Hacker News Reader

Comment by purpleblue | Hacker News Reader

In Toronto, the number of condos that have been built is staggering. There must be hundreds of thousands of new condos in the last 20 years.

The prices have only gone up. The idea that new housing reduces cost is insane. All of the condos being built are at the top of the price range.

What needs to be done is NEW CITIES need to be created with business centers. Not adding more housing into already packed cities.

I have been saying for a decade that large tech employers like Google and Facebook should have created offices in the middle of the US, which cheaper neighborhoods, better schools, etc. Create opportunities for families to move out from the tech areas and enrich other parts of the country. But they keep doubling, tripling and quadrupling down on the Bay Area.

New cities need to be created with business centers, not new condos in old cities!

View on HN

I mean, imagine what housing in Toronto would cost if they didn't build those 100K+ condos? Pricing is composed of supply and demand, and the article is saying that holding demand constant, increasing supply lowers prices. Adding a marginal unit to the housing stock kinda has to result in lower or equal prices in the static case.

Toronto is growing insanely quickly, and supply can't meet demand. New cities are great, but a large number of people want to move to big and established population centres.

We are in violent agreement. Creating new condos will still keep the prices increasing, but it will be better than the situation where no new housing is built.

But the article specifically says "new homes reduce house prices." This is patently false.

Toronto is growing because there's no real business centers outside of Toronto for the 1 million immigrants a year that are coming in. We need to create viable options by expanding business outside of Toronto in new land, so that housing demand lessens.

FAANGs are not doubling down on the Bay Area. Several of them are making significant expansions in Austin, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, etc. I was told specifically by an Apple recruiter a couple years ago that they were told to concentrate recruiting outside of Cupertino.

If you build 8 new units to support 10 people moving in, prices will still go up.

But not as much as if you didn't.

more housing does decrease prices. the price went up, but not as much as it would have. for us to see a.price decrease, we would have to see new buildings out pace new people to the area for a sustained period of time. and what is more likely to happen is that they won't decrease but stay flat.

staying flat is still a price decrease each year it does it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com