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Houses in the middle of Nebraska do not meaningfully help the housing market of New York City or San Francisco. Sure, I could go and buy a house in my hometown in bumfuck rural Missouri, but I don't want to live in a homophobic conservative hellhole, so housing stock there isn't really relevant to me in any way.
And if you look at a city like Seattle, where there actually has been meaningful construction, the pressure on renters has been way lower. Straight from the horses mouth:
https://fortune.com/2023/10/24/how-much-seattle-west-coast-apartment-worth-landlords-rents-capital-economics-forecast/amp/
Here's a London-based investment firm complaining about how housing in Seattle is becoming a bad investment due to increasing supply.
Not to mention, more rentals isn't a bad thing! More rental units means fewer competition for each individual unit and ultimately cheaper rents. If you have 1000 people wanting to move to a city but there are only 500 open apartments, only the richest 500 people get to move. If you have 1200 open apartments, those landlords have to find a price that'll get them a tenant or they'll completely miss out on rents.
I completely agree with the sentiment that housing shouldn't be treated as a productive investment asset, but the real question worth asking is why the market is so slanted towards landlords that housing can even serve as a productive asset in the first place. If you look at places like the Soviet Union or Communist China, they managed to house everyone easily because they build a metric fuckton of housing everywhere, so the questions of determining who gets housing and who gets to starve on the streets didn't even apply.
It's a supply issue. Essentially every economist agrees that it's a supply issue. Evidence has shown time and time again that increasing supply lowers rent pressures. This is not a controversial question.
That's amazing news about Seattle. It's my dream to be able to afford to live there again one day
As of the last time a city government report was made on this just two years ago, over 61,000 homes were vacant in San Francisco. In answer to anyone who would write that off to pandemic effects, the number a few years before was around 40,000 homes sitting uninhabited. In San Francisco. Just sitting around being some well-off person or corporation's investment, empty.
From some data I could find, the average one bedroom rent in January 2020 was $3050. From the same source, it's currently around $2900. That 2020 number adjusted for inflation is $3600. So, rents seem to have both nominally and truly fallen.
I'd assume it's largely due to lower demand because of remote work, since SF surely hasn't been building anything. Thanks for the good example that increased vacancy does indeed lead to lower rents.
Trickle down housing doesn't work. The end.
Edit: You guys are going to win the downvote war, you always do. But are you really winning? You're trying to get your cashflow on, I get it, but is it really worth it? I think you may want to think about your life choices if part of your job is chasing around people like me on Lemmy, lol.
I know you don't care about evidence, but for anyone reading who does, here's a study from Helsinki.
https://ideas.repec.org/p/fer/wpaper/146.html
Turns out there may be a meaningful difference between randomly cutting taxes from businesses and building a bunch of new housing.
Dude, I live in Seattle, I live in the evidence. The only reason rent went down in Seattle is because they busted the price fixers.
https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-realpage-rent-doj-investigation-antitrust
Seattleite here. We also focused on supply side housing issues. We passed a ballot initiative last year that allows the city to establish its own housing developer which will compete with capital to build public housing.
It’s a supply side issue AND a capitalist greed issue. Don’t listen to this person.
Did they also take away the ability to buy your way out of providing affordable housing?
I don’t know, I’m not on the city council so I don’t have all the details. I would hope they do approach that issue though if they haven’t already
Okay, then how is this going? We have our own developer, have we bought properties to convert into affordable housing?
Also, what shouldn't they believe about my posts?
I didn’t say “don’t believe this person” I said “don’t listen to them” meaning I think your stance doesn’t fully reflect reality with regards to this topic. I don’t think you’re a liar, I just think you shouldn’t be the only voice in the thread speaking for Seattle when I have an opinion to share too. Sorry if my words were offensive; it was meant to be dismissive but not offensive.
You can find out directly how things are going, here: https://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/public-participation/boards-and-commissions/seattle-social-housing-public-development-authority-board
Looks like the board meets at the Capitol Hill library branch. Also I was wrong about how long ago the vote was, it was in February 2023. I’m a bit time blind so I kinda suck at that, sorry 😅
It seems like they are still setting up shop and laying the groundwork to get things done. The worst thing about government in my opinion is how damn slow everything moves.
That's hilarious.
Yeah, the developers aren't slows af, lol
They are when they’re just getting started.
The paper came out before that investigation was opened, so unless the paper is wrong, you're probably wrong.
On Helsinki? An old world town that has way different living standards and free healthcare?
I'm in agreement. Also in Seattle. The median house price in Seattle is over $800,000. Down a whopping 2%. This means you'd have to make over 200k a year to afford your mortgage. How many more apartment units will trickle this down the other 50% or 75% to make it affordable to everyone? People need to be realistic. Bans on for-profit home ownership need to be part of the mix here, not just more supply.
I could see a private ownership of an actual person being allowed 2 homes in Seattle. Corporations and any lateral, upwards, or subsidiary companies attached to the same board can only own up to 5 units or something for airbnb type situations. Anything over that, they have to register as a hotel and follow hotel rules.
China seems to be having some of their own real estate issues and are maybe pulling out of the US, some of our rent decreases might be because of that too. A little of it might take care of itself? Just a guess, but I hope we continue to look at everything. No one can afford to live in Seattle doing the low level jobs, so stop complaining about the lack of workers you shitty person at the grocery checkout. We were becoming San Francisco and I don't think anyone wants that.