Cities Keep Building Luxury Apartments Almost No One Can Afford - Slashdot
source link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/04/21/1447223/cities-keep-building-luxury-apartments-almost-no-one-can-afford
Go to the source link to view the article. You can view the picture content, updated content and better typesetting reading experience. If the link is broken, please click the button below to view the snapshot at that time.
Cities Keep Building Luxury Apartments Almost No One Can Afford
Cutting red tape and unleashing the free market was supposed to help strapped families. So far, it hasn't worked out that way. From a report: Austin is experiencing an unrivaled apartment boom. In 2021 the region including the Texas capital issued nearly 26,000 multifamily housing permits, about 11 units per 1,000 residents. That's more per capita than any large US metro area since 1996, when Las Vegas OK'd new apartments at only a slightly higher level, according to rental marketing firm Apartment List. By the same measure, which is based on an analysis of US census data, Austin topped the 50 largest US metropolitan areas in 9 of the last 10 years. Many, if not most, of these apartments are classified as luxury, depending on how you define it. (Some developments are likely using a bit of real estate puffery.) Buildings such as the Hanover have become a flashpoint in a fierce, often bitter debate raging in Texas, the US and around the world. It's about the best way to shelter this generation and the next, particularly in the most sought-after and expensive cities. Academics, developers and people in their 20s and 30s -- particularly those most active on social media -- have reached an unusual level of consensus. Their solution, supported by a wealth of scholarly research, is simple and elegant: Loosen regulations, such as zoning, and build more homes of any kind -- cheap, modest and palatial. The shorthand for the movement has become "Build, build, build" or "Yes, in my backyard" -- Yimby, for short. It's a rejoinder to the "Not in my backyard," or Nimby, crowd, the hidebound folks who typically thwart construction. Texas is famous for its business-friendly ways, and David Ott is one of many embracing the Yimby approach. He oversees the Texas projects of Houston-based Hanover, which developed the building Young was showing on a recent March afternoon. He says Austin is getting overbuilt, so rents will indeed come down, especially in the suburbs. "It's simple supply and demand," he says.
Do you have a GitHub project? Now you can sync your releases automatically with SourceForge and take advantage of both platforms. Do you have a GitHub project? Now you can automatically sync your releases to SourceForge & take advantage of both platforms. The GitHub Import Tool allows you to quickly & easily import your GitHub project repos, releases, issues, & wiki to SourceForge with a few clicks. Then your future releases will be synced to SourceForge automatically. Your project will reach over 35 million more people per month and you’ll get detailed download statistics. Sync Now
›
Developers do not want to build them. They can build a house twice the size for more than twice the profit.
Apartments are similar. Yes, you can fit more smaller apartments in the same space, but it's nothing compared to the higher rent you can charge for bigger apartments.
-
Cities don't want them to either, because more expensive apartments provide more in various tax revenues. And neighbors don't want low income, because they attract the poors, who are ugly.
-
But are they ugly mostly because they are poor?
Please discuss below.
-
Or are they poor because they're ugly?
Either way, for some, the only possible solution is for poor people to go away and die somewhere that normal people don't have to look at them.
-
There is plenty of evidence that you are right. Attractiveness has a strong correlation with increased lifetime earnings.
However, as a strange twist, very unattractive people, not just run-of-the-mill unattractive, but "oh. . . my. . . God" ugly people enjoy the same lifetime earning benefits as moderately attractive people.
-
-
No, they are poor because they are lazy, worthless and criminal. Which is also what makes them "ugly".
-
Some maybe... but you can't deny some are born into a really bad situation through no fault of thier own.
-
Or they're poor because their parents were poor, and they never had a chance to meet the right people, get into the right schools, etc.
But tell me, did you masturbate while you posted about how morally superior you are to all those dirty mud people?
Cuz we all know you did.
-
-
It can be a vicious circle. If you're not beautiful you're going to have a harder time getting a high-paying job which will make you poor. If you're poor you'll have a harder time affording quality food and health care, and having free time/spare physical energy for exercise which can make you ugly. If you come from a poor background your ancestors probably also had a harder time attracting beautiful mates which can put you on the back foot genetically.
But more to the point, wealthy property owners don't di
-
-
Because crime follows them. The kiss of death for neighborhoods is when you start seeing people put those iron bars on windows and doors.
-
Crime does not "follow them". They are the ones committing the crime.
-
-
That's the crux of it. If you look at the local market around here a lot of time a builder will build the same template of houses in two different neighborhoods. The same brand new house might be $200,000 in one neighborhood and $450,000 10 minutes down the road. The reason? For the more expensive one people are willing to pay significantly more for the same house because they know their neighbors will have to too, and they want to make sure they're around people of similar income.
Low housing prices = p
-
-
Nice FP. So how about considering the social and psychological damage of the "my tiny kingdom" mentality fostered by small homes? Shoot first, ask questions about lost balls or turning around in my driveway afterwards!
However, mostly I'd like to add a couple of historical footnotes. In my youth as a whippersnapper programmer I did a lot of work for commercial realtors in that selfsame Austin. The big crisis of those days involved office buildings and to a lesser degree shopping centers. The way capitalism works, a bunch of investors had noticed that Austin appeared to need more office (and retail) space, so they built a bunch of it. But acting independently, they overbuilt and created a race condition of desperate investors trying to complete their projects and get them sold to someone else before they went bankrupt.
Quite an entertaining circus, especially since many of the properties had been speculatively resold several times during the process. Each resale raised the land's value, but the previous owner was able to clear his debt and in the end only the last owner would be forced into bankruptcy and the banks would be left holding greatly devalued properties.
Yet one of the funniest stories I recall from those days was a residential development... Even after all these years I'm not sure I should go that far as naming names... And even though my own employers were only tangentially involved... But what the heck. Anyone ever heard of Block House? But I'm not even sure of the official name... Maybe it was Block House Creek? Not to be confused with Williamson Creek...
So now we have the same song, but a different verse about apartment buildings?
By the way, one of the biggest Austin gamesters of those days was the father of the future briber of Supreme Court "Justice" Thomas. I can't recall if I ever met him, so probably not.
-
Which is to say cities donâ(TM)t build, developers do. They get the funding, and are expected to drive a profit. In my city for many years that meant renovating downtown office buildings into hotels.
We have three large parcels of land right now under development for expensive apartments near downtown. They have been stagnant for a decade. They need funding other large parcels are being developed into relatively affordable townhomes
Austin is unique in Texas for two reasons. First, it is the only cit
-
The permitting and inspection process, along with things like environmental review, not to mention site prep, are all essentially fixed overhead - whether you build expensive housing or cheap housing, you're really not going to be able to skimp on those costs. EIR is often used as an excuse to deny development, even in areas that can support the increase in higher end market units, so a lot of money has to be spent to actually push through a housing development.
So assuming the market can support it (and if
-
Well you also have localities who are pushing things (at the request of existing residents) like limiting the number of houses that can be built (because they don't want more traffic), or restricting density requirements so that your number of houses per acre is a maximum amount such that its not feasible to build houses but so small).
I mean I get it to some degree - Americans (including myself) have a very individualist mindset and largely want to be off to themselves without lots of other people to bother
-
-
What's completely missed is that typically when somebody is at the beginning of their career, they shouldn't expect to be able to buy or rent the fancy new housing unit, just like they can't necessarily buy every other fancy new item they want. Pretty much nobody is in that position at that age, and their parents were too. As such, they can't expect to own all of the same stuff their parents do now as they move out on their own. Instead, what happens is somebody who has been in their career longer goes and gets said fancy new housing unit and the younger person gets the one that has just been vacated, happy to have something nice and dreaming of the day in the future when they can afford a fancy new housing unit. Admittedly, AirBNB has screwed that up to a noticeable degree.
-
> they shouldn't expect to be able to buy or rent the fancy new housing unit,...and their parents were too
Bullshit.
Someone "beginning their career" today would be in their mid 20s. "Their parents" therefore would be between 40 and 50. Let's say 50s, who themselves started their careers in their mid 20s, meaning they were getting out into the world circa 1990s.
The average new house in 1990 cost about $150,000 (adjusted to 2020 dollars)
The average new house in 2020 cost about $400,000.
And if we go back to
-
I thought the worst take was to just blame the younger people who can't afford houses of spending too much on avocado toast, presumably to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
-
You'll notice that a lot of homes like that are also much smaller the further back you go.
Honestly we need a lot of 750 SQFT condos and/or townhomes that are priced reasonably. And honestly the free market would probably even facilitate that if the zoning regulations would get the hell out of the way.
-
-
Except the issue here isn't that someone at the beginning of their career is expecting this, it's that they have no housing available to them. Someone late career may be interested in the luxury apartment, and leave behind... an equally expensive house that the beginning career people also can't afford.
There's simply an oversupply of luxury. Housing is not trickle down economics. Sitting on a house does not cause it's value to degrade like a second hand car.
-
If Austin is like the Bay Area, the housing shortage is most acute at the bottom end and not really all that bad at the top. New luxury apartments won't be available for those to those who really need them for 20 years, if ever. (Many luxury apartments have amenities that will never work at low rents). Where are the middle and low income people going to live in the mean time?
-
-
Even creating more luxury apartments will help significantly because they are far more dense than detached homes. Most new buildings are not going to be affordable when new, but today's new buildings become the affordable homes of future generations. I don't think we need to be too concerned with new housing be affordable for average residents, we just need to build more in general. If there are enough new homes for the upper middle class to move into, then the middle class can move into the older homes whi
-
Only if people will buy them. I just saw a 9000 sq foot monstrosity go up in a neighborhood that has 2000 sq foot average homes, topping out around 3000. Big family homes in a family community. this developer bought a plot of land and absolutely filled it with this huge house because on paper that will be worth several million dollars, but its not clear if it will sell for that because the size and amenities don't really fit with the community and the types of families that tend to move to that area.
-
And if that theory were actually valid across the standard curve of income, then every home would be 5000SF+, cost 2 million or more, and we'd all be driving around in $100K luxury cars.
The entire point being made here is profit hardly matters when unrelenting greed alienates your product from the very consumer base it was intended for. Those aren't "developers". They're greedy parasites contributing to a problem. The only thing all that "profit" will guarantee, is an inevitable market crash.
Not that Gre
-
It may not be enough to crash the market again. It could just stretch people's debt to the brink but not too far that the economy breaks.
I do wonder what would happen if there were zoning restrictions in specific areas on property sizes / building cost limits that scale with inflation. Someone would be able to build and make a profit even if it's somebody else.
-
Out of control housing costs is hardly a localized problem anymore. And we're not talking about a luxury watch or a yacht here. We're talking about the very asset that allows adult humans to move out of their parents bedrooms. To accept job opportunities, start lives, and build families.
Quite frankly, I could give a shit if Greed doesn't want the market to crash again. It needs to, and everyone knows it. And with bank interest rates continuing to climb adding hundreds more to an obscene monthly cost, th
-
-
Recommend
About Joyk
Aggregate valuable and interesting links.
Joyk means Joy of geeK