Submitted by Blecher_onthe_Hudson t3_11a2qwh in jerseycity
DirectorBeneficial48 t1_j9pke2e wrote
Reply to comment by Blecher_onthe_Hudson in Want to know why NY metro housing is expensive? Answer in NYTimes OP-ED by Blecher_onthe_Hudson
Everyone is meeting housing demands. There are thousands upon thousands of empty apartments, condos and homes in every one of those markets. The rest of what you stated makes no sense and has nothing to do with anything. Your original statement was a rhetorical why housing was so expensive in this area, and laid the blame on the areas that weren't building.
As has been shown ad nauseum in this and in other posts, more units doesn't mean higher or lower rent. There is zero connection between more or less development and higher or lower prices.
objectimpermanence t1_j9pplwu wrote
You are literally denying reality.
What you are saying goes against the evidence that is generally accepted among economists and other housing experts.
Housing vacancy rates are near historic lows nationwide (source).
The pace at which new housing is built has lagged behind the household formation rate for years (source). The problem is particularly acute in coastal cities like NYC, Boston, and SF.
A constrained housing supply and low vacancy rates are good for landlords and existing homeowners, but they are bad for renters and prospective homebuyers.
These are basic economic facts that everyone in the real estate industry is aware of. These conditions form the basis of the investment thesis that professional real estate investors use to justify their housing investments.
>There are thousands upon thousands of empty apartments, condos and homes in every one of those markets.
Of course there are thousands of vacancies in NYC. It's a city with 3.5 million housing units. At any given point in time, some of those units will be vacant for any number of reasons. E.g., they're being turned over between tenants, they're being renovated, etc.
Sure, some of those housing units are kept intentionally empty as non-primary residences for the wealthy, but that is a small fraction of the total number of vacant units.
What matters is not the absolute number of vacancies, but the number of vacancies relative to the total number of housing units in a particular city in relation to the number of housing units in demand.
Blecher_onthe_Hudson OP t1_j9ps4tj wrote
>You are literally denying reality.
>
>What you are saying goes against views that are widely held among economists and other housing experts.
Never stops the "socialists" who want to solve problems created by government market interference with more government interference.
xTheShrike t1_j9q3j75 wrote
Socialists do not understand economics whatsoever. Artificial government controls create artificial scarcity which leads to higher prices.
Blecher_onthe_Hudson OP t1_j9q82ea wrote
Precisely how rent control in response to a housing crisis during world War II has resulted in a continuous housing crisis for the past 80 years.
objectimpermanence t1_j9pup9f wrote
Yep, I wonder how many people realize that some of the greatest urban neighborhoods were built before contemporary zoning regulations were even a conceived.
Also, people love to rave about how European cities are designed and then they oppose changes to local zoning and building codes that would actually allow us to replicate that typology in new construction here.
DirectorBeneficial48 t1_j9pwv0t wrote
Your link is for homeowner vacancy throughout the nation, including rural areas. The discussion involves the inclusion of rentals, notably in cities, and I also included a response as to how there's not increased demand, merely an artificial scarcity and artificially raised rates. Way to gaslight, but you're just a shithead tossing out other stuff to obfuscate what the discussion is.
In fact, a huge percentage - over double that of the overall rate - of rent-stabilized units in NYC for example, remain empty, not for "renovation", but because landlords would rather wait until they can change the laws to remove rent controls. https://www.thecity.nyc/housing/2022/10/20/23413894/vacant-rent-stabilized-apartments-nyc
Getting back to the original discussion that you tried to derail, you can repeat the same line about MORE UNITS = LOWER RENTS all you like and go THIS IS SOME BASIC SHIT, but there's literally zero connection between the two. There's no housing market trend in that direction. None. Your theory does not match with reality.
Every example the OP pointed out, shows zero correlation between those two factors. I could go on and on and have in other threads. There's no correlation.
I'm sorry you're so fucking stupid that you keep repeating the same dumb shit over and over, but that's a you problem. What you want to be true and what is, simply aren't. The reality that we live in has demonstrably shown otherwise.
There's. No. Correlation.
objectimpermanence t1_j9qceep wrote
You are the one who is arguing that the basic rules of supply and demand somehow don't apply to the housing market.
I work in finance. My work touches the real estate industry pretty closely. I know for a fact that certain people and institutions have made a ton of money because they identified the supply-demand imbalance in the housing market and figured out how to exploit it to their benefit.
I have been in meetings with housing strategists and investment professionals at large institutional investment firms. If I told them that there is zero correlation between housing supply and housing prices, I would be laughed out of the room. These are people who spend their days analyzing a dizzying array of data about the housing market.
I am not saying that the conclusions of these people are 100% accurate 100% of the time, but there is an overwhelming body of evidence to support the theory that housing prices are a primarily a function of supply and demand and that that the primary reason for escalating housing prices in this area is due to a shortage of housing units.
You are denying basic facts. You are just as bad as the anti-vaxxers who think they are better equipped than actual scientists to make evidence-based decisions.
I am done arguing with you.
DirectorBeneficial48 t1_j9qizni wrote
>You are the one who is arguing that the basic rules of supply and demand somehow don't apply to the housing market.
Cool, show me the evidence it does. I've looked it up a bunch of times. It isn't there. There's no correlation to the locales that have had the most development and the rent in said locales. It flat out is not there.
There's clearly another force behind simply "create more units" that all y'all don't want to bring up, which is greed.
I've shown the very basic steps elsewhere, so I'll copy/paste for you.
>I'll help you. Google up "US cities with the most development" (substitute some other synonym for development, such as "new buildings/homes" if you like). Now do the same for "Average/median rent by city in US". Hell, if you really want to get spicy, toss in a third factor and add in "US cities with the highest rent growth".
And the fact that you work with the exploiters of us is not a mark in your favor. You are stuck in your bubble that believes this whole cloth without actually looking at the very basics of the argument.
> I have been in meetings with housing strategists and investment professionals at large institutional investment firms. If I told them that there is zero correlation between housing supply and housing prices, I would be laughed out of the room.
Yea, no shit, they aren't around to want to hear the very underpinnings against their raison d'etre.
pixel_of_moral_decay t1_j9pnke8 wrote
Pretty much.
Most of this argument is to distract from stagnant wages. Building/maintaining buildings is crazy expensive.
Lots of new construction does drive up prices as shown by parts of Florida, Las Vegas among others. Induced demand in housing is is a long known concept.
But the intent to distract from wage suppression is not an accidental thing either.
objectimpermanence t1_j9py529 wrote
Yes, wages have not kept up with productivity gains.
But there is more to the story than induced housing demand.
You can build all the new housing you want in Camden or Detroit or Gary, Indiana. But the presence of new housing by itself isn't enough to make people flock to live in those places. People want to live where there are jobs and economic opportunity.
The problem in the NYC metro area is pretty simple. There are tons of good jobs and lots of economic opportunity here. It's one of the most economically productive regions in the country. But we aren't building enough new housing to accommodate the people who want to live here.
All of that means that the NYC metro area ultimately isn't living up to its full potential. Opening a new business like a restaurant or a retail store is that much harder when you have to pay your workers enough to afford exorbitant rents that are propped up by exclusionary zoning rules.
Silicon Valley is an interesting example of that. There has been a massive transfer of wealth going on there from young tech workers to landlords and incumbent property owners due to rampant NIMBYism that has restricted the housing supply there. People who happened to buy a house there 40 years ago and then did nothing to it are walking away with millions of dollars today. It makes no sense.
PixelSquish t1_j9q7v5a wrote
THe people that downvoted you are morons.
As a progressive I fight for higher wages, universal healthcare, affordable daycare and mandatory paid vacations and sick days for all. I also realize that we need to build a ton of housing, and as you say, not just anywhere, but where people need and want to live. That is the only way we can solve our housing price crisis.
objectimpermanence t1_j9qz0b3 wrote
Agreed. As a registered Democrat, I have to say that Democrats' inability to take serious actions to deal the housing crisis in major cities is a major embarrassment.
I roll my eyes anytime anytime things like expanded rent control get floated as potential solutions. SF, which probably has the strongest tenant "protections" in the country has already tried that along with a bunch of other band aid hippy-dippy solutions and they have all failed horribly.
Every time someone gets priced out of an expensive Blue state and moves to a suburb in a Sunbelt state is a win for Republicans.
It is one of THE defining social issues of our time. Inability to access affordable housing is at the root so many problems in our country. It is very disappointing that our most "progressive" cities have let this problem get so out of hand.
People need to stop making emotional arguments about the big evil landlords and developers and listen to the experts. Our major cities need more housing plain and simple.
PixelSquish t1_j9r1ij3 wrote
Perfectly said. It's an area where Democrats and Republicans are an agreement, by being nimby's. Republicans are all for small small government, but when it comes to strictly dictating What you can do on most of the land rather drastically, They are all of a sudden big government lovers.
Then you have liberals who are all about a more equitable society with wages and health care and housing but when it comes to the one solution that will actually help housing prices, building more were people actually need and want to live, they quickly change their minds about everybody's problems.
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