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Comment by paulddraper | Hacker News Reader

So..... Now they have to permanently "rent" them (maybe from a company they have ownership in)?

Maybe we should just build more houses.

Builders really seriously need to make condos/apartments with sufficiently sound proofed walls, floors and ceilings. I would happily live in a condo if I was confident that I wouldn’t be able to hear my neighbors and have my sleep disrupted etc.

They exist. My last home before my free-standing house was a poured concrete and brick condo. You could jump up and down with an elephant and the downstairs neighbors wouldn’t hear you.

You just have to test before purchasing. And, of course, this costs more.

Mind if I ask how you go about testing this? Seems like you would either need access to multiple adjacent units at once (which seems rare unless the building is new), or you’d have to go by the construction type but that isn’t really a “test” so I assume you meant something else.

I was friends with my neighbors. I didn’t literally test with an elephant but I was morbidly obese at the time and did quite a bit of jumping and furniture moving.

Joking aside, I would ask the inspector to test the building materials and widths of floors and ceilings. I assume there’s some standard performance that if you have 4 inches of concrete that’s bad but 12 inches is ok, or something like that.

When I bought my unit, I didn’t use an inspector but did talk to neighbors and my realtor had worked on multiple purchases in the building and had those accounts.

Vast sprawling suburban wastelands with no services is not the solution. Just build houses is easily said but it’s not necessarily where people want to live.

If a lot of people want something limited in supply, by definition it will be expensive.

Don’t buy more than 3 houses?

Or heck, more than 2 should basically be taxed at massive rates. Like, 40-50%.

Any suggestions on how to make that happen? People are already free to build as many houses as they want. They don't because building houses is expensive and there are easier ways to make more money with that capital

Permitting and lawsuits by NIMBYs are a giant blocker for development.

Pass a regulation saying any building permit application that isn't reviewed in 10 days is default approved. Then defund the permit offices.

In tandem, gut the ability for anyone to file suits (I'm looking at you, CEQA) that block development.

> People are already free to build as many houses as they want.

At (inflation adjusted) price X in location Y + regulator time/cost Z, the number of housing units that can be legally built has decreased considerably. Part of this is we've exhausted undeveloped/raw land and haven't upzoned in most locations.

The fixed costs and regulatory hurdles for building housing units can certainly be reduced - if the political challenges can be overcome.

Even some relatively sane regulations like insulation and safety standards could be re-evaluated. The issue is we are not doing any cost-benefit analysis of these regulations; even a 10% increase in the average home price should logically have a large impact on overall quality of life; that extra 10% spent on housing (~$50,000) in young adulthood reduces retirement savings >$300,000 assuming 8% returns, 30-40 years of investment, etc.

this is strident ignorance of the highest magnitude

source: two years in a professional US urban planning office

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