The surest rent control is widespread availability of affordable, ownable housing.
But that would require builders to build affordable homes, which is the same effort and lower profit than building luxury.
But that would require builders to build affordable homes, which is the same effort and lower profit than building luxury.
The claim that housing supply advocates make about affordability is not that new units will be most affordable than but that older comparable units will become more affordable due to the increased competition. The people who’ve been bidding up the prices on older rental and resale homes will choose the newer housing instead because they are able and more willing to. The older stock becomes more affordable. Time goes on and even newer buildings cause what was once new to become a more affordable option. It should eventually get to a point where nobody would ever choose the older (again, similarly sized and located) units with poor amenities because it’s not worth it compared to newer options that are a better value. And those get replaced with new construction. That’s how a housing market should function.
But instead we have housing that is over 100 years old going for ever increasing prices even without modern renovations. Thats a broken market.
Also, your average 100 year-old house is a much higher quality structure than your average new house. And 100 years old is about the pinnacle of craftsmanship.
As for 100 year old houses being considered high quality… there’s definitely going to be a survivorship bias for such buildings that didn’t get replaced while they could (prior to mass downzoning on the 1970s) but they literally didn’t have building codes back then. Lots of money needs to be spent to retrofit old buildings for modern seismic and energy standards.
Also — not saying you’re guilty of this — there is a lot of racial prejudice when folks criticize the “poor craftsman” of modern construction workers compared to those of past generations, as they more often tend to be Latino workers these days.
This is nonsense. The reason people say nearly all modern construction and manufacturing sucks is because the primary focus is on reducing costs and increasing production efficiency/speed. Something that needs to be replaced sooner is also seen as a benefit rather than a problem - planned obsolescence.
Is there a drawback with those except price? Like do they fall apart earlier?
Land tax reform is debated amongst economist. It is a form of wealth taxation, and in America we generally don't tax wealth. And even if we did, unlike having $1 million in the bank - which is a known amount of wealth - the value of land is rather hard to quantify. You could arbitrarily say that all land in the city is taxed at $10 a square foot per year. Clearly that would be inequitable by some land is worth considerably more.
Land, unless it's farmland, generates no income and our tax policy is generally based upon income income tax.
Perhaps it is different in temperate climates, but old houses can be an absolute hassle.
That’s probably a big part of it, but of course making anything stand the test of time is extremely difficult.
This is only true because they can't build homes in significant volume in most localities due to land use and zoning regulations. It took 3 years in my former neighborhood to build 20 houses, because of the review and public comment period. This is the same story I've read about across the country: any locality that is desirable to live in has had increasingly strict regulations and processes that artificially constrain the building of housing inventory of any type.
Given this, if you can only build 20 units instead of 2000, you'll end up building in the luxury category, as its the only way to maximize any value of the build without other incentives.
If instead they could 2000 or 20000 homes that meet building code, builders could not only compete in earnest but you could do things like selling units at lower prices per unit but its made up in volume, or each housing unit could be denser (like town houses, condos etc).
You can't overlook these aspects. Real estate is not a functional marketplace and should be seen as the definition of government regulation overreach in many respects, but home owners tend to vote in blocs, so politicians won't touch it
If they wanted to, they could build them much more affordable and save 30% off the total price, but nobody does it. Why not? It takes the same amount of time and you might as well build the more expensive one because someone will buy it and you get a percentage of the sale price.
Where is there both desirable places to live and infinite land you can build on?
Also important: how are those plots zoned and what is the process for the builders to get approval for their builds?
The builders get approval from the county if outside a city, or the city if inside one, or build a new city.
“All over the country” isn’t a specific answer to the question at hand
Costs like 15% more and sells for 30% more. Building economy is a losing proposition.