How private equity is changing housing

this sounds nice, but neglects the fact that (1) materials cost has gone up and (2) zoning requirements exist. (1) means its just more expensive to build overall, and (2) means that a lot of proposals for apartment complexes get voted down.

Part of building more is getting government (mostly) out of it so that things like zoning laws don't hamper new development. Obviously that is very hard to do at a local level when incumbent homeowners' housing values would be cut in half overnight.

This is happening in california. In fact there are three current situations: 1/SB9 cutting R1 lots in half 2/ ADU laws, which let you build up to 3 homes/units where there was one and further, can be combined with SB 9 3/ AB2011 which lets you turn defunct strip malls into housing

Honestly, this plus things like PermitFlow make me feel like we will be able to build enough. The issue will be making sure the housing is affordable rather than expensive and empty.

>this sounds nice, but neglects the fact that (1) materials cost has gone up

That's a red herring because most of the price increase comes from increase in land prices.

https://www.aei.org/housing/land-price-indicators/

Well duh because "just make everyone underwater on their mortgage" is a bit of a silly solution that definitely won't have any second order effects.

also neglects the market's appetite for this risk of building in the current environment, which is the biggest problem. market gonna act like a market

can you please explain how these graphics are supposed to support your argument? it's not clear to me and i'm trying to understand the georgist POV.

nonetheless, materials and the cost of labor are the most significant costs for new buildings. not land, taxes, or zoning regulations. here is one example where this is a fact: www.vermontpublic.org/local-news/2024-05-23/uvm-halts-student-housing-project-construction-costs-workforce-shortage

You're not wrong. There are multiple aspects of government involvement that require untangling which includes federally backed mortgages that allow banks to be more lax on loan terms (which is how we got 30 year loans and Trump proposing a 50 year)

Actual NIMBY/YIMBY fights look like one level of government representing a lot of people who can't afford a primary residence fighting against a different level of government representing a lot of incumbent primary residence owners who are concerned on a personal level about the negative externalities of more people being able to live in their neighborhood. Government is happening no matter what.

I'm not neglecting those facts. 2) is almost the entirety of the problem. the call to action of "build more" is not wishful thinking that someone will donate free houses to the public. the call to action is to vote for politicians who will remove the near-universal smothering red tape that prevents any kind of meaningful new housing construction

Switch from "national level" tab to "metro level", and select los angeles for an extreme example. Look at the the figures right of the map, that says "share of SFD units build before 1980 with a land share of" and compare the figures between 2012 and 2024. Just by eyeballing the percentages, it looks like the land share went from 50-60% to 70-80%. This is confirmed if you sum up the figures in a spreadsheet, you go from an average share of 51% to 72%.

You can compare this to overall housing prices in the LA area[1], prices in 2024 is 262.7% of 2012 prices. Suppose you have a $100k house in 2012, that will worth $262k in 2024, an appreciation of $162k. Using the land value percentages above, the land value of the houses are $51k and $188k respectively, an appreciation of $137k. That means 85% of the appreciation was in land, not because building materials got more expensive or whatever.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LXXRSA

market has plenty of appetite but it's muzzled by selfish and short-sighted NIMBYs

exactly wrong based on my argument. did NIMBYs cause the dramatic drop in building after the great financial crisis? (no)

interesting. what about a timeframe that doesn't occur with a period of extremely low interest rates like your 2012 - 2024 time range?