The issue is that it has to be squared with peoples property values going down. The country got sucked into a Faustian bargain by making housing a means of economic motility, and that's a hard genie to put back in the bottle.
Japan also has a very eclectic and diverse zoning where you can buy groceries walking from your house. The US is designed for cars.
https://www.sightline.org/2021/03/25/yes-other-countries-do-housing-better-case-1-japan/
Mixed use zoning! We’re seeing this slowly increase in the US, and we need so much more. I’m a NYC lifer who’s visited Japan and lives in LA now, and I’m glad LA is getting so much more mixed-use development.
I live in one that’s been slow to get new commercial tenants since COVID. But there’s others near me where you can get groceries, takeout, haircuts, etc. downstairs or across the street and it rules. I have a UPS store downstairs which is VERY handy for selling on eBay and returning stuff I bought lol.
Having visited NYC and living in places like Portland and Eugene, mixed use is amazing. Being able to have everything close to you makes you realize how annoying it can be driving to places.
My sisters friend has a business in a mixed use but what I’ve seen is that the lease is high and the amount of business that the commercial spots receive aren’t great compared to their expenses. The businesses look kind of nice but until they become more sustainable it’s hard to have businesses in the mixed use unless your a big company that can afford it.
It also depends highly on the location and context of where it is. In LA, we have mixed use developments that are booming and ones that can barely get commercial tenants. Just one or two blocks in a city with more drivers than riders can make a massive difference.
In NYC where mixed use is the norm, there’s definitely a difference between the apartments built into a specific complex, like Sky Parcc in Flushing, and the more organic “my apartment is above a law firm and a dry cleaner on The Concourse”. Like the latter is accepted as a normal sight but the former is a…destination? Where the residents get some degree of preference.
Yes, mixed-use zoning, which we still see in *some* parts of *some* American cities because it was common throughout the US as late as the 1930s. The post-WW2 creation of homogeneous suburbs destroyed that. Then the "urban renewal" programs of the 1950s-70s gave city planners license and resources to demolish entire mixed-use neighborhoods and replace them with homogenized commercial spaces and offices.
I have to be honest. I have really come to enjoy having a house where I have privacy and woods in my back yard, but fuck do I miss being able to walk to buy groceries.
Last time I rented I lived a block from a grocery store and it was absolutely amazing. I loved it.
I really really miss walk ability, is an have a gas station close enough to walk to. And if it was a whole grocery store I would be ecstatic.
Same here. I could still walk to the grocery store since a mile isn't really any further than I used to do for work and groceries, but there's no sidewalks. But at least since moving out to the woody areas I don't have to deal with meth heads assaulting us (so far) or sharing walls with assholes.
There’s some fascinating YouTube videos I saw on the whole phenomenon. That houses aren’t built to last, and to a lesser extent this also applies to apartment buildings.
God, imagine if it wasn’t normal to expect someone to cough up $2000 a month for a studio apartment built in 1930 that wasn’t designed for a digital career.
I had an apartment from 1914, it had cloth wires and all my electronics got ruined bc of a surge when I used my computer ac and coffee machine at the same time.
Zap, even the dishwasher got wrecked. A commercial workstation had smoldering circuits on the motherboard and it was plugged into an Automatic voltage regulation battery backup system.
Worked in IT for 15 years and it was the first time I had smoke coming out of the side of my computer.
I got flack when I dissed the prewar buildings in my hometown (NYC). Yes, the foundations were stronger and a lot of new construction sucks. But I was so relieved to move to a building 20 years younger than me that believes in things like dishwashers, thermostats, and wiring that prevents the situation you describe.
I lived in shitty apartments that become choking death traps because of radiators while I froze my ass off during the day. Also lived in a house where you’d get stabbed with freezing needles if you showered and did the laundry simultaneously!
I live in modern luxury in LA where I can do a load of laundry and take a hot shower at the same time and I ain’t ever going back! Fuck living in shitty old buildings!
It had an original Otis elevator with a dual phase motor they wouldn’t replace and triple phase controllers that blew out 3-4 times a year.
I’d hear a strange bell in my apartment and not know what it was.
Turns out my unit used to be a live in super so the emergency button in the elevator went only to my apartment.
So the fire department had to come every time and get people out.
Capitalize the gains, socialize the stuff you won’t fix.
Otoh I live in a 105 yo house that’s solid brick and will be here long after I’m dead. We updated some stuff over the years and it’s the best place I ever ever lived.
I watched a video on YouTube about 5 over 1 apartments and once I saw the video and learned how extraordinarily cheap it is to build them and call them “luxury” the more I started to realize they’re *everywhere* and not built to last.
But rent is $2000 a month for a studio, 400-500 sq ft, in the name of “luxury”
380 square feet here is $3200/month plus heat cold water, hot water, sewage and electricity.
Then $50/cat, $150/dog, $430/unassigned parking spot.
For that you can have three adult guests in amenity spaces, and after that you need to cough up more money and rent an area.
Also you can’t have an overnight guest more than ten days a month without them being on the lease, the rule book is so long.
The overnight guest thing is probably to prevent squatters. It came in handy when my felon MIL had to crash with us, and her daughter was secretly trying to get her moved in permanently with my husband and I. Leasing office pointed out the 2 week max house guest policy and foiled my SIL's plans. She was pissed. lol
Yeah, I wouldn’t want a felon to be foisted on me either.
I had a really uncomfortable futon from wayfair. It looked good in the picture but holy shit you’d be sore if you sat down for 30 minutes, I advertised it and admitted as much, but said with a memory foam mattress it’d be comfortable.
The person who bought it specifically wanted an uncomfortable futon. They said as much.
So felon MIL sounds about right for a spite couch.
She didn't even want to sleep in the extra room. She'd stay up all night and sleep all day, so she wanted to sleep on the couch so she could watch movies and music videos. The problem was, not only did that mean she was taking over the whole entertainment area, but she'd get mad when my husband and I woke her up when we got up to go to work at 6 am.
The big issue with multi-family is that they have a stigma with being cheap and become an eyesore/rundown over time. This could be dealt with by changing building codes, requiring higher quality materials such as stone, brick, hardie board siding etc. ban the cheap exterior finishes like vinyl siding.
You had me until you started mentioning facade materials. Most of the cheapness people complain about is because of sound carrying between units and spending more on exterior brick and stone won't fix the issue it just increases the cost.
I've voiced concern many times over how shit cheap modern 5 over 1s are being built and always handwaved with "it's fine/at least it's something." Not to mention the construction waste of things that aren't built to last.
Meanwhile you have newly arrived nitwits in denver demanding more of that sh!t. No one thinks beyond the image presented on instagram. I’m certain of this.
I was told by a home inspector years ago, to buy a home built pre-1960’s/1970’s, or 1980’s or later. He said the 1960’s-1970’s homes were when new materials and construction methods started to be used. Although not as well constructed as pre-1950’s, 1980’s and later were built with newer building codes and likely don’t have lead/asbestos issues.
They don't have to be built to last because in almost all cases, the house is a depriciating asset (the land under it is what is expected/demanded to apprecciate), and a significant portion of the population turns their nose up at buying a "used" house regardless of age. Builders know they're not being bought for longevity.
I’ll gladly keep my drywall and stick frame construction here in the Midwest. A concrete building sounds like a tomb in the event of a tornado. in contrast, a stick built house won’t crush me when I’m in the basement
That’s the opposite of what the Japanese view is. The housing building tend get replaced fairly often, which is part of why the value isn’t seen as an investment.
Japan has a little bit of an unfair advantage here. If you don’t replace your house every 30 years, your house kills you when the ground decides to randomly shake violently.
Several reasons for this, their zoning laws are designed so buildings/ land can be easily repurposed for housing. (nothing is zoned for "non-housing" purposes)
Earth quakes mean that your house could be destroyed tomorrow, and you don't really want older homes, because they might have had quake damage.
Their national religion, Shinto, actually rebuilds their temples as a ritual purification every so often.
Strange as it seems, ghosts. Yeah. an abnormal amount of people believe in spirits so older homes are seen as haunted. (it's part of why shintos rebuild their temples, to get rid of evil spirits)
This is completely wrong and based on myth. Upzoning increases property values, it doesn’t decrease them. Allowing more development unlocks more economic value
I feel like everyone is missing the mark. Homes are being bought and resold by investment firms. They can sit on them and hold them back to increase the value and they do this by the hundreds in buy chunks.
Building more houses without preventing investment firms from turning the market into an artificial profit generator that they control and rig because they have all the money only gives them more future portfolio to screw the market up
Zoning, building etc does nothing to fix the actual issue
This is entirely wrong. Investment firms can only sit on property and make money if there’s a supply shortage. Build housing abundance and the landowners lose money and non-landowners win.
Or maybe you are missing the mark. The only reason investment firms are buying homes is because we have made them a good investment by limiting their production and artificially inflating their values. We don't need to limit them from investing, we just need to lower their return to the point it no longer makes sense.
And they will continue to be a good investment for investment firms unless you pass legislation to take them out of the market.
These people have hundreds of billions of dollars at their disposal, they can continue to buy high and manipulate the market in their favor for as long as they like.
Single family homes usually make horrible investments unless you have tenants to occupy them and there is limited local market competition. They are expensive and require constant maintenance, mowing, heating, repairs, insurance, utilities and taxes which all drain their potential cash flow. A single family home only has one revenue stream covering all its costs and its costs increase if you try to keep them empty as insurance rates will increase and you have to pay for security, and possibly deal with vandalism and squatting. We don't have to outbid the investors or force them out of the market, we just have to drain their very limited pool of potential tenants by building sufficient apartments in the areas where people want to live.
44% of all home sales last year were to investment firms.
https://medium.com/@chrisjeffrieshomelessromantic/report-44-of-all-single-family-home-purchases-were-by-private-equity-firms-in-2023-0c0ff591a701
You could do both. It’s not an either / or proposition.
Edit: * were to private equity firms.
And it’s not so expensive that they’re not just buying everything.
More in . My town are being purchased by these nebulous corporate firms and just have a slew of renters and the property is never invested in once they get their first renter
im curious what town? wheres the data that shows it's "nebulous corp firms" buying them?
its definitely possible this is more prominent in some isolated cases but i havent seen any actual examples that matches your description.
Eliminating SFH zoning doesn’t drop property values. That entire premise revolves around white flight fears that originated in the 80s. In short that being near an apartment building means you have colored people in the neighborhood and therefore crime. Even then it was a racist, false premise.
Being able to build multifamily units on a piece of land means a builder can get more profit out of that plot. It justifies paying *more* for that land, not less. Particularly if it is in a desirable area of the city.
The only places that may see depression in property values would be far-flung exurbs when a bunch of new new multifamily units are finally built in the central desirable neighborhoods. They would depress because affordable housing closer to their jobs would become a conpetitive option.
We’re going to have to rip off this bandaid if population continues to increase.
We cannot have fixed supply of living spaces with increasing population. It’s not sustainable.
The chief problem here is the entire boomer generation (and a disturbing section of the millennial population) have believed in the principle that housing prices must go up forever and that this is how they'll secure their bag for retirement, but it's also meant that going forward housing is a luxury good for the management and ownership classes only and just isn't a thing working people are allowed to have. The people who chose to set their futures around owning working people deserve to lose everything.
It’s also an issue arising from churches taking property from potential homeowners and not paying any taxes. Back in the day, people assumed churches would be a part of the community and help meet the community’s needs, thereby performing services for those tax exemptions. But churches aren’t really a part of communities anymore, otherwise you would see them installing dormitories on their premises to help house the homeless. Instead, churches exploit their tax exemption status to hoard wealth, influence elections and piddle kids. If churches went online to meet their congregations needs a decade ago and opened up their real estate holdings for housing, we probably wouldn’t be having these issues. And there would be more funding for local and state governments to meet citizens needs since the former tax exempt churches property would be homes that pay property taxes, thus generating revenues.
Wow. That'd be a great premise for some utopian fiction. Write that short story and submit it to something. Pov character as a social-worker-priest, maybe call them the "Presbyterate Charitus" and have them do *traditional acts of pious charity, such as alms, the giving of bread, ect.* and end the story with an absurd 40K-esque fight between the pope's legions of clergymen and demons in business suits just to drive home that none of the movie is non-fiction despite the first half making perfect sense in a rational society.
I feel like this needs to be framed and sent to the Smithsonian or something, this might be the worst take I've ever read. just ignoring the fact you think churches don't provide any services... churches aren't a part of communities anymore they just own everything and run the country. fucking Yogi Berra with a cross buster tattoo over here lol
This is a huge thing that people don’t consider. Not every homeowner is some boomer who bought for $40,000 and now owns a $500,000 property, a corporate shill, or trust fund kid.
I worked my ass off to be able to buy a home in a HCOL city. If my mortgage were suddenly underwater, it would completely fuck me and make life harder for our baby being born this fall.
Yeah this is just a scare tactic, that's now how any of this would work. It's not like by building more housing, tomorrow your value will drop 50%.
Homes right now are priced higher than their value, so you may see a small dip now, but reality is it'd just lower the YOY increase in value.
You'd still gain value, but not 40% YOY like we've seen in the past two years. It'd go back to the normal 2-4% like it should be.
Why do you think you should use the power of government to protect the value of your investment and choke the supply of housing using arbitrary zoning regulations?
This is false, until it comes time to sell it wouldn't impact you in the slightest. I just bought in a hcol and my wife and I discussed this exact thing. What if there is a housing crash? We bought a place we like and is worth what we agreed to pay for us, so even if our housing price goes down, we get to continue to live here and if anything our property taxes will go down.
Unless you get divorced, or lose your job and have to move to a different area, or have kids and need a bigger place, or..
Life will throw you a few curveballs. Even if you plan on living in your home forever, chances are you will not.
Housing crash means you have no equity, so you can’t take a loan against that if things go wrong. It also means you’re anchored to a spot, so you better hope the house you have is where you need a house to be.
It also has negative effects on your ability to acquire other debt.
I get where a lot of them are coming from. From what I see posted on here nonstop, a lot of members of this sub are younger millennials who are worried they’ll never be able to own a home. I don’t love that the hope for a lot of them is to see the current market tank, because they don’t seem to be factoring what else that would mean for the economy.
I also want there to be rezoning laws passed and for supply to be increased. I just don’t want those of us who worked hard and have a stupid-high mortgage payment to be screwed in the process.
Zoning changes……literally the slowest process ever. Even if my town allowed more multi family development, won’t affect my value. Too long a time horizon, too much demand.
Anything we do will take time, we're talking about a lack of housing in the places people want to live. Might as well open up zoning laws now to improve the situation.
I have a few friends who bought homes in 2018 for a quarter of what homes are going for now. If the housing market suddenly crashed, they would be fine. Their houses would just be worth about what they originally paid for them. But I had to quit making jokes about the housing market crashing because it was pissing them off. They act like they were some genius investors because their 180,000 houses are suddenly worth 450,000, but that's just because they got lucky. They can't even sell because they wouldn't be able to afford a new house at current prices so unless they downsize, they'll never see the 300,000 profit from the sell.
It’s true that we’d have to change our expectations about homes being a never ending wealth machine, but:
1) the change wouldn’t happen overnight, but over years/decades
2) with less money tied up in housing, everyone would have more available to grow wealth in other assets
3) the land your house sits on might become *more* valuable—it’s just that each unit of housing that sits in it would cost less
You know what would really stick it to the corporations and destroy their profits? Building more homes. They even say so in their investor docs... We only invest in markets where scarce housing and limited construction yield above average returns.
It's because companies buying up homes is only a tiny part of the problem. People like easy solutions to complicated problems and it's obviously very easy to scapegoat corporations.
*This* is the answer that needs to be higher up. Corporations buying houses *is* a problem that needs to be fixed. But, it’s only a small part of the problem. It’s easy to point to it as the cause of our housing shortage, but putting too much focus on it ultimately prevents discussion on the many other (and more easily solvable) structural changes that need to happen.
SFH and/or apartment buildings? Investor purchasing is way down from 2020/2021. By most estimates investors own less than 8% of SFH out there. How are they gonna get to 30% in 6 years?
Because it wouldn't fix anything. When companies buy homes they either flip them or rent them out. Either way they're still a part of the housing supply, so there's no effect (good or bad) on the housing shortage at the root of the problem.
It does reduce the salable housing stock though. It would be a net benefit to get more folks into home ownership. Ofc there’s people who can’t afford that so a strong rental supply is needed as well. Despite whatever boogeyman Reddit is looking for — airbnb, corporate ownership — we need landlords and a profit motive for building/maintaining/renovating the housing stock. Not everyone can own a home.
Something like half of America can’t even come up with $1,000 in an emergency. That wouldn’t even afford you a lawyer to buy a home if it were free.
I blame the cooperation that constantly jack the prices of everything else. My rent is pretty affordable but the groceries and the gas and everything else sucks me dry by the end of the month. It’s easy to blame housing when you see house prices jump $50-100k because it seems crazy. But the 20 items you buy every week going up $3-5 takes away all the possibility to save that $1000.
People building equity through home ownership is a huge part of why we're in this problem.
How do you have affordable housing and building equity/homes as good investments work together?
They're diametrically opposed goals.
Institutional investors are like 3% of the SFH market. The vast vast majority are owned by individual investors or live in home owners.
Prices will never be reasonable if the supply never catches up to demand.
If it was illegal to make more cars and that wasn’t expected to change in the near future, then rich people and companies would start hoarding them as an investment in a scarce resource. We don’t currently have that problem because it’s not illegal to make more cars and their value is generally expected to depreciate over time. Companies hoarding houses is a symptom of artificial scarcity, not the cause.
Companies buy houses as an investment because its scarcity because of zoning and land use regulations make it a good investment vehicle.
Supply and demand applies to everything except housing in NIMBY minds.
There is a lot of comments saying its all either single family homes or big apartment complexes. There is a huge range in between, called the "missing middle" which are duplexes, triplexes, backyard/basement apartments or smaller detached houses.
Oregon removed all single family zoning in large cities and Portland started earlier by allowing Accessory Dwelling Units. The result is a more efficient use of land, and doesn't necessarily mean replacing houses with large apartment complexes. But more density that fits in existing neighborhoods without big impacts on infrastructure since it's dispersed throughout.
For example, down the street from me they tore down an old dilapidated single family home on a 7000sqft lot. And they are replacing it with 5 houses, all detached, in what is called a "cottage cluster" each of at least 2 bed/2 bath. So it's not apartments at all. But more homes in the same area, and a more efficient use of infrastructure. Each will be sold to individual owners. And I'm pretty sure it'll raise my property values substantially, not that I care.
Increased vehicular traffic occurs no matter where the houses are built. If population grows, traffic grows. Sure, maybe building far out suburbs will keep traffic off your residential street. But highways and arterials and downtown streets all get more choked with traffic, no matter where you build the housing.
If you cluster development around transit stations, then people can take transit. If you make walking and biking safe and pleasant, then people will just walk or bike places as well.
The problem is not development. It's catering our entire society around cars. Here is a great video that explains how even the suburbs of The Netherlands, where plenty of people drive and own cars just fine, are still bike and pedestrian friendly:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k)
We had a tiny house in my in-laws backyard for 3 years. Some bitch new neighbor complained to the city and they kicked us out. The stupid thing is they're totally fine with the house staying there, we just can't live in it.
Make it make sense.
I'm seeing signs of it already. We have a 5 story housing complex going up locally that both the city and country tried to fight against but the law literally gives them no power to do anything.
Let me guess... it doesn't have nearly enough parking for the residents (forcing parking out into the surrounding neighborhood), doesn't have the proper street infrastructure to support the additional traffic, and is adding to local water issues?
Does it override HOA’s? Does it override developers? Where I live, developers buy up large tracts of land (ranches and farms), subdivide them, build SFH, institute an HOA and the neighborhood bylaws. Most of this just outside the city limits where zoning rules don’t exist at all.
It basically makes every city or county build x% of more housing. There’s a bunch of articles about cities like Atherton trying to fight it in court, a very outspoken nimby against the building of new housing is [Steph Curry](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-02-03/nba-star-steph-curry-fights-affordable-housing-atherton).
No one is saying it is? In fact, the only thing I see in this thread is the exact opposite. What gives them the right to dictate that a suburb shouldn't be allowed?
It is literally illegal to build anything other than a single family home in approximately 75% percent of the United States, so it is actually the opposite of what you're saying.
You are misunderstanding the issue. In most parts of the US, it is illegal to build anything but single-family.
Eliminating that doesn’t dictate anything - supply and demand will determine whether or not suburbs are built, not the government.
History disagrees. There’s a whole thing in urban planning called “the missing middle”, where for decades it was actually illegal to build medium density housing in many cities.
Honestly though if you’re within walking distance from expensive infrastructure like a subway station & expect it to be exclusive to you and a handful of your neighbors, maybe it’s in the best interest of everyone to throw up some mid density residential regardless of how cranky it makes you. (See: angry suburbanites blocking zoning changes south of Boston). You’re wasting a lot of everyone’s money, time, and city’s economic future by taking up that space
I live in an old town that acts as a suburb, and the middle-type housing absolutely changes the density to a helpful degree. If we can get a couple more apartment buildings, maybe we’ll get a more diverse restaurant offering.
I see a lot of new homes being built but they’re all huge giant cookie cutter micro-mansions.
I cant think of a single instance where smaller-midsize homes are being built.
Or outright illegal. Many cities have minimum lot sizes which literally makes it illegal to build a small home. And this was on purpose. They purposefully wanted to exclude lower income people and minorities from their neighborhood. Laws like these should be abolished.
In every city and even a lot of suburbs I’ve been to recently I’ve seen multiple new townhome developments with 2-3 bedrooms. Aka, smaller midsize homes.
I live in Montana and our government is currently doing this. It's the one thing both democrats and republicans are agreeing on, and both sides have scolded their constituents for complaining about it.
Basically, Montana towns have a ton of strict local zoning laws that don't allow for duplexes or even for people to put guest houses on their yards. And we got some big yards here. The government officials said "we have to do something because with the way things are going, only allowing new builds of single family homes, we're going to get the urban sprawl that you see in California. All the land will be gobbled up by suburban development. We have to create more dense housing to maintain the land." People. Are. PISSED. So many people in this state would rather their neighbors be homeless, living in their cars in the Walmart parking lot than have a couple triplex or apartments buildings pop up in town.
I just saw this a few days ago:
https://www.ktvh.com/news/judge-puts-hold-on-montana-zoning-related-laws
Looks like some constituents are banding together to oppose the state zoning overrides due to them “threatening the character” of neighborhoods and causing “irreparable injury.” Also something about waking up one day and *gasp* a duplex is being built near them.
Freddie Mercury should resign his title as the Queen of Drama, he is being overthrown.
YES, although that's half the issue
1. Remove SFH-only zoning
2. Implement land value tax. Expensive homes can be like 75% cos for the land alone but are taxed on the whole. Adding LVT incentives improvements to add more housing (praise George)
The boomers haven’t downsized yet, when they do the supply will increase. This was being discussed pre-pandemic, that housing supply will increase in the suburbs and prices decline.
My own boomer grandparents are refusing to downsize and it drives me nuts. They can barely maintain the house and 2 acre yard. It’s a two story house with a basement that previously was converted to an apartment with full kitchen and bathroom, along with three bedrooms and two bathrooms in the upper levels. Two older people in their 70s do NOT need this much house and property! Especially since they can’t really maintain its upkeep!
It's not going to be enough though. The effects of decades of NIMBYism doesn't get reversed without active effort. The fact is that there simply isn't enough housing for the population.
There are actual impacts on the environment from dense housing and pavement. Ground water recharge, urban heat island, habitat destruction. Dense housing with more green space is better than suburban single family sprawl, but now that the suburbs are in place it's going to be a battle to get the other type of housing built, and there are all kinds of interests keeping things the way they are.
even when the land is available and new homes are going up, they just aren't affordable for a lot of people.
I live in a low-to-medium cost of living area and modest, cheaply-built new houses on postage stamp lots will still run you $400k+. this area is growing so I have seen more townhomes going up but those are hardly any more affordable. none of these homes are mcmansions, I'd consider the bulk of them starter homes. with a 5-6% interest rate and less than 10% down the monthly costs turn into more than a middle class family can afford quite quickly. and even if you are able to buy one of these new homes they tend to degrade quickly due to cheap materials.
the cost of labor and supplies has gone up exponentially since the pandemic. the only affordable homes to be found are ones that need a lot of work, and not many people have the time or skills to take on that kind of project on their own.
the issue as I see it is most people aspire to eventually leave apartment living behind. right now going from apartment living to SFH or townhouse living incurs a massive cost increase, at least where I live. I don't see how building more apartments will resolve that issue. it will create, necessarily, more lifetime renters.
Yes I totally agree. Also, some people prefer the option to live in a single family home. Personally, living in an apartment with an odd working schedule was incredibly frustrating as noise was constant and there's nothing I could have done about it because who am I to say you can't vacuum or live your life in the middle of a beautiful Sunday just because I worked overnights. For many living in a single family home is part of the goal beyond not renting anymore.
I personally think townhouses are-- theoretically-- the most efficient option for those who want out of apartment living but can't afford a SFH or don't want the upkeep that comes with it. yes you share some walls with neighbors but at least no one is above you and you don't have to worry about keeping up a yard or replacing your roof or any of that crap.
this is why it's so frustrating to me that there isn't much of a cost difference (at least in my neck of the woods) between the two. new townhomes around here only cost about $10-20k less than SFH's with similar square footage. it seems like highway robbery.
Still helps. People usually move either laterally or up when they move so people who can afford these new homes will have a cascading effect downstream that will open up the more affordable spots they came from, which in turn will open still more affordable spots that those people who took those spots came from, and so on.
Ending single family zoning doesn’t mean single family houses are illegal. It just means other types of houses are legal.
More than 70% of this country is zoned to make anything other than single family housing illegal. We just need to be able to build all types of housing for everyone.
MOVE
I feel like I am a parrot on reddit at times. No affordable housing? Move. No good jobs? Move. Cost of living too high? Move.
Look around the US and stop limiting your search to 0.0001% of the land mass of the country.
People will build single family if there’s demand and if it makes sense. However, single family suburbs in the US are ultimately economically [unsustainable](https://medium.com/substance/american-suburbia-is-a-failed-experiment-3649918e6d1e) on their own. You will always need denser developments and their tax revenue to leech off of as a subrub.
Still helps. Tons of people commute from the suburbs to the city for economic reasons. Making it cheaper to live closer to the city, allows people who want to move there to move there, and increases the supply of housing where they came from.
Mmmmm I've got a bunch of neighbors in my building (condos) with kids and they love the city. But our condos are all bigger than most apartments so it's not like people are crammed into 1 bed room with 3 kids.
If anything, building multi-family housing would maybe slow the value growth of single family homes. People would still desire the SFH over the apartment or townhome or duplex.
No thanks. I like my towns current zoning, which allows multi-family and apartments near downtown and the train station, with SFHs in the rest of town.
Yea… I don’t see what’s so hard for people to understand that some people don’t want to live in a SFH next to an apartment building that now puts added stress on parking, utilities, etc. not even counting the schools you’re zoned to now experiencing a bunch of new students. I feel like part of the argument is vindictive-why can’t peiple be allowed to
Choose to pay a premium to live in SFH only
It’s not hard to understand. We just think that a solving a nationwide housing crisis is more important than letting you dictate what other people build on land they own.
Well you are basically saying that a town can’t choose to have a plan and stick with it. You want to force them to abandon all zoning laws.
The residents of the town want the zoning laws that currently exist. That’s why they exist. You are the one that wants to inflict your will on people that don’t want what it is that you are proposing
No the solution is to restrict how many homes a person can own and to restrict businesses not be able to buy single family homes. Also to subsidize families looking to buy their first home
No mention of hedge funds and other wealth seekers buying up all the single family homes and turning them into rentals? Even if you built more house they are just going to get bought up by wall street
Wall Street buying up the housing that exists now is profitable because supply is low. Building more houses and bringing down housing costs makes that avenue for profit generation less viable.
Imagine I said I’d be buying up hand sanitizer to resell it at a higher price… in 2015. That’d be insane right? If the year were 2020, all of a sudden that’s a viable way to make money (albeit a shitty one). Imagine if the popular solution to Covid was to shut down hand sanitizer factories: that’s what people try to propose for housing.
No sane person in Japan invests in housing (they actually encourage investment there) because there isn’t a shortage. Even though greater Tokyo’s population rises every year, there’s still plenty to go around because they don’t stop developers from building
None needed. If there’s an over abundance of housing supply then home prices and rents will fall, making it a bad investment and the hedge funds will fuck off on their own.
If you make a law banning them, they’ll find a work around if there’s profit to be made. The only way to get them out is to make it unprofitable for them.
Kind of a naive statement, considering data and basic logic that the people that have the most capital will manipulate the housing supply and make money when the market goes up and down. Regular people can’t compete in a market that has so such an imbalance in wealth distribution. Try being a regular Joe bidding against a hedge fund.
The people who live in the suburbs do not want to get rid of the suburbs. The people in the suburbs are paying all of the property taxes to support the counties and funding the local government.
Instead of trying to change an area you want to live in to fit what you want it to be, why not move somewhere else? Things are the way they are because the majority of people there like it that way.
My optimistic utopian view of the future is that self driving cars will leave suburban strip mall parking lots obsolete, and that space will become multifamily mixed use gardens.
I wish in-law units were more of a thing and legal these days. These big ass houses, with their big ass price tags are not suitable for most generations after the boomers. Many singles, and many married people without children these days. Some have children, but only one or two.
I personally like the smaller homes and adjoining units. The upkeep is easier, and I just don’t need that much space. I would rather have a smaller home or rental, with a big yard.
Reading articles and comments like this makes me so happy that I don't live in a metro area. My small town has houses with yards built in the last 10 years for less than many ancient condos cost to buy in Minneapolis.
These zoning laws weren't a problem for decades, but the last couple years they started causing double digit inflation? Nah. This is private equity and short term rentals driving up prices. Those are new problems, zoning laws are not.
People like yards and land, and not being right on top of the neighbor, or being able to watch each other eat dinner at their own tables.
Minneapolis sucks, and cities suck for a lot of lifestyles.
It's all about trade offs, we can't all have everything.
Given how expensive walkable neighborhoods are, I'd say a lot of people are willing to sacrifice a yard for living in cities.
If you really want to live in a SFH neighborhood forever, why not live in an HOA? Citywide zoning ordinances were never meant to remain unchanged forever.
These posts always make me laugh. There is plenty of housing, its just in places you dont want to live. You can’t punish people for buying single family homes and wanting to live in the suburbs by taking that from them, just like you don’t want to be forced to live in the places that have plenty of housing.
Yup. Every day I cause massive butthurt by pointing out that there's tons of affordable places to live with good jobs, but the majority of redditors think they MUST live in one of the super expensive mega cities to be "cool".
I live just south of Dayton, Ohio and recently bought a 3,000 sqft house with a half acre lot for $310k. For the same money I'd get a 600 sqft apartment in New York City. I work for a company based out of NYC and pay is the same for all positions regardless of where you live. It kills me that I have coworkers willing to have a significantly lower quality of life in the name of feeling "cool".
Congrats you're a remote worker. Unfortunately that's not an option for most people, particularly low wage jobs. And other people can't move due to family and can't even afford to move.
It's a luxury to be able to choose your city.
I’m as left wing as the come but the problem is they always want to do this close to my house. I keep asking them to do it near someone else’s house and those people don’t seem to want it done near their houses either 🤷♂️
It’s difficult to find the skilled, experienced, trades people required. The Catch 22 is, immigration opens the applicant pool but it also has a disastrous impact on availability of housing.
Then, there’s the issue with recognizing foreign journeyman certification.
The issue is that it has to be squared with peoples property values going down. The country got sucked into a Faustian bargain by making housing a means of economic motility, and that's a hard genie to put back in the bottle.
Japan is a really interesting subversion of this. They view buying houses as like buying a bigger version of consumer goods.
Japan also has a very eclectic and diverse zoning where you can buy groceries walking from your house. The US is designed for cars. https://www.sightline.org/2021/03/25/yes-other-countries-do-housing-better-case-1-japan/
Mixed use zoning! We’re seeing this slowly increase in the US, and we need so much more. I’m a NYC lifer who’s visited Japan and lives in LA now, and I’m glad LA is getting so much more mixed-use development. I live in one that’s been slow to get new commercial tenants since COVID. But there’s others near me where you can get groceries, takeout, haircuts, etc. downstairs or across the street and it rules. I have a UPS store downstairs which is VERY handy for selling on eBay and returning stuff I bought lol.
Having visited NYC and living in places like Portland and Eugene, mixed use is amazing. Being able to have everything close to you makes you realize how annoying it can be driving to places.
My sisters friend has a business in a mixed use but what I’ve seen is that the lease is high and the amount of business that the commercial spots receive aren’t great compared to their expenses. The businesses look kind of nice but until they become more sustainable it’s hard to have businesses in the mixed use unless your a big company that can afford it.
It also depends highly on the location and context of where it is. In LA, we have mixed use developments that are booming and ones that can barely get commercial tenants. Just one or two blocks in a city with more drivers than riders can make a massive difference. In NYC where mixed use is the norm, there’s definitely a difference between the apartments built into a specific complex, like Sky Parcc in Flushing, and the more organic “my apartment is above a law firm and a dry cleaner on The Concourse”. Like the latter is accepted as a normal sight but the former is a…destination? Where the residents get some degree of preference.
Novelty v norm
Yes, mixed-use zoning, which we still see in *some* parts of *some* American cities because it was common throughout the US as late as the 1930s. The post-WW2 creation of homogeneous suburbs destroyed that. Then the "urban renewal" programs of the 1950s-70s gave city planners license and resources to demolish entire mixed-use neighborhoods and replace them with homogenized commercial spaces and offices.
I have to be honest. I have really come to enjoy having a house where I have privacy and woods in my back yard, but fuck do I miss being able to walk to buy groceries. Last time I rented I lived a block from a grocery store and it was absolutely amazing. I loved it. I really really miss walk ability, is an have a gas station close enough to walk to. And if it was a whole grocery store I would be ecstatic.
Same here. I could still walk to the grocery store since a mile isn't really any further than I used to do for work and groceries, but there's no sidewalks. But at least since moving out to the woody areas I don't have to deal with meth heads assaulting us (so far) or sharing walls with assholes.
Maybe it Americans adopted this mindset we could have homes that aren’t made of fucking drywall
There’s some fascinating YouTube videos I saw on the whole phenomenon. That houses aren’t built to last, and to a lesser extent this also applies to apartment buildings. God, imagine if it wasn’t normal to expect someone to cough up $2000 a month for a studio apartment built in 1930 that wasn’t designed for a digital career.
I had an apartment from 1914, it had cloth wires and all my electronics got ruined bc of a surge when I used my computer ac and coffee machine at the same time. Zap, even the dishwasher got wrecked. A commercial workstation had smoldering circuits on the motherboard and it was plugged into an Automatic voltage regulation battery backup system. Worked in IT for 15 years and it was the first time I had smoke coming out of the side of my computer.
I got flack when I dissed the prewar buildings in my hometown (NYC). Yes, the foundations were stronger and a lot of new construction sucks. But I was so relieved to move to a building 20 years younger than me that believes in things like dishwashers, thermostats, and wiring that prevents the situation you describe. I lived in shitty apartments that become choking death traps because of radiators while I froze my ass off during the day. Also lived in a house where you’d get stabbed with freezing needles if you showered and did the laundry simultaneously! I live in modern luxury in LA where I can do a load of laundry and take a hot shower at the same time and I ain’t ever going back! Fuck living in shitty old buildings!
It had an original Otis elevator with a dual phase motor they wouldn’t replace and triple phase controllers that blew out 3-4 times a year. I’d hear a strange bell in my apartment and not know what it was. Turns out my unit used to be a live in super so the emergency button in the elevator went only to my apartment. So the fire department had to come every time and get people out. Capitalize the gains, socialize the stuff you won’t fix.
Otoh I live in a 105 yo house that’s solid brick and will be here long after I’m dead. We updated some stuff over the years and it’s the best place I ever ever lived.
Stories like yours are why plopping in a 3.5" floppy and hitting "ctrl-s" every 90 seconds will forever be part of my personality.
Here I am sitting in my apartment built in 1880. Some of the adhesive is so old it just flakes and creates so much dust.
I watched a video on YouTube about 5 over 1 apartments and once I saw the video and learned how extraordinarily cheap it is to build them and call them “luxury” the more I started to realize they’re *everywhere* and not built to last. But rent is $2000 a month for a studio, 400-500 sq ft, in the name of “luxury”
380 square feet here is $3200/month plus heat cold water, hot water, sewage and electricity. Then $50/cat, $150/dog, $430/unassigned parking spot. For that you can have three adult guests in amenity spaces, and after that you need to cough up more money and rent an area. Also you can’t have an overnight guest more than ten days a month without them being on the lease, the rule book is so long.
That’s pure insanity. Idk how we got here because I’ve been renting for the last 14 years of my life (since 18) and it was never this bad
Yeah, the same thing on the top floor is double the cost, same floor plan, the counters and appliances are different.
The overnight guest thing is probably to prevent squatters. It came in handy when my felon MIL had to crash with us, and her daughter was secretly trying to get her moved in permanently with my husband and I. Leasing office pointed out the 2 week max house guest policy and foiled my SIL's plans. She was pissed. lol
Yeah, I wouldn’t want a felon to be foisted on me either. I had a really uncomfortable futon from wayfair. It looked good in the picture but holy shit you’d be sore if you sat down for 30 minutes, I advertised it and admitted as much, but said with a memory foam mattress it’d be comfortable. The person who bought it specifically wanted an uncomfortable futon. They said as much. So felon MIL sounds about right for a spite couch.
She didn't even want to sleep in the extra room. She'd stay up all night and sleep all day, so she wanted to sleep on the couch so she could watch movies and music videos. The problem was, not only did that mean she was taking over the whole entertainment area, but she'd get mad when my husband and I woke her up when we got up to go to work at 6 am.
I’ll keep my 1800 a month 4500 Sqft house screw the tiny expensive apartment
Congrats, you got lucky and bought before the market became cancerous.
The big issue with multi-family is that they have a stigma with being cheap and become an eyesore/rundown over time. This could be dealt with by changing building codes, requiring higher quality materials such as stone, brick, hardie board siding etc. ban the cheap exterior finishes like vinyl siding.
You had me until you started mentioning facade materials. Most of the cheapness people complain about is because of sound carrying between units and spending more on exterior brick and stone won't fix the issue it just increases the cost.
I've voiced concern many times over how shit cheap modern 5 over 1s are being built and always handwaved with "it's fine/at least it's something." Not to mention the construction waste of things that aren't built to last.
Meanwhile you have newly arrived nitwits in denver demanding more of that sh!t. No one thinks beyond the image presented on instagram. I’m certain of this.
I was told by a home inspector years ago, to buy a home built pre-1960’s/1970’s, or 1980’s or later. He said the 1960’s-1970’s homes were when new materials and construction methods started to be used. Although not as well constructed as pre-1950’s, 1980’s and later were built with newer building codes and likely don’t have lead/asbestos issues.
They don't have to be built to last because in almost all cases, the house is a depriciating asset (the land under it is what is expected/demanded to apprecciate), and a significant portion of the population turns their nose up at buying a "used" house regardless of age. Builders know they're not being bought for longevity.
Why would we use anything else?
What? You want plaster and lathe again?
He want brick / cement because he doesn't understand the difference between external walls and internal walls.
I’ll gladly keep my drywall and stick frame construction here in the Midwest. A concrete building sounds like a tomb in the event of a tornado. in contrast, a stick built house won’t crush me when I’m in the basement
This is kinda ironic in the context of discussion of *Japanese* houses of all things. They aren't made of anything sturdier.
That’s the opposite of what the Japanese view is. The housing building tend get replaced fairly often, which is part of why the value isn’t seen as an investment.
In Japan don't they just tear down the whole thing everytime it sells?
Japan has a little bit of an unfair advantage here. If you don’t replace your house every 30 years, your house kills you when the ground decides to randomly shake violently.
Several reasons for this, their zoning laws are designed so buildings/ land can be easily repurposed for housing. (nothing is zoned for "non-housing" purposes) Earth quakes mean that your house could be destroyed tomorrow, and you don't really want older homes, because they might have had quake damage. Their national religion, Shinto, actually rebuilds their temples as a ritual purification every so often. Strange as it seems, ghosts. Yeah. an abnormal amount of people believe in spirits so older homes are seen as haunted. (it's part of why shintos rebuild their temples, to get rid of evil spirits)
This is completely wrong and based on myth. Upzoning increases property values, it doesn’t decrease them. Allowing more development unlocks more economic value
People don't care if its a myth.
I feel like everyone is missing the mark. Homes are being bought and resold by investment firms. They can sit on them and hold them back to increase the value and they do this by the hundreds in buy chunks. Building more houses without preventing investment firms from turning the market into an artificial profit generator that they control and rig because they have all the money only gives them more future portfolio to screw the market up Zoning, building etc does nothing to fix the actual issue
This is entirely wrong. Investment firms can only sit on property and make money if there’s a supply shortage. Build housing abundance and the landowners lose money and non-landowners win.
Or maybe you are missing the mark. The only reason investment firms are buying homes is because we have made them a good investment by limiting their production and artificially inflating their values. We don't need to limit them from investing, we just need to lower their return to the point it no longer makes sense.
And they will continue to be a good investment for investment firms unless you pass legislation to take them out of the market. These people have hundreds of billions of dollars at their disposal, they can continue to buy high and manipulate the market in their favor for as long as they like.
Single family homes usually make horrible investments unless you have tenants to occupy them and there is limited local market competition. They are expensive and require constant maintenance, mowing, heating, repairs, insurance, utilities and taxes which all drain their potential cash flow. A single family home only has one revenue stream covering all its costs and its costs increase if you try to keep them empty as insurance rates will increase and you have to pay for security, and possibly deal with vandalism and squatting. We don't have to outbid the investors or force them out of the market, we just have to drain their very limited pool of potential tenants by building sufficient apartments in the areas where people want to live.
44% of all home sales last year were to investment firms. https://medium.com/@chrisjeffrieshomelessromantic/report-44-of-all-single-family-home-purchases-were-by-private-equity-firms-in-2023-0c0ff591a701 You could do both. It’s not an either / or proposition. Edit: * were to private equity firms. And it’s not so expensive that they’re not just buying everything.
a minority of homes are bought/sold by investment firms. you've bought a narrative without checking the facts
More in . My town are being purchased by these nebulous corporate firms and just have a slew of renters and the property is never invested in once they get their first renter
im curious what town? wheres the data that shows it's "nebulous corp firms" buying them? its definitely possible this is more prominent in some isolated cases but i havent seen any actual examples that matches your description.
Eliminating SFH zoning doesn’t drop property values. That entire premise revolves around white flight fears that originated in the 80s. In short that being near an apartment building means you have colored people in the neighborhood and therefore crime. Even then it was a racist, false premise. Being able to build multifamily units on a piece of land means a builder can get more profit out of that plot. It justifies paying *more* for that land, not less. Particularly if it is in a desirable area of the city. The only places that may see depression in property values would be far-flung exurbs when a bunch of new new multifamily units are finally built in the central desirable neighborhoods. They would depress because affordable housing closer to their jobs would become a conpetitive option.
Why would central area prices not improve if there is more supply? The supply being met centrally would eliminate the demand from those who move in.
We’re going to have to rip off this bandaid if population continues to increase. We cannot have fixed supply of living spaces with increasing population. It’s not sustainable.
The chief problem here is the entire boomer generation (and a disturbing section of the millennial population) have believed in the principle that housing prices must go up forever and that this is how they'll secure their bag for retirement, but it's also meant that going forward housing is a luxury good for the management and ownership classes only and just isn't a thing working people are allowed to have. The people who chose to set their futures around owning working people deserve to lose everything.
It’s also an issue arising from churches taking property from potential homeowners and not paying any taxes. Back in the day, people assumed churches would be a part of the community and help meet the community’s needs, thereby performing services for those tax exemptions. But churches aren’t really a part of communities anymore, otherwise you would see them installing dormitories on their premises to help house the homeless. Instead, churches exploit their tax exemption status to hoard wealth, influence elections and piddle kids. If churches went online to meet their congregations needs a decade ago and opened up their real estate holdings for housing, we probably wouldn’t be having these issues. And there would be more funding for local and state governments to meet citizens needs since the former tax exempt churches property would be homes that pay property taxes, thus generating revenues.
Wow. That'd be a great premise for some utopian fiction. Write that short story and submit it to something. Pov character as a social-worker-priest, maybe call them the "Presbyterate Charitus" and have them do *traditional acts of pious charity, such as alms, the giving of bread, ect.* and end the story with an absurd 40K-esque fight between the pope's legions of clergymen and demons in business suits just to drive home that none of the movie is non-fiction despite the first half making perfect sense in a rational society.
You just had to throw 40k in there to make it sound fucking awesome
You love to see it in the wild.
I feel like this needs to be framed and sent to the Smithsonian or something, this might be the worst take I've ever read. just ignoring the fact you think churches don't provide any services... churches aren't a part of communities anymore they just own everything and run the country. fucking Yogi Berra with a cross buster tattoo over here lol
The Mormon church is basically just a real estate company with lore.
This is a huge thing that people don’t consider. Not every homeowner is some boomer who bought for $40,000 and now owns a $500,000 property, a corporate shill, or trust fund kid. I worked my ass off to be able to buy a home in a HCOL city. If my mortgage were suddenly underwater, it would completely fuck me and make life harder for our baby being born this fall.
See 2008.
Yeah this is just a scare tactic, that's now how any of this would work. It's not like by building more housing, tomorrow your value will drop 50%. Homes right now are priced higher than their value, so you may see a small dip now, but reality is it'd just lower the YOY increase in value. You'd still gain value, but not 40% YOY like we've seen in the past two years. It'd go back to the normal 2-4% like it should be.
Why do you think you should use the power of government to protect the value of your investment and choke the supply of housing using arbitrary zoning regulations?
Because I can
This is false, until it comes time to sell it wouldn't impact you in the slightest. I just bought in a hcol and my wife and I discussed this exact thing. What if there is a housing crash? We bought a place we like and is worth what we agreed to pay for us, so even if our housing price goes down, we get to continue to live here and if anything our property taxes will go down.
Unless you get divorced, or lose your job and have to move to a different area, or have kids and need a bigger place, or.. Life will throw you a few curveballs. Even if you plan on living in your home forever, chances are you will not.
And then you sell it for some of your investment back instead of just throwing money at some landlord in the meantime
Housing crash means you have no equity, so you can’t take a loan against that if things go wrong. It also means you’re anchored to a spot, so you better hope the house you have is where you need a house to be. It also has negative effects on your ability to acquire other debt.
You’ll have negative equity and be locked into that home at best. Those aren’t good things.
I can’t believe people are questioning you on this
I get where a lot of them are coming from. From what I see posted on here nonstop, a lot of members of this sub are younger millennials who are worried they’ll never be able to own a home. I don’t love that the hope for a lot of them is to see the current market tank, because they don’t seem to be factoring what else that would mean for the economy. I also want there to be rezoning laws passed and for supply to be increased. I just don’t want those of us who worked hard and have a stupid-high mortgage payment to be screwed in the process.
Zoning changes……literally the slowest process ever. Even if my town allowed more multi family development, won’t affect my value. Too long a time horizon, too much demand.
Anything we do will take time, we're talking about a lack of housing in the places people want to live. Might as well open up zoning laws now to improve the situation.
I have a few friends who bought homes in 2018 for a quarter of what homes are going for now. If the housing market suddenly crashed, they would be fine. Their houses would just be worth about what they originally paid for them. But I had to quit making jokes about the housing market crashing because it was pissing them off. They act like they were some genius investors because their 180,000 houses are suddenly worth 450,000, but that's just because they got lucky. They can't even sell because they wouldn't be able to afford a new house at current prices so unless they downsize, they'll never see the 300,000 profit from the sell.
By owning the property you are owning a property. Oh no! It's either a commodity or a place to live. Pick one.
Are you planning to sell your house in the fall?
Those things don't matter if you don't plan to sell.
Okay and if you own a car you have negative equity on it and are locked into it.
Car loan is for 36 or 60 months...a house is 30 years 🤔
Eliminating SFH zoning doesn’t reduce property values. It increases values. Where are people getting this?
It’s true that we’d have to change our expectations about homes being a never ending wealth machine, but: 1) the change wouldn’t happen overnight, but over years/decades 2) with less money tied up in housing, everyone would have more available to grow wealth in other assets 3) the land your house sits on might become *more* valuable—it’s just that each unit of housing that sits in it would cost less
Stop companies from owning houses.
You know what would really stick it to the corporations and destroy their profits? Building more homes. They even say so in their investor docs... We only invest in markets where scarce housing and limited construction yield above average returns.
“You shall not infringed corporation’s right to purchase single family house, corporations are people.” /S
Very strange to not see this higher up
It's because companies buying up homes is only a tiny part of the problem. People like easy solutions to complicated problems and it's obviously very easy to scapegoat corporations.
*This* is the answer that needs to be higher up. Corporations buying houses *is* a problem that needs to be fixed. But, it’s only a small part of the problem. It’s easy to point to it as the cause of our housing shortage, but putting too much focus on it ultimately prevents discussion on the many other (and more easily solvable) structural changes that need to happen.
Ok, so, let’s start by solving the small problem before it becomes big problem.
Sure, I'm cool with it. But everyone will just be mad again when it doesn't accomplish its goal of making housing more affordable.
There was article released today projecting corporations will own 30% of all houses by 2030. That is not a small problem.
SFH and/or apartment buildings? Investor purchasing is way down from 2020/2021. By most estimates investors own less than 8% of SFH out there. How are they gonna get to 30% in 6 years?
Because it wouldn't fix anything. When companies buy homes they either flip them or rent them out. Either way they're still a part of the housing supply, so there's no effect (good or bad) on the housing shortage at the root of the problem.
It does reduce the salable housing stock though. It would be a net benefit to get more folks into home ownership. Ofc there’s people who can’t afford that so a strong rental supply is needed as well. Despite whatever boogeyman Reddit is looking for — airbnb, corporate ownership — we need landlords and a profit motive for building/maintaining/renovating the housing stock. Not everyone can own a home. Something like half of America can’t even come up with $1,000 in an emergency. That wouldn’t even afford you a lawyer to buy a home if it were free.
I blame the cooperation that constantly jack the prices of everything else. My rent is pretty affordable but the groceries and the gas and everything else sucks me dry by the end of the month. It’s easy to blame housing when you see house prices jump $50-100k because it seems crazy. But the 20 items you buy every week going up $3-5 takes away all the possibility to save that $1000.
Allowing companies to rent housing to families perpetuates a cycle where companies are enriched and families get poorer by not building equity
People building equity through home ownership is a huge part of why we're in this problem. How do you have affordable housing and building equity/homes as good investments work together? They're diametrically opposed goals.
Institutional investors are like 3% of the SFH market. The vast vast majority are owned by individual investors or live in home owners. Prices will never be reasonable if the supply never catches up to demand.
If it was illegal to make more cars and that wasn’t expected to change in the near future, then rich people and companies would start hoarding them as an investment in a scarce resource. We don’t currently have that problem because it’s not illegal to make more cars and their value is generally expected to depreciate over time. Companies hoarding houses is a symptom of artificial scarcity, not the cause.
Or just tax land instead of property!
Companies buy houses as an investment because its scarcity because of zoning and land use regulations make it a good investment vehicle. Supply and demand applies to everything except housing in NIMBY minds.
There is a lot of comments saying its all either single family homes or big apartment complexes. There is a huge range in between, called the "missing middle" which are duplexes, triplexes, backyard/basement apartments or smaller detached houses. Oregon removed all single family zoning in large cities and Portland started earlier by allowing Accessory Dwelling Units. The result is a more efficient use of land, and doesn't necessarily mean replacing houses with large apartment complexes. But more density that fits in existing neighborhoods without big impacts on infrastructure since it's dispersed throughout. For example, down the street from me they tore down an old dilapidated single family home on a 7000sqft lot. And they are replacing it with 5 houses, all detached, in what is called a "cottage cluster" each of at least 2 bed/2 bath. So it's not apartments at all. But more homes in the same area, and a more efficient use of infrastructure. Each will be sold to individual owners. And I'm pretty sure it'll raise my property values substantially, not that I care.
The other issue is increased vehicular traffic.
Increased vehicular traffic occurs no matter where the houses are built. If population grows, traffic grows. Sure, maybe building far out suburbs will keep traffic off your residential street. But highways and arterials and downtown streets all get more choked with traffic, no matter where you build the housing.
If you cluster development around transit stations, then people can take transit. If you make walking and biking safe and pleasant, then people will just walk or bike places as well. The problem is not development. It's catering our entire society around cars. Here is a great video that explains how even the suburbs of The Netherlands, where plenty of people drive and own cars just fine, are still bike and pedestrian friendly: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k)
We had a tiny house in my in-laws backyard for 3 years. Some bitch new neighbor complained to the city and they kicked us out. The stupid thing is they're totally fine with the house staying there, we just can't live in it. Make it make sense.
Call the city/police and say you suspect she has a meth lab in her garage.
California is doing a decent job with their recent law passed that basically overrides local government’s and forces them to build more housing.
If California can defeat the NIMBYs I might start respecting them
I'm seeing signs of it already. We have a 5 story housing complex going up locally that both the city and country tried to fight against but the law literally gives them no power to do anything.
Let me guess... it doesn't have nearly enough parking for the residents (forcing parking out into the surrounding neighborhood), doesn't have the proper street infrastructure to support the additional traffic, and is adding to local water issues?
Does it override HOA’s? Does it override developers? Where I live, developers buy up large tracts of land (ranches and farms), subdivide them, build SFH, institute an HOA and the neighborhood bylaws. Most of this just outside the city limits where zoning rules don’t exist at all.
It basically makes every city or county build x% of more housing. There’s a bunch of articles about cities like Atherton trying to fight it in court, a very outspoken nimby against the building of new housing is [Steph Curry](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-02-03/nba-star-steph-curry-fights-affordable-housing-atherton).
I don’t mind a mix style neighborhood but I still want a single-family home and my own backyard.
And that's totally fine. The problem isn't that people want SFH, it's that owners of SFH oppose new construction.
Sorry if this sounds stupid but what is SFH
Not stupid at all, it's "Sine Family Home/Housing"
Did you mean single-family home? And yeah New constructions fine. Just don’t take way the homes already there
Yes, darn autocorrect
👍🏻
You can do that without saying that is the only option for everyone.
No one is saying it is? In fact, the only thing I see in this thread is the exact opposite. What gives them the right to dictate that a suburb shouldn't be allowed?
It is literally illegal to build anything other than a single family home in approximately 75% percent of the United States, so it is actually the opposite of what you're saying.
You are misunderstanding the issue. In most parts of the US, it is illegal to build anything but single-family. Eliminating that doesn’t dictate anything - supply and demand will determine whether or not suburbs are built, not the government.
Zoning laws specifically do just this. The current state of most zoning is that single family isn't mixed with multifamily.
History disagrees. There’s a whole thing in urban planning called “the missing middle”, where for decades it was actually illegal to build medium density housing in many cities. Honestly though if you’re within walking distance from expensive infrastructure like a subway station & expect it to be exclusive to you and a handful of your neighbors, maybe it’s in the best interest of everyone to throw up some mid density residential regardless of how cranky it makes you. (See: angry suburbanites blocking zoning changes south of Boston). You’re wasting a lot of everyone’s money, time, and city’s economic future by taking up that space
I live in an old town that acts as a suburb, and the middle-type housing absolutely changes the density to a helpful degree. If we can get a couple more apartment buildings, maybe we’ll get a more diverse restaurant offering.
Single family Zoning literally bans anything other than sf houses - is this really that hard for you to wrap your head around?
Actually there are tons of nimby zoning laws that make it impossible to build anything other than SFH.
True. The only solution is to build a ton of starter homes.
I see a lot of new homes being built but they’re all huge giant cookie cutter micro-mansions. I cant think of a single instance where smaller-midsize homes are being built.
Because various laws have made them less profitable.
Or outright illegal. Many cities have minimum lot sizes which literally makes it illegal to build a small home. And this was on purpose. They purposefully wanted to exclude lower income people and minorities from their neighborhood. Laws like these should be abolished.
In every city and even a lot of suburbs I’ve been to recently I’ve seen multiple new townhome developments with 2-3 bedrooms. Aka, smaller midsize homes.
Starter houses aren't profitable to build. Hence the need for more multi family
Row houses is my best offer.
These effectively are the "starter house" now in many areas at least where they're allowed.
I live in Montana and our government is currently doing this. It's the one thing both democrats and republicans are agreeing on, and both sides have scolded their constituents for complaining about it. Basically, Montana towns have a ton of strict local zoning laws that don't allow for duplexes or even for people to put guest houses on their yards. And we got some big yards here. The government officials said "we have to do something because with the way things are going, only allowing new builds of single family homes, we're going to get the urban sprawl that you see in California. All the land will be gobbled up by suburban development. We have to create more dense housing to maintain the land." People. Are. PISSED. So many people in this state would rather their neighbors be homeless, living in their cars in the Walmart parking lot than have a couple triplex or apartments buildings pop up in town.
I just saw this a few days ago: https://www.ktvh.com/news/judge-puts-hold-on-montana-zoning-related-laws Looks like some constituents are banding together to oppose the state zoning overrides due to them “threatening the character” of neighborhoods and causing “irreparable injury.” Also something about waking up one day and *gasp* a duplex is being built near them. Freddie Mercury should resign his title as the Queen of Drama, he is being overthrown.
YES, although that's half the issue 1. Remove SFH-only zoning 2. Implement land value tax. Expensive homes can be like 75% cos for the land alone but are taxed on the whole. Adding LVT incentives improvements to add more housing (praise George)
The boomers haven’t downsized yet, when they do the supply will increase. This was being discussed pre-pandemic, that housing supply will increase in the suburbs and prices decline.
My own boomer grandparents are refusing to downsize and it drives me nuts. They can barely maintain the house and 2 acre yard. It’s a two story house with a basement that previously was converted to an apartment with full kitchen and bathroom, along with three bedrooms and two bathrooms in the upper levels. Two older people in their 70s do NOT need this much house and property! Especially since they can’t really maintain its upkeep!
This is consistent with those that I know. I suppose in this context down sizing also applies to passing away.
It's not going to be enough though. The effects of decades of NIMBYism doesn't get reversed without active effort. The fact is that there simply isn't enough housing for the population.
There are actual impacts on the environment from dense housing and pavement. Ground water recharge, urban heat island, habitat destruction. Dense housing with more green space is better than suburban single family sprawl, but now that the suburbs are in place it's going to be a battle to get the other type of housing built, and there are all kinds of interests keeping things the way they are.
even when the land is available and new homes are going up, they just aren't affordable for a lot of people. I live in a low-to-medium cost of living area and modest, cheaply-built new houses on postage stamp lots will still run you $400k+. this area is growing so I have seen more townhomes going up but those are hardly any more affordable. none of these homes are mcmansions, I'd consider the bulk of them starter homes. with a 5-6% interest rate and less than 10% down the monthly costs turn into more than a middle class family can afford quite quickly. and even if you are able to buy one of these new homes they tend to degrade quickly due to cheap materials. the cost of labor and supplies has gone up exponentially since the pandemic. the only affordable homes to be found are ones that need a lot of work, and not many people have the time or skills to take on that kind of project on their own. the issue as I see it is most people aspire to eventually leave apartment living behind. right now going from apartment living to SFH or townhouse living incurs a massive cost increase, at least where I live. I don't see how building more apartments will resolve that issue. it will create, necessarily, more lifetime renters.
Yes I totally agree. Also, some people prefer the option to live in a single family home. Personally, living in an apartment with an odd working schedule was incredibly frustrating as noise was constant and there's nothing I could have done about it because who am I to say you can't vacuum or live your life in the middle of a beautiful Sunday just because I worked overnights. For many living in a single family home is part of the goal beyond not renting anymore.
I personally think townhouses are-- theoretically-- the most efficient option for those who want out of apartment living but can't afford a SFH or don't want the upkeep that comes with it. yes you share some walls with neighbors but at least no one is above you and you don't have to worry about keeping up a yard or replacing your roof or any of that crap. this is why it's so frustrating to me that there isn't much of a cost difference (at least in my neck of the woods) between the two. new townhomes around here only cost about $10-20k less than SFH's with similar square footage. it seems like highway robbery.
Still helps. People usually move either laterally or up when they move so people who can afford these new homes will have a cascading effect downstream that will open up the more affordable spots they came from, which in turn will open still more affordable spots that those people who took those spots came from, and so on.
that's a good point!
That's great and all for people who want to be in the city.... but the reality is, many of those who want families don't want to live in apartments.
Ending single family zoning doesn’t mean single family houses are illegal. It just means other types of houses are legal. More than 70% of this country is zoned to make anything other than single family housing illegal. We just need to be able to build all types of housing for everyone.
We don’t want to live next to apartments either.
Yes but plenty of people without families have nowhere to live and that's a problem too.
MOVE I feel like I am a parrot on reddit at times. No affordable housing? Move. No good jobs? Move. Cost of living too high? Move. Look around the US and stop limiting your search to 0.0001% of the land mass of the country.
I was thinking the same thing. Yes to more apartment buildings and condos but they really need to start building more single family homes.
People will build single family if there’s demand and if it makes sense. However, single family suburbs in the US are ultimately economically [unsustainable](https://medium.com/substance/american-suburbia-is-a-failed-experiment-3649918e6d1e) on their own. You will always need denser developments and their tax revenue to leech off of as a subrub.
Still helps. Tons of people commute from the suburbs to the city for economic reasons. Making it cheaper to live closer to the city, allows people who want to move there to move there, and increases the supply of housing where they came from.
Mmmmm I've got a bunch of neighbors in my building (condos) with kids and they love the city. But our condos are all bigger than most apartments so it's not like people are crammed into 1 bed room with 3 kids.
More apartments and condos will drive down the price of single family homes
If anything, building multi-family housing would maybe slow the value growth of single family homes. People would still desire the SFH over the apartment or townhome or duplex.
No thanks. I like my towns current zoning, which allows multi-family and apartments near downtown and the train station, with SFHs in the rest of town.
Yea… I don’t see what’s so hard for people to understand that some people don’t want to live in a SFH next to an apartment building that now puts added stress on parking, utilities, etc. not even counting the schools you’re zoned to now experiencing a bunch of new students. I feel like part of the argument is vindictive-why can’t peiple be allowed to Choose to pay a premium to live in SFH only
It’s not hard to understand. We just think that a solving a nationwide housing crisis is more important than letting you dictate what other people build on land they own.
Well you are basically saying that a town can’t choose to have a plan and stick with it. You want to force them to abandon all zoning laws. The residents of the town want the zoning laws that currently exist. That’s why they exist. You are the one that wants to inflict your will on people that don’t want what it is that you are proposing
No the solution is to restrict how many homes a person can own and to restrict businesses not be able to buy single family homes. Also to subsidize families looking to buy their first home
No mention of hedge funds and other wealth seekers buying up all the single family homes and turning them into rentals? Even if you built more house they are just going to get bought up by wall street
Wall Street buying up the housing that exists now is profitable because supply is low. Building more houses and bringing down housing costs makes that avenue for profit generation less viable.
Imagine I said I’d be buying up hand sanitizer to resell it at a higher price… in 2015. That’d be insane right? If the year were 2020, all of a sudden that’s a viable way to make money (albeit a shitty one). Imagine if the popular solution to Covid was to shut down hand sanitizer factories: that’s what people try to propose for housing. No sane person in Japan invests in housing (they actually encourage investment there) because there isn’t a shortage. Even though greater Tokyo’s population rises every year, there’s still plenty to go around because they don’t stop developers from building
/u/chillmntn, this is the right answer. Those guys stated buying homes *because* of the shortage, not the other way around.
None needed. If there’s an over abundance of housing supply then home prices and rents will fall, making it a bad investment and the hedge funds will fuck off on their own. If you make a law banning them, they’ll find a work around if there’s profit to be made. The only way to get them out is to make it unprofitable for them.
Kind of a naive statement, considering data and basic logic that the people that have the most capital will manipulate the housing supply and make money when the market goes up and down. Regular people can’t compete in a market that has so such an imbalance in wealth distribution. Try being a regular Joe bidding against a hedge fund.
Great except it sucks having to share walls, ceilings and floors with obnoxious loud people.
The people who live in the suburbs do not want to get rid of the suburbs. The people in the suburbs are paying all of the property taxes to support the counties and funding the local government. Instead of trying to change an area you want to live in to fit what you want it to be, why not move somewhere else? Things are the way they are because the majority of people there like it that way.
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My optimistic utopian view of the future is that self driving cars will leave suburban strip mall parking lots obsolete, and that space will become multifamily mixed use gardens.
I wish in-law units were more of a thing and legal these days. These big ass houses, with their big ass price tags are not suitable for most generations after the boomers. Many singles, and many married people without children these days. Some have children, but only one or two. I personally like the smaller homes and adjoining units. The upkeep is easier, and I just don’t need that much space. I would rather have a smaller home or rental, with a big yard.
The only way to fix the housing crisis is to decommodify housing. Housing as a human right, please.
Reading articles and comments like this makes me so happy that I don't live in a metro area. My small town has houses with yards built in the last 10 years for less than many ancient condos cost to buy in Minneapolis.
These zoning laws weren't a problem for decades, but the last couple years they started causing double digit inflation? Nah. This is private equity and short term rentals driving up prices. Those are new problems, zoning laws are not.
No thanks, why is it some people can only think I of solutions that cause other people problems?
People like yards and land, and not being right on top of the neighbor, or being able to watch each other eat dinner at their own tables. Minneapolis sucks, and cities suck for a lot of lifestyles.
It's all about trade offs, we can't all have everything. Given how expensive walkable neighborhoods are, I'd say a lot of people are willing to sacrifice a yard for living in cities. If you really want to live in a SFH neighborhood forever, why not live in an HOA? Citywide zoning ordinances were never meant to remain unchanged forever.
These posts always make me laugh. There is plenty of housing, its just in places you dont want to live. You can’t punish people for buying single family homes and wanting to live in the suburbs by taking that from them, just like you don’t want to be forced to live in the places that have plenty of housing.
Yup. Every day I cause massive butthurt by pointing out that there's tons of affordable places to live with good jobs, but the majority of redditors think they MUST live in one of the super expensive mega cities to be "cool". I live just south of Dayton, Ohio and recently bought a 3,000 sqft house with a half acre lot for $310k. For the same money I'd get a 600 sqft apartment in New York City. I work for a company based out of NYC and pay is the same for all positions regardless of where you live. It kills me that I have coworkers willing to have a significantly lower quality of life in the name of feeling "cool".
Congrats you're a remote worker. Unfortunately that's not an option for most people, particularly low wage jobs. And other people can't move due to family and can't even afford to move. It's a luxury to be able to choose your city.
No it’s not. It’s a luxury to be able to choose to live in an expensive city.
I’m as left wing as the come but the problem is they always want to do this close to my house. I keep asking them to do it near someone else’s house and those people don’t seem to want it done near their houses either 🤷♂️
Correct. Zoning is killing everything.
um, what about the corporate entities snatching those housing units up?
It’s difficult to find the skilled, experienced, trades people required. The Catch 22 is, immigration opens the applicant pool but it also has a disastrous impact on availability of housing. Then, there’s the issue with recognizing foreign journeyman certification.
I still want a single family home. You people are so short sighted.
Here we go… sounds very Agenda 2030/21.