Hacker News Reader

* Dramatically increasing supply will dramatically reduce home prices. That's the point.

* Subsidizing first-time buyers will increase home prices. That's the opposite of the point.

Not true re #1, yes creating a glut of housing beyond demand in the market would reduce home prices, but other markets like Tokyo that do build a lot of housing still see increasing home values despite stable prices. Land value goes up, but units per unit land goes up too, so each individual unit does not necessarily go down. Maybe the value of your physical single family home goes down, but the value of the land it stands on goes way up when the density and infrastructure around it intensifies, so it does not follow that the homeowner loses out (most likely they make money)

Subsidizing first time buyers does increase prices overall but you have to consider the effect of such a policy relative to its cost. It has potentially positive externalities so that’s worth considering while balancing it out eg with the previous policy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com