Man, this housing thing is going to get REALLY ugly

[dasherHampton]

I was bored so I browsed Trulia/Zillow for the first time in about 3-4 years. It kind of shocked me into reality.

10 years ago (when I initially started looking) there were dozens of nice homes available in the 120k-150k range. Too many for me to see all of them. A really nice home started at 200k, and McMansions in premier areas started at around 280k. A good fixer upper was around 80k-100k. If you were content to buy in a bad neighborhood you could get one as cheap as 30-40k.

Now?

Nice homes? None. Those dozens of good houses from a decade ago? Off the market. Not a single one available.

Decent fixer uppers in good neighborhoods? Also none.

Buyers are left with:

1) Homes in crappy, crime ridden areas that list around 80k-100k. Hope for gentrification, I guess.

2) High end homes that start at 350-400k.

The "Renter Nation" nightmare might actually be right around the corner.

 

[Brainonska511]

Fundamentally, it's a supply and demand problem.

Get local busybodies out of the way by limiting local control, end exclusionary zoning, and let people build more housing on their properties by right.

So many areas and future residents would benefit if people could even put up duplexes to quadplexes on their properties.

 

[K1052]

America's chronic housing shortage meets the COVID era disruption. We bought at the end of 2019 and the comps say our value is up 50%...

 

[IronWing]

Fundamentally, it's a supply and demand problem.

Get local busybodies out of the way by limiting local control, end exclusionary zoning, and let people build more housing on their properties by right.

So many areas and future residents would benefit of people could even put up duplexes to quadplexes on their properties.

^ We must destroy the village to save the village. The desires of people who don’t live in a community outweigh those that do.

 

[Torn Mind]

You must live in a relative backwater. Where I’m at, high-end starts at 600+k. Actually, even countryside houses in the doldrums can cost 600k. The mansions are in the forests on both sides of the western Potomac(Great Falls and Potomac).
Civilization ends to the north of Clarksburg.
Housing shortage is real in the county but it’s because it’s has blue concerns plus the old farms are not exactly pleasant commute-wise.


Or you’re in Baltimore, where the market is a mosaic with islands of high prices and then there’s the trashier parts of town.

 

[Torn Mind]

^ We must destroy the village to save the village. The desires of people who don’t live in a community outweigh those that do.

Yeah, let’s buy up farmland in the middle of nowhere and build up high end condos around Harper’s Ferry, WV. Then order people to go live there.

 

[K1052]

Yeah, let’s buy up farmland in the middle of nowhere and build up high end condos around Harper’s Ferry, WV. Then order people to go live there.

There is a segment of the population who literally thinks this or that people who can't afford housing locally should basically move to the economically bombed out rust belt towns and die.

 

[Brainonska511]

^ We must destroy the village to save the village. The desires of people who don’t live in a community outweigh those that do.

Or how about we let people build what they want on their property instead of using incumbent power to control other people's property and to keep people out in the name of protecting property values and neighborhood character.

I'm not advocating that every suburban area suddenly be upzoned, but there are tremendous plots of land, even in cities, where it would make sense to even allow a modest density increase. Like San Francisco - about 70% of the land is zoned exclusively for single family housing.

 

[IronWing]

Like San Francisco - about 70% of the land is zoned exclusively for single family housing.

It's that zoning that keeps San Francisco, San Francisco. Remove the zoning and it becomes just another soulless city.

 

[repoman0]

It's that zoning that keeps San Francisco, San Francisco.

A place filled with horrible tech bros because no one else can afford to live there?

 

[K1052]

A place filled with horrible tech bros because no one else can afford to live there?

ding

 

[Denly]

Lol at high end house for under 600k, in my area 600k USD is the starting point of new build townhouse or some older singles.

Housing is not coming down, a correction maybe but not 15yrs ago down. Pop is not slowing down, boomer is about to pass on their wealth to next gen, ultra low rate, WFH movement, gov(all) are printing $$ and housing is now trendy investment.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Family bought a place for ~400k about a half hour outside of a minor city (rather good price for the size) around 2 years ago. It's floating around 500k value now.

 

[dank69]

It's that zoning that keeps San Francisco, San Francisco. Remove the zoning and it becomes just another soulless city.

That soul you're referring to smells like the shit of the homeless.

 

[pete6032]

I was bored so I browsed Trulia/Zillow for the first time in about 3-4 years. It kind of shocked me into reality.

10 years ago (when I initially started looking) there were dozens of nice homes available in the 120k-150k range. Too many for me to see all of them. A really nice home started at 200k, and McMansions in premier areas started at around 280k. A good fixer upper was around 80k-100k. If you were content to buy in a bad neighborhood you could get one as cheap as 30-40k.

Now?

Nice homes? None. Those dozens of good houses from a decade ago? Off the market. Not a single one available.

Decent fixer uppers in good neighborhoods? Also none.

Buyers are left with:

1) Homes in crappy, crime ridden areas that list around 80k-100k. Hope for gentrification, I guess.

2) High end homes that start at 350-400k.

The "Renter Nation" nightmare might actually be right around the corner.

Same experience here in Chicago. About 8 years ago I was able to find some nice places where I lived around $150k. Now those same places are going for $250k.

 

[Zorba]

Fundamentally, it's a supply and demand problem.

Get local busybodies out of the way by limiting local control, end exclusionary zoning, and let people build more housing on their properties by right.

So many areas and future residents would benefit of people could even put up duplexes to quadplexes on their properties.

Also incredibly cheap money availability.

Also have far too many houses as hotels in many areas.

 

[Brainonska511]

Also incredibly cheap money availability.

Also have far too many houses as hotels in many areas.

The latter may be a small problem, but if you somehow stopped that, there would still be a massive shortage because there are just not enough units of housing to begin with, and as a society, we've created a one-way rachet that makes it easy to block new housing and nearly impossible to build anything new, unless you have a lot of time, money, patience, and know how to grease the wheels.

 

[Torn Mind]

There is a segment of the population who literally thinks this or that people who can't afford housing locally should basically move to the economically bombed out rust belt towns and die.

It doesn’t matter what “those” people think because they are politically irrelevant in the major cities like D.C, it’s what government wants for itself. Bigger purses mean more glitz and glam to attract high income wage earners in a never ending cycle of aesthetic enhancement. Condos and high rises eventually com around with increasing frequency as more people populate an area.



You should want it too, because it means flipping these outskirts from red to blue.

 

[Brainonska511]

It doesn’t matter what “those” people think because they are politically irrelevant in the major cities like D.C, it’s what government wants for itself. Bigger purses mean more glitz and glam to attract high income wage earners in a never ending cycle of aesthetic enhancement. Condos and high rises eventually com around with increasing frequency as more people populate an area.



You should want it too, because it means flipping these outskirts from red to blue.

The problem is local control keeps more from being built. The government of a state may want more housing to be built, but there are many layers of government, with very different incentive structures. At the local level, where building decisions live and die, the landed local stakeholders are real people, whereas the future residents are a nebulous group who may or may not yet live in the area. Who do you think that government is going to listen to?

 

[IronWing]

The problem is local control keeps more from being built. The government of a state may want more housing to be built, but there are many layers of government, with very different incentive structures. At the local level, where building decisions live and die, the landed local stakeholders are real people, whereas the future residents are a nebulous group who may or may not yet live in the area. Who do you think that government is going to listen to?

You make it sound like a bad thing that local government takes direction from the people who actually live in the community instead of pandering to developers in search of a cash grab.

 

[Zorba]

The latter may be a small problem, but if you somehow stopped that, there would still be a massive shortage because there are just not enough units of housing to begin with, and as a society, we've created a one-way rachet that makes it easy to block new housing and nearly impossible to build anything new, unless you have a lot of time, money, patience, and know how to grease the wheels.

It depends on where how small of a problem it is. In some cities it's a pretty large percentage of the housing market.

The percentage of unmarried adults had also increased the demand for housing as well.

We also continue to provide companies incentives to build in places with tight housing markets, making the issues worse.

 

[Brainonska511]

You make it sound like a bad thing that local government takes direction from the people who actually live in the community instead of pandering to developers in search of a cash grab.

So let me get this straight, it's okay for a community to use its incumbent power for grabbing cash at the expense of future residents, but it's not okay for a developer to profit by building more housing for future residents?

 

[K1052]

You make it sound like a bad thing that local government takes direction from the people who actually live in the community instead of pandering to developers in search of a cash grab.

Do you stand outside of grocery stores denouncing the owners for having the gall to profit from their business also?

 

[Zorba]

So let me get this straight, it's okay for a community to use its incumbent power for grabbing cash at the expense of future residents, but it's not okay for a developer to profit by building more housing for future residents?

Kind of how democracies work.

If we let unborn kids vote I think we'd have very different policies than when we let AARP card holders vote.

I think a huge problem is most cities don't have any sort of real development plan, so you just get a patchwork of crap. Get anchor lots right by highways and apartments where there is no infrastructure. If there were areas planned for dense development you could alleviate a lot of the issues people don't like with that development.

 

[K1052]

Kind of how democracies work.

If we let unborn kids vote I think we'd have very different policies than when we let AARP card holders vote.

I think a huge problem is most cities don't have any sort of real development plan, so you just get a patchwork of crap. Get anchor lots right by highways and apartments where there is no infrastructure. If there were areas planned for dense development you could alleviate a lot of the issues people don't like with that development.

But people don't actually vote on this stuff. Local leaders mostly make land use decisions based on the loud cranks who can show up at a public meeting on a Monday night at 5PM. Needless to say this process is not really representative.