Comment by crooked-v
5 days ago
Housing price issues in the US are fundamentally the result of every major city making it expensive or impossible to actually build enough housing. Changing taxes (in either direction) really wouldn't move the needle at all. What's needed are local zoning changes and significant revamps of permitting and approval processes to remove endless discretionary roadblocks from anyone who doesn't like medium density housing.
Yep. The fact that in most places in the US it's illegal to build apartments above shops is insane. That's the norm in the UK.
It's in Germany too, but recently it's become the norm for new-rich people to buy or rent these apartments and then sue the shop and especially bar owners for noise violations.
Not allowing that kind of mixed usage in the first place completely cuts away all that crap.
My perspective on that one is broadly "screw 'em". If you buy property over a bar or restaurant that was there before you I don't think you should then be allowed to turn around and act surprised that there's a bar or restaurant downstairs.
1 reply →
Not to say there's not restaurants/bars open just as late or noisy, but fwiw I would say typically a pub in the UK would be the whole (vertical) building - rooms upstairs for staff or B&B, if not more seating for pub restaurant.
> fundamentally the result of every major city making it expensive or impossible to actually build enough housing
ZIRP certainly had something to do with this too! Don’t overlook ridiculous fiscal and monetary policy.
> Changing taxes (in either direction) really wouldn't move the needle at all.
Henry George begs to differ. He would say that you start with The One Tax and the resulting pressure on zoning will be unbearable. Good reading: "Land is a Big Deal" by Lars Doucet.
> Changing taxes (in either direction) really wouldn't move the needle at all.
Mmm... if you introduced higher taxes for anyone who owns multiple houses and has rental income for one or more of those homes and you eliminated from the current tax code their ability to claim deductions, it would definitely move the needle on housing prices and availability.
[flagged]
OP lives in Austin. If you have $1M net worth, you can probably buy a house there and live there. If you don't go do that, I think you're just punishing yourself.
Yes - there are insanely great houses all over Texas. $400K gets you incredible houses, depending on the area, and $1M would get you mansions beyond your (or at least my) wildest dreams.
Meanwhile, if you live in the Bay Area, I can totally see "$1M net worth but not really able to buy a house".
Where you choose to live in really does matter a lot. Not to say there aren't issues with property costs, but... come on.
No.
The global housing crisis is the result of international organised crime owning or operating most of the large construction conglomerates, using real estate as a fiat currency to wash the proceeds from all their illicit business, and (org crime infested) private equity companies cashing in on the former situation, pumping assets by buying up available real estate just to make it unavailable.
CRIME is the real reason worldwide for people not being able to afford a house.
> using real estate as a fiat currency
Even if we take your premise as a given, the entire reason real estate is so valuable is that there isn't enough housing in the first place. Real estate is, by its nature, a bad investment; it's only the scarcity of it that makes the value continue to go up exponentially.
> buying up available real estate just to make it unavailable
There isn't actually any available housing in the first place, at the point of cities even approving projects, compared to the number of people who need housing. That's the problem. The most extreme example is San Francisco, where as of this July the entire city had approved only 16 housing units [1] out of an already comically poor goal of only about 10,000 housing units per year.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/san-francisco-only-agreed-build-16-...
>Real estate is, by its nature, a bad investment; it's only the scarcity of it that makes the value continue to go up exponentially.
It's very nature is it's scarcity though. Land is the one thing they don't make more of.
1 reply →
This is absurd. Does it happen? Yes. But this is not the primary driver.
We turned housing into retirement funds. The median family's wealth is their primary residence. We cannot have these assets depreciate in nominal terms for this reason, and we actually need them to appreciate in real terms for people to have a nest egg.
It's awful, but it's the truth.
The median family's wealth is 0.6 * {their primary residence}.