Comment by whoknowsidont

Incredibly dishonest article. It's shocking to see people support this. And I love the way it's framed in a conspiratorial tone, and uses coded language to make you doubt this is a quantifiable problem.

All while he ignored many parts of the text he allegedly was critiquing. I'm still shocked that this is getting upvoted.

The very first sentence in the article is this:

>This group, mostly on the left, insists that the biggest problems in America typically come from monopolies and the corruption of big business.

"Insists" is doing a lot of work here to support the rest of the article. But it's lies through omission.

>At a high level, I have never found these arguments persuasive

Irrelevant if it persuades you. This isn't a high school debate class, facts and metrics are what matters.

>One hallmark of a monopolistic market is rising profits.

Not even close to true in theory or practice. In theory, monopolies have ever way in order to set prices for whatever goal their after. They may also lower supply thereby lowering aggregate profits. Long term profits can justify anything now.

Anti competitive practices are mainstays of monopolies. Not whatever the author just made up.

>The Musharbash essay on Dallas—like too much of the antitrust left’s work on housing

Oh boy here we go! The boogeyman has been setup, the ominous "they" is out.. checks notes... make housing available for average people.

>is filled with out-of-context quotes, overconfident assertions lacking evidence, and generally misguided claims.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

The next 5 paragraphs are about him talking to Quintero. He starts by framing the issue saying Dallas is not a good fit for Quintero’s theoretical model or previous research, which Quintero agrees with. He then uses this agreement to act like he's right about everything else and even misquotes his "100%".

It was shocking to see how we just kind took one affirmative agreement for one thing and turned it into an agreement about another. Talk about hearing what you want!

But that's not the rub.

The rub is that the Musharbash's essay isn't referencing the John Hopkin's research paper (Quintero) to say DFW fits it's described model, it's that the use of a market intelligence broker has effectively made the firms act as single (or a few) unit(s), enough to make the DFW's conclusions relevant.

Here's the snippet from Musharbash:

>Over the past two decades, most — if not all — significant builders in DFW have converged on the same source of market intelligence to drive their decision-making: a consulting firm named Residential Strategies, Inc. (“RSI” for short). [0]

> [...] While RSI is reportedly careful not to share sensitive information or facilitate explicit collusion among builders, it does not have to do so to play a role in limiting competition. [1]

Moving back (unfortunately) to the Thompson article, here's his next little "misquote":

>Claim #2: Dallas housing experts say local homebuilders are monopolies who are “devouring” the market.

The article didn't even claim this. The quote the source articles quote DIRECTLY below the claim from Musharbash's article really highlights how far out of the way Thompson went to misquote it:

From Musharbash's article, whihch again Thompson also hilariously quotes:

>Indeed, “[t]he scale and sway of market leaders” — particularly D.R. Horton and Lennar — means they “often monopolize access to trades and vendor resources” in local markets, constraining the ability of smaller builders to build at all, according

Unless D.R. Horton is a "local", "Dallas" builder I'm not even sure Thompson misread this piece so badly. If he wasn't an established journalist I'd call into question his reading comprehension skills.

So I have to assume it's not stupidity, it's malice.

There's also a subtext claim here where he continues to talk with McManus about land use regulations. McManus says land use regulation is the primary and SINGULAR cause of the housing issue, but what Musharbash's article points out is that land use regulations and zoning laws really have changed while the issue continues to intensify:

> I discovered that pretty much the same dynamics afflicting blue states are also afflicting red ones — a fact that should have important implications for how we think about housing politics and policy in this country. [2]

> [...] not of land use regulations, which have remained relatively stable in recent decades, but of two critical segments of the housing supply chain: The homebuilding industry that builds new houses, and the resale market in which people buy and sell existing housing stock. Both have experienced dramatic changes over the past four decades [3]

This is exhausting, not going to lie. But let's continue.

>Claim #3: Industry experts have data proving that homebuilding oligopolies are holding back national housing construction [...] Did Lambert agree with the antitrust folks, who love to quote him so much, that the consolidation of big homebuilding companies was hurting housing supply?

No. Nope. No again. That's not what was written. Here's what was written:

>By facilitating high-priced home sales with these cut-rate mortgages, large homebuilders impose a double handicap on small builders while inflating property valuations in the region as a whole. [4]

> [...] The largest homebuilders benefit from this dynamic because they sit on large amounts of real estate whose valuations they want to maintain or raise, but it makes it that much more expensive for small builders to buy land to build on in the first place.[5]

>>By tying home sales and mortgages, Dominant homebuilders can sell their houses at higher prices with higher gross margins, while issuing bigger mortgages with bigger origination fees and bigger resale values on the securitization market. As their below-market mortgages get buyers to accept higher sticker prices, these inflated prices feed high-priced comps into local property databases — pushing land and home valuations up market-wide. The largest homebuilders benefit from this dynamic because they sit on large amounts of real estate whose valuations they want to maintain or raise, but it makes it that much more expensive for small builders to buy land to build on in the first place. [6]

The picture being painted here is not one of "no one is building houses" but people are building the wrong houses for the wrong reasons. And smaller, local builders aren't able to build the houses people WANT and NEED because the system is let's just say... self-fulfilling.

The big builder's aren't going to build you your affordable home. It's not just that they don't have to, but it benefits them not to. More homes at the appropriate market prices would cause their stranglehold to completely unravel.

Let me just tab back over to the article yet again and continue.

>Claim #4: “X companies account for Y percent of this industry” is a smart way to think about market concentration.

You know what, I'm actually done.

Terrible article. Terrible journalist. I would say he should feel ashamed but the fact that he's willing to be so dishonest on paper with his name stamped over it tells me he couldn't give a shit.

Full on Bullshit Asymmetry Principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law) on display here.

Links:

[0]: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-with-texas-how-bi...

[1]: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-with-texas-how-bi...

[2]: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-with-texas-how-bi...

[3]: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-with-texas-how-bi...

[4]: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-with-texas-how-bi...

[5] https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-with-texas-how-bi...