World News

22405 readers

1 users here now

Breaking news from around the world.

News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.

Guidelines for submissions:

Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
Social media should be a source of last resort.

These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.

For US News, see the US News community.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

America's housing shortage is keeping home prices high (www.axios.com)

submitted 2 years ago by lumberjacked@beehaw.org to c/news@beehaw.org

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

We’re also seeing a rapid increase in commercial vacancies with WFH. But there are big challenges and costs to turning commercial properties into residential.

I’ve heard a lot about the problems. Surely there’s some good ideas for a solution out there?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] ZapBeebz@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I mean, one good long term solution is either ban or heavily, heavily tax corporate ownership of single family homes. And heavily tax short term vacation rentals. Basically force all the companies that are buying up blocks and blocks of single family housing to sell.

Then, take a look at zoning laws. I have no experience with this side, but they're probably often a barrier to creating medium or high density housing. Which we're gonna need a lot of in the near future.

Apparently foreign home ownership is a big issue in Canada, so I have to assume it's also a (smaller) issue in the US.

Basically, the issue I see is not that there isn't enough housing. It's that corporate greed is pricing people out of their neighborhoods and then the houses are sitting empty because they're barely worth $150k, but the "market" says they can be listed at $400k, and not many people can afford that.

[–] CarrierLost@lemmy.one 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A lot of this comes from the mindset of real estate as an appreciating asset. That drives the desire to buy and hold, because it only ever goes up.

[–] ampersandrew@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Why do you think opportunity cost isn't coming into play? If you've got a house only as an appreciating asset that's not generating income, you're losing money compared to just throwing it in the stock market. If they're just holding it because the value always goes up, that sounds exactly like 08, and the price would have to come down once the bubble pops.

[–] CarrierLost@lemmy.one 1 points 2 years ago

Historically, I think, housing is less volatile than the stock market. So there's a risk mitigation strategy there that may partly be in play with companies that are purchasing single-family homes and just squatting on them.

This may also be exacerbated by rising interest rates. So companies/individuals that purchased a historically low rates are/may be reticent to sell because they can't secure a loan with the same rates they currently have. Even IF the housing isn't actively generating income, it could be losing LESS just due to the rates.

This is all entirely speculation on my part. I'll freely admit I don't know.