housing benefits are only possible if it is permanent WFH. The problem during COVID was that employers weren't willing to commit and therefore employees has to maintain the ability to resume commuting.

It is strange to me that WFH isn't brought up relating to housing affordability.

I do wonder what country, besides Japan, will be the first one to 'break' and realize that, when you restrict supply in the face of rising demand, prices rise. The current situation is sustainable for as long as voters keep voting in NIMBY politicians. Something may give, but something may not.

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-en...

It's absolutely about NIMBYs, but I wouldn't blame "NIMBY politicians" as they are responding to the demands of their voters (else they fairly soon wouldn't be politicians).

An interesting article about the UK has never really built houses, except for a very short time before the second world war: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-britain-doesnt-build If we haven't built sufficient houses for this long it's hard to see what could change to allow us to build more.

The problem is that it's a location supply problem, rather than a housing supply problem. People all want to live in the same locations, that are already full of houses.

Toronto is full of single family homes, right in the heart of the city. This should not have happened.

You should be able to density.

As part of housing reform, we can also make more locations worth living in. There are plenty of small towns that could use the help (e.g. the Rust Belt)

> realize that, when you restrict supply in the face of rising demand, prices rise.

Everyone knows this, so as long as there's a majority of homeowners who benefit from pushing values up, the problem is going to get worse.

Plenty of countries do, for ex in Asia see Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc.

I know in Indonesia it's basically impossible for a foreigner to own land. Of course there's workarounds, but for the most part you at least need to have some local connections for some time to be able to access the less-than-legal workarounds, so it's still quite good

If you read the article, there are already restrictions on purchases. This 30% pertains to people that have taken out a mortgage on a property, when they already have an existing property mortgage. What case is there for restricting that?

I’ve read the article but don’t see details on there about Canada having restrictions on buying homes. Can you elaborate on what the restrictions are, outside of the price being too high for many people?

I imagine the person you’re replying to means restrictions more along the lines of limits on one home per person, or increased taxes on secondary or investment homes, or restrictions on who can buy an home, etc.

Replying to myself because I see it now:

> Instead, Ottawa has targeted foreign real estate buyers with a ban on purchases until the end of 2024.

Canada has already banned foreign buyers, in some cases even if they are legally living/working in Canada. (This is despite the fact that it’s mostly an ongoing domestic speculation problem, as indicated here, … and despite the fact that Canadians own billions of dollars of property in the US and elsewhere.)

it would be nice if it werent sustainable and something had to change. unfortunately i don't see any reason why it cant just continue to get worse. it could get a lot worse.

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