Comment by ianm218
21 hours ago
Housing is largely restricted by local politics and zoning not corporate interests. There’s no conspiracy on that beyond crappy local politics.
21 hours ago
Housing is largely restricted by local politics and zoning not corporate interests. There’s no conspiracy on that beyond crappy local politics.
Who do you think is paying to keep coming that way? Businesses that have an interest in keeping it that way, for example comercial realestate companies.
Based on my personal observations, most of the local zoning restrictions in the US come from conservative local residents, and not a cabal of developers. The latter want to build.
And I am using the word conservative in the non-political sense here - opposed to change. The individual motivations are many, but ultimately, a lot of people tend to avoid change around where they live.
In large cities, housing is now being built specifically for rent, and there are many early sales opportunities available exclusively to companies. In certain cities of Ireland, it is common for a new block of apartments to be sold out within the first hour. You get in a queue to visit on the first day and you don't even have a chance.
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Do you think commercial real estate are backing maintaining single family zoning in places like Palo Alto, or do you think they'd actually benefit from tossing all the zoning, and being able build, sell, and rent as many office buildings and apartments and condominiumns as possible?
Real estate development is a pretty competitive business with few barriers to entry. Nobody controls enough of the market to make it worth trying to restrict other developers.
In most cities it's developers who are pushing councils/government to rezone land so they can secure additional development sites.
I don’t think so - those companies are atleast modestly pro growth. They want to do more projects. In NYC and Boston local residents talk about “evil developers” who want to replace vacant lots with homes and businesses
I don't know about Boston case, but in Ireland it is common for developers to build and investment funds to buy it all in closed door meetings. So your only option is to rent. In other places of the world where I lived, it was common to rent a completely different region to only find out later the company letting the house/apartment belonged to the same group.
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