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Comment by davesque | Hacker News Reader

Then why did houses used to be affordable even in those dense regions with high paying jobs? People act as though housing has always been prohibitively expensive in city centers but it hasn't. My dad bought a house in Boulder, CO of all places easily in the 90s. And of course he made a killing off of it because the housing market went completely insane over the next two decades. I now make more money than he ever did and can't even dream of buying the same house.

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> Then why did houses used to be affordable even in those dense regions with high paying jobs?

Because those city centers have remained the same size while demand for living there continues to increase

More demand for a fixed set of land drives prices up.

Those city centers today are not equivalent to the same city centers 35 year ago.

> More demand for a fixed set of land drives prices up.

This works because both you and GP specified "[free-standing] house". This is not true of homes, where multiple homes can occupy the same land - just 15 feet higher or lower

Perhaps someday more American cities will discover the third dimension, allowing for cheaper housing

Don't get me wrong, there is a place for units/apartments, especially in the face of homelessness. But no one dreams of owning an apartment as opposed to a free-standing house.

The dream/desire is the thing.

https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Weird-Al-Yankovic-2/Buy-Me...

  Gonna buy me a condo
  Gonna buy me a Cuisinart
  Get a wall-to-wall carpeting
  Get a wallet full o' credit cards
  I'm gonna buy me a condo, never have to mow the lawn
  I'm gonna get me da T-shirt wit' the alligator on

> But no one dreams of owning an apartment as opposed to a free-standing house.

I think you might be a little out of touch. Plenty of people dream of owning any kind of real property.

Mate, I am well aware of the struggle, I am living it too.

But we're talking dreams here. Imagination. Do people really feel the need to be frugal with their imagination of what they desire?

Do people really think "Gosh, what I could do with a billion dollars.... no wait, I need to conserve my brain energy, my imagination is getting too expensive, better make that tree fiddy." ?

Why would you want to live in a free-standing house instead of a nice apartment given the choice? There are pros and cons sure, but unless you can hire someone to do all the house things I don't see it being a clear win.

I think you're focusing on the wrong thing and missing the point. Housing supplies have not significantly increased with population growth (demand) in decades--thus the price equilibrium has moved up. I don't care if you build up or out and neither does the law of supply and demand. The left gets all hung up on 'the right kind of housing' and doesn't realize they're part of the problem--making it harder to build housing (of any kind) is pushing housing costs up.

Just to take it one step further, there are usually geographical reasons why cities are located where they are.

So you also can't just build a new city in central Nebraska and have everyone move there for cheap.

This is besides the entrenchment that happens when industry is in one place for a long time.

Because the regulations, set by those with vested interest in real estate, make it difficult to build more housing. Otherwise anyone with any sense would undercut the existing housing stock and turn a 100k investment in concrete and timber into a million dollar home in Boulder, CO.

Not exactly rocket science - if there's money to be made and people aren't making it then something is stopping them.

It's a generational narrative here as well: while it gets applied to X, Y, or Z generations in turn and depending on the context - I think it started with X's - but the gist of it is that young generations couldn't afford the house they themselves grow up in. Even if their parents were basic blue collar families and the new generation are well educated. There's too much truth in that as people look back in the preceding decades.

This wasn't some kind of mansion. It was a 1300 square foot house. I guess I'm aiming too high then while making 4x his salary? And people have been whining about this same problem for decades so nothing to be done about it?

well shoot, his grandpappy just had to roll up and Stake his claim on the land and it was his.

Depends if you think you’re going to ride a rising tide of appreciation when you buy a house, or if you have to accept its already long passed.

Aunts and uncles picked up homes in SoCal for 150-200k in the 90s, now worth 1-2m in some cases, but in any case, it seems unreplicable today.

If there’s a new frontier to capitalize on, a lot of us seem to be missing it…

Supply and demand. Among many other changes, the demographics of the typical Boulder resident changed significantly - originally nature lovers and hippies for whom earning money was not a primary motivation - post-2000 shifted to educated, highly-compensated desk workers who can bid up prices. And lots more people in total seeking to live in a small area, which also lifts prices significantly.

Zoning laws is why. No one wants new development because it could devalue their own house.

America is new. Even in the 90s boulder was largely empty, competition for land was low, so land was cheap. As people spread to newer cities and gained wealth they bid up the price on land.

Still plenty of cheap land in CO, but they made drilling a well a nightmare in many cases. So people wanting to use cheap land either have to haul water or do some kind of low-key wildcat drilling.

> Even in the 90s boulder was largely empty

Uh, no it wasn't? I was living there and continued living there for the next 30 years. It always felt about as dense to me as it did back then.

Even today Boulder is "largely empty". It's an overgrown village and not a city, and planning rules ensure it will stay that way.

>It always felt about as dense to me as it did back then.

This is why its so expensive. Demand for housing has increased but supply has not. The government refusing to allow densification in the face of increased demand means prices skyrocket

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