Comment by danesparza
1 month ago
Ah -- you showed your hand there.
You should be careful saying things like "high housing costs which driven up by overregulation". It sounds like you're trying to frame bad economic news like it's the fault of a more liberal political party in the US.
High housing costs are just an effect of capitalism. It's supply and demand - as simple as that. If they were grass huts in downtown San Fransisco, they'd be just as expensive. "Overregulation" is a fallacy.
Zoning is regulation. Prop 13 in California is regulation. Regulations can reduce supply and drive up prices. The Bay Area is proof of this.
Zoning costs money everywhere. That's work that needs to be done by a person. That person gets paid. It's capitalism again.
Prop 13 actually limits property taxes and the assessments that can happen. You're actually hurting your argument with this point.
Regulations don't reduce supply because regulations don't purchase properties. People purchase properties and then that property is off the market.
The Bay Area is proof that limited supply (because there is only so much land in the area) + steady (or increasing) demand (because people need to live close to where they work for some baffling reason) will cause property values to raise steadily over time.
Again: It's supply and demand. Regulations have very little to do with price increases.
To be clear: I'm not anti-capitalist ... I'm just anti "wrong context"
> Zoning costs money everywhere. That's work that needs to be done by a person.
I'm not talking about the salary for a city planner who draws lines on a map. I'm talking about banning building denser housing via zoning.
> The Bay Area is proof that limited supply... will cause property values to raise steadily over time
The Bay Area has limited housing supply for a long time through single-family zoning, minimum lot sizes and other regulatory means.
> Prop 13 actually limits property taxes and the assessments that can happen.
Unaffordable property tax increases are a signal that the land is under-utilized. High property taxes due to land scarcity incentivize building more housing on the same land. Prop 13 takes away that signal. Or at least, it insulates existing and long-term homeowners from the effects of insufficient housing supply in their area. Their taxes don't go up so they have no reason to sell their house to someone who will build condos and apartments on that land.
> You're actually hurting your argument with this point.
I don't think you've taken the time to understand my points.
> Again: It's supply and demand. Regulations have very little to do with price increases.
Again: regulations can and do limit supply.
It's not as simple as that. The supply is being kept low to enrich housing investors.
I live in an unregulated county and I just built a house for $60,000.
I've found a few plots of land in San Francisco where you could put my house on where the land itself is under $200,000. So $260,000. So why doesn't anyone do this? It's $200,000 in profit easy since you could sell it for $460,000+ easy. Capitalists just hate making money? Clearly there is regulation stopping it, otherwise developers would be buying $50k boxables or the cheapest manufactured house they could drop down off a trailer and making an absolute mint on all the slivers of cheaper land you can find for sale in these upper priced cities.
When I was in the planning phase of building my house I quickly identified only a few counties in my state where it was even possible to build a house all myself without regulatory inspections. The only reason why I have a house is because I found a place with no regulatory inspections for owner-builder housing which allowed me to bypass codes, engineering, building plans, and licensing.
People in New York City don't talk as often about how difficult building is because of NIMBYism. Generally it's a combination of red tape that's meant to act as a protection from things like fires and bad construction, which is good, environmental regulations which is so-so (some of them drive up housing costs), because of progressive policies (demanding a certain percentage of units be for lower income people), a scarcity of land, high wages, and a political class tied to unions (the latest tax breaks are tied to 50 dollar min wage for new construction of 99 units or more).
It's very very complicated. And new construction makes rents go up here because it's all luxury - it has to be, or developers won't bother to build.
It's so complicated that I'm sick of reading the West Coasters hot take on housing problems - that it's 100 percent due to single family homes and zoning and other very very California problems.
Guys, we're not all in California.