Economy The great housing market crash of 2022

[chrisdiaz]

Walking and riding your bike for transportation is for poor people. The stigma isnt going away for a long time.

 

[deadon]

Walking and riding your bike for transportation is for poor people. The stigma isnt going away for a long time.

Shit all I see are kids that just want to stay indoors. Imagine telling them to walk to school lol. Or go to the store or whatever. It's not happening. These fools are growing up in a world where if mom tells them it's dinner time they yell at her and throw the remote at the TV.
But yeah little Johnny go outside!

 

[Islam Imamate]

Developers petition for zoning that makes the most economic sense for the developer. They're not stuck with the original zoning, especially when developing a massive tract of land.

That's just not true, most cities in North America zone most of their land for single family residences with setbacks and minimum parking requirements. Lobbying to build anything else is expensive so most developers default to whatever the local zoning code calls for with maybe some slight tweaks.

You can certainly demand that developers build multifamily or mixed use dwellings out in the burbs...and watch no one take you up on that. Because people move to the suburbs precisely because they don't want the multi-family or mixed use experience. They want the single family home on the fenced in plot of land. The mini-kingdom. And they are willing to pay for that. If they have to share the premises with strangers or businesses, they might as well live in an urban center.

And if I'm the developer, I'm building what will sell for the most money. The economics of the city are not my concern.

Well first off let's see what the market really generates by getting rid of the onerous zoning laws that mandate single family zoning. Beyond that cities could try to incentivize those developments with tax breaks. And beyond that they could buy the land themselves and develop market rate public housing.

As far as Americans not wanting anything in between detached single family homes and massive condo towers to the point that anything else is entirely economically nonviable and that the lack of such housing is entirely unrelated to zoning codes, yeah just don't buy it at all. The few neighborhoods from before such zoning laws were instituted that are mixed use and pedestrian friendly are highly sought after for a reason. Part of it is scarcity since they're illegal to build these days but a big part is because lots of people like dense, mixed use areas and especially dense, mixed use suburbs.

 

[panamaican]

There should be a bill to repurpose business real estate in cities to be affordable housing/dorms, etc. Since big corps are moving their employees to be more remote working. Seems like something like that could work, especially at the state level. Give tax breaks to corporations/commercial realestate who comply with giving up the building and/or the corporations that push to work remotely to free up space.


But yea, public housing is a mess. Lots of major counties have like 3 year wait lists for section 8/asssistance, or simply have closed waitlists due to lack of available housing. A lot of these people don't want to leave the urban areas also for whatever reasons, their medicaid health centers are also in limited supply and need to be in urban hubs, among other resources.

I know that people say that but I don't think it would work in real life. The reason is that population density is an economic advantage for corporations, even when they have remote employees. They're never going to go fully remote because they lose the advantages of having the community engaging in real time, face to face. And so long as those benefits exist, they'll want commercial real estate. And they will centralize that real estate to maximize hiring and commuting for those employees. Which will often mean urban centers. And when it doesn't mean urban centers, employees will drive up the price of housing to live as close as possible to wherever that work is.

The second reason I don't see it happening in real life is that the levers of government are never going to be remote. Police, fire, judicial, legislative, etc. will always be operated in person and headquartered near a city center. And that's going to create the same demand pressure.

Take another example -- hospitals. Major employers but they need to be centrally located to maximize customer access. But where do the doctors want to live? Near the hospitals. Where do the nurses and administrators want to live? Near the hospital. Eventually, demand will destroy affordability and we're right back where we are now.

Affordable housing doesn't work near desired locations and we can't change that.

As for why low income people don't want to leave urban areas, it's pretty simple. Public transportation. Try living in the suburbs without a car, you're basically a prisoner. At least in an urban area, there's usually more than adequate bus and subway services to get them to work, the grocery or corner store, etc.

 

[chardog]

Shit all I see are kids that just want to stay indoors. Imagine telling them to walk to school lol. Or go to the store or whatever. It's not happening. These fools are growing up in a world where if mom tells them it's dinner time they yell at her and throw the remote at the TV.
But yeah little Johnny go outside!

our kids walk to school, essentially I force it on them. My BIL is way worse, he's going to have his middle school kid walk to school, and it's over a mile an a half walk, and SHE has to cross a fairly large intersection!!! my son buses and walks to high school, with walking to the stops adding up to 1/2 mile.

he can avoid that by getting a job and a car, but he doesnt so....

 

[deadon]

our kids walk to school, essentially I force it on them. My BIL is way worse, he's going to have his middle school kid walk to school, and it's over a mile an a half walk, and SHE has to cross a fairly large intersection!!! my son buses and walks to high school, with walking to the stops adding up to 1/2 mile.

he can avoid that by getting a job and a car, but he doesnt so....

Good on you guys.

 

[deadon]

Back on topic. Nothing to see here tho.

 

[deadon]

Just saw this. Back on topic.lol
Here's How Much You Need To Earn To Afford A Home In 50 US Cities.
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/heres-how-much-you-need-earn-afford-home-50-us-cities

 

[lifelessheap]

I've done that myself, driven to one lot for a certain store and then drove across the street to the other lot for the other store. The reason isn't because people don't like biking and walking, its because our infrastructure is hostile to those outside of cars. Parking minimums mean that even if two stores are technically close enough to be within walking distance, you have to cross large parking lots and busy roads with cars driving at high speeds, which generate lots of noise and air pollution, to walk to the other store and hence most people would rather just drive that distance.

Cities that have built proper bike infrastructure like protected bike lanes and an expansive network that works as an alternate method of transportation unsurprisingly see bike use go up. If you build it they will come. And the thing is drivers benefit from this as well as more bike lanes mean more short trips are made by bike and not car which leads to less congestion for drivers.

Yeah exactly, we need more options and there are things that cities can do to help. Like I said earlier bike lanes are cheaper to build and maintain and some cities have seen large increases in cycle use after building dedicated bike networks with protected paths. Paris, Seville, and NYC have all seen big jumps in bike use over the last five to ten years because they've committed to building more bike infrastructure.

The sad irony is that in countries like The Netherlands, suburbs are actually seen as the best places to bike since the lower density means fewer cars and therefore less risk to cyclists. But in the US its the opposite way around due to our terrible urban planning.

Urban planning has everything to do with housing prices as it determines how much and of what kind of housing the market can provide.

Have you watched videos about stroads?

 

[panamaican]

That's just not true, most cities in North America zone most of their land for single family residences with setbacks and minimum parking requirements. Lobbying to build anything else is expensive so most developers default to whatever the local zoning code calls for with maybe some slight tweaks.

I do this this type of work, it's not that expensive to petition for a zoning change, especially if we're talking about new development. It's not a lobbying process, it's a petition to alter the zoning. It's easier with new development because with existing development, you also need the neighbors to agree and new development doesn't have neighbors. What you're talking about is that the land is initial zoned as single family and that's what the developers choose to build instead of petitioning for a zoning change. True. But the zoning isn't the problem.

Well first off let's see what the market really generates by getting rid of the onerous zoning laws that mandate single family zoning. Beyond that cities could try to incentivize those developments with tax breaks. And beyond that they could buy the land themselves and develop market rate public housing.

We know what the markets generate. Because if it was really more desirable to build something else, the developers would do so.

As far as Americans not wanting anything in between detached single family homes and massive condo towers to the point that anything else is entirely economically nonviable and that the lack of such housing is entirely unrelated to zoning codes, yeah just don't buy it at all. The few neighborhoods from before such zoning laws were instituted that are mixed use and pedestrian friendly are highly sought after for a reason. Part of it is scarcity since they're illegal to build these days but a big part is because lots of people like dense, mixed use areas and especially dense, mixed use suburbs.

Most Americans aspire to the single family home existence. And for those who don't want it, they're not interested in moving to the suburbs. What people wanted 90 years ago is irrelevant. If people still wanted that experience in the suburbs, developers would have kept building them. But they stopped and they stopped because they were less desirable to the consumer, not because of zoning.

 

[Islam Imamate]

I do this this type of work, it's not that expensive to petition for a zoning change, especially if we're talking about new development. It's not a lobbying process, it's a petition to alter the zoning. It's easier with new development because with existing development, you also need the neighbors to agree and new development doesn't have neighbors. What you're talking about is that the land is initial zoned as single family and that's what the developers choose to build instead of petitioning for a zoning change. True. But the zoning isn't the problem.


We know what the markets generate. Because if it was really more desirable to build something else, the developers would do so.


Most Americans aspire to the single family home existence. And for those who don't want it, they're not interested in moving to the suburbs. What people wanted 90 years ago is irrelevant. If people still wanted that experience in the suburbs, developers would have kept building them. But they stopped and they stopped because they were less desirable to the consumer, not because of zoning.

Well yes cities are wising up and making ti easier to build forms of housing other than generic detached single family homes. In my area this comes in the form of townhouses. But of course if the land is zoned for single family then building single family detached homes is the easiest option so I think you're completely wrong that zoning has nothing to do with the problem here. I don't doubt there's high demand for such homes but that's not unrelated to the induced demand created by restrictive zoning laws which have only allowed single family detached homes for decades.

If the market demands such homes so overwhelmingly, why do we need these restrictive zoning codes at all? And if we were able to induce demand for detached single family homes via zoning, why not encourage more dense housing via reformed zoning codes and ta breaks? Why should the city build its own public housing to add more stock? It would make housing more affordable and would improve city finances as dense housing is required to generate enough tax revenue to sustain services and maintenance.

 

[panamaican]

Well yes cities are wising up and making ti easier to build forms of housing other than generic detached single family homes. In my area this comes in the form of townhouses. But of course if the land is zoned for single family then building single family detached homes is the easiest option so I think you're completely wrong that zoning has nothing to do with the problem here. I don't doubt there's high demand for such homes but that's not unrelated to the induced demand created by restrictive zoning laws which have only allowed single family detached homes for decades.

That's not how zoning works. One cannot say that sure plenty of people want single family detached homes and simultaneously blame municipalities for creating large of amounts of the requisite zoning.

You have the demand chain backwards. People want single family housing, so when zoning new areas for development, the city zones enough of it to meet anticipated demand. People want single family homes so developers create the single family housing, rather than getting the zoning changed to something that has lower demand, such as multi-family or mixed use.

If the land was zoned mixed use or multifamily, developers would still build single family on those lots, so long as it didn't violate the zoning. And if it did, they would simply petition to have the zoning changed to single family use and cite consumer demand as why.

If the market demands such homes so overwhelmingly, why do we need these restrictive zoning codes at all? And if we were able to induce demand for detached single family homes via zoning, why not encourage more dense housing via reformed zoning codes and ta breaks? Why should the city build its own public housing to add more stock? It would make housing more affordable and would improve city finances as dense housing is required to generate enough tax revenue to sustain services and maintenance.

We need zoning codes because those things impact other elements of municipal growth. Imagine a municipality that didn't have commercial zoning. How would you stop developers from throwing up single family housing everywhere and not have a commercial base. Why setbacks? Because cities want people to be able to walk along sidewalks so that developers don't build right up to the edge of the street. Or so that they have access to infrastructure under the land without having to go through the property. An example are pipes that connect the property to the main lines. If there was no setback, developers could build so close to the street that the city couldn't access the pipes without tearing up the street, as opposed to simply tearing up a single property's front yard or sidewalk.

Again -- we did not induce demand for single family homes via zoning. That's not what zoning does. You're very focused on single family housing so you're not thinking about all of the other zoning pieces out there.

Imagine that there was no zoning. There would be no barrier to a chemical waste company putting their facility in the middle of housing. Or a company like Walmart buying up all of the land and putting supercenters there. We zone things commercial and industrial and residential, primarily to protect residential consumers from the predations of commercial and industrial interests. We don't induce single family housing demand via zoning, we protect residential communities with it.

To lay some additional ground work on how this works. When the city has a huge plot of land with nothing on it, they zone it out. They want a mix of commercial and residential to create a positive vibrant community. To that end, they have multiple types of residential zoning. Developers come by and decide that they want to build stuff. The people who build multi-family bid on those parcels, the people who build single family bid on those parcels. But either group could bid on the other parcels and then petition to have the zoning changed and explain why. So why don't developers bid on the single family parcels and convert them to mixed use or multi-family? Demand and profits.

The thing you're complaining about in the suburbs is the exact opposite in many metropolitans. In those areas, investors are buying up single family residences and petitioning to have them rezoned as multi-family so that they can build out 2-4 unit apartments or condos and sell them for massive profits.

But no one moves into the suburbs to get multi-family housing so there's very little demand in the suburbs to convert a single family house into a multi-family or mixed use property. In the city centers, it's the opposite.

You have your demand pressure backwards. The zoning reflects demand, it doesn't create it.

 

[method115]

Shit all I see are kids that just want to stay indoors. Imagine telling them to walk to school lol. Or go to the store or whatever. It's not happening. These fools are growing up in a world where if mom tells them it's dinner time they yell at her and throw the remote at the TV.
But yeah little Johnny go outside!

That's one of the things I like about my area. I see kids out all the time. I feel a bit bad for my son though cause he gets so excited and I can tell he wants to go play with them but he's to young right now.

 

[Poatan Power]

They also get at the issue that America's terrible zoning laws have meant that the only two forms of housing that have generally been allowed are sprawling residential single family suburbs and tightly packed condo towers with little in between and so many Americans can't imagine anything else. So when you mention more density, people like HockeyBjj and him immediately imagine huge condo towers instead of fourplexes and townhouses which can fit into existing suburbs.

Yes I was born and raised in America. Of course that's how things are here, because that's how things were built and nothing else was allowed for decade and decades.

Yes few people bike to work, again its because of a lack of safe and well connected bicycle infrastructure. Painted bicycle lanes with no physical barriers from cars don't count, those are very unsafe. Hence why the only people who bike are bicycle enthusiasts and as you point out they have to bike in groups for safety otherwise they risk getting run over by a car. You're actually proving my point here by pointing out that even cycle enthusiasts have to get in their cars to do errands, because bike infrastructure here just doesn't work as reliable means of transportation.

I've lived in such suburbs and to me the car dependence and lack of amenities within walking/biking distance as well as good pedestrian/bicycle infrastructure sucks. My neighborhood didn't even have sidewalks, just roads as far as the eye can see. Having a yard and privacy is nice but being stranded in the suburbs because you don't have a car absolutely sucks and it means that households need to have a car which is a significant expense.

Why are we out of room for homes? Because only allowing for single family zoning meant dedicating most residential land for the least efficient form of housing. Now those who have to rent apartments are faced with exorbitant rents

Btw you didn't address the point I made there, about middle housing and mixed use developments. What is wrong with suburbs built like that, that have fourplexes and townhouses as well as commercial developments like cafes and corner stores? That's not living in a concrete jungle and it allows for the kind of density that can reduce housing prices. I personally wouldn't want to live in a condo tower or a dense city downtown area but would love to live in a medium density, mixed use suburb where I can walk to a corner store or grocer and kids can walk/bike to school and so would many, many other Americans. Why do you think such developments should be illegal to build?

This has nothing to do with culture, I'm just as American as you are and yet I don't want to make it illegal to build medium density, mixed use housing and many Americans agree with me. This is about good urban planning vs bad urban planning.

The problem is there aren't enough units to keep housing costs low so people end up forced into apartments with high rents because NIMBYs block the necessary level of density required to put enough housing stock on the market. Will all due respect it seems like you're one of the NIMBYs if anything.

No one is saying you can't have cars but I don't think the city and businesses should be forced to subsidize your car ownership with mandatory parking requirements and endless lane expansions to the detriment of all other forms of travel. Bike lanes are cheaper, easier to maintain, and when designed well actually generate revenue for the city rather than acting as a drain on city finances like suburban sprawl. Same with dedicated bus lanes. Cities should be investing in expanding their public transit and bike infrastructure to allow for more alternatives to cars so that people can take short trips on foot, by bike, or bus instead of being forced to use a car and contributing to congestion unnecessarily.

how do you reconcile your excellent points with the facts that a.) basically nobody wants to ride a bike b.) basically everybody wants a car c.) easily half the country isn't healthy enough to ride a bike in the extreme weathers, maybe not even mild weather d.) why should the taxpayer subsidize something they don't want/want to use?

honest questions

 

[Misfit23]

Walking and riding your bike for transportation is for poor people. The stigma isnt going away for a long time.

That's such a shitty mindset. 2/3 of this country lives paycheck to paycheck. Majority of people are poor.

 

[Scerpi]

That's just not true, most cities in North America zone most of their land for single family residences with setbacks and minimum parking requirements. Lobbying to build anything else is expensive so most developers default to whatever the local zoning code calls for with maybe some slight tweaks.

Well first off let's see what the market really generates by getting rid of the onerous zoning laws that mandate single family zoning. Beyond that cities could try to incentivize those developments with tax breaks. And beyond that they could buy the land themselves and develop market rate public housing.

As far as Americans not wanting anything in between detached single family homes and massive condo towers to the point that anything else is entirely economically nonviable and that the lack of such housing is entirely unrelated to zoning codes, yeah just don't buy it at all. The few neighborhoods from before such zoning laws were instituted that are mixed use and pedestrian friendly are highly sought after for a reason. Part of it is scarcity since they're illegal to build these days but a big part is because lots of people like dense, mixed use areas and especially dense, mixed use suburbs.

Specifically, California needs to completely rework their zoning and building codes. Its fucking impossible to build anything there....

They (Politicians) all know the problem, but refuse to do anything about it. And just add more and more regulations, never taking any of them off.

It took Bill Maher three years to get solar installed, due to the tangled mess of red tape, mostly concerning how Cali required a shed to house the unit, but also a multitude of conflicting codes that prevented him from actually building the shed.

A project that should take 2 months max... Took around 3 years. There's similar issues to anyone building homes or other multi-family residences. Cali is such a mess, it takes far more money and time to do anything. Often, the right hand has no idea what the left is doing... so building often stalls indefinitely

Hence... the massive housing supply problem

 

[chrisdiaz]

That's such a shitty mindset. 2/3 of this country lives paycheck to paycheck. Majority of people are poor.

My post was a half joke but I see your from portland so Im not surprised by your response. Carry on.

 

[deadon]

Specifically, California needs to completely rework their zoning and building codes. Its fucking impossible to build anything there....

They (Politicians) all know the problem, but refuse to do anything about it. And just add more and more regulations, never taking any of them off.

It took Bill Maher three years to get solar installed, due to the tangled mess of red tape, mostly concerning how Cali required a shed to house the unit, but also a multitude of conflicting codes that prevented him from actually building the shed.

A project that should take 2 months max... Took around 3 years. There's similar issues to anyone building homes or other multi-family residences. Cali is such a mess, it takes far more money and time to do anything. Often, the right hand has no idea what the left is doing... so building often stalls indefinitely

Hence... the massive housing supply problem

It's taken my best friend 3 years to build his home. He's even paid the state inspectors the "expedited fee" each time and it's still a 4 to 5 month wait before they can move on to the next thing.
I dont think people understand how bad CA is when it comes to anything like this.

 

[Misfit23]

Back on topic. Nothing to see here tho.

That's fuckin nuts to me. I hope some of those are business related. I only have two credit cards and don't even use the second one.

 

[Islam Imamate]

Have you watched videos about stroads?

Yes and once you see it, you can't not see how terrible they are.

That's not how zoning works. One cannot say that sure plenty of people want single family detached homes and simultaneously blame municipalities for creating large of amounts of the requisite zoning.

You have the demand chain backwards. People want single family housing, so when zoning new areas for development, the city zones enough of it to meet anticipated demand. People want single family homes so developers create the single family housing, rather than getting the zoning changed to something that has lower demand, such as multi-family or mixed use.

If the land was zoned mixed use or multifamily, developers would still build single family on those lots, so long as it didn't violate the zoning. And if it did, they would simply petition to have the zoning changed to single family use and cite consumer demand as why.

You're oversimplifying it by assuming that the demand chain goes one way. Of course there was demand for single family homes but what seems to have happened is that this demand came from white middle class families who wanted out of the city but to be able to commute to and work in the city. These people were disproportionately influential on government and got most land zoned for detached single family homes. This induces demand for single family homes and suppressed demand for alternative forms of housing.

Opening up zoning laws and offering the right incentives can reverse this to some extent. There will always be lots of demand for detached single family homes but by using a mix of home types to increase density you can add enough stock to reduce housing prices overall(thereby making those detached single family homes more affordable) while also generating enough tax revenue to cover maintenance costs which detached single family homes can't do on their own.

We need zoning codes because those things impact other elements of municipal growth. Imagine a municipality that didn't have commercial zoning. How would you stop developers from throwing up single family housing everywhere and not have a commercial base. Why setbacks? Because cities want people to be able to walk along sidewalks so that developers don't build right up to the edge of the street. Or so that they have access to infrastructure under the land without having to go through the property. An example are pipes that connect the property to the main lines. If there was no setback, developers could build so close to the street that the city couldn't access the pipes without tearing up the street, as opposed to simply tearing up a single property's front yard or sidewalk.

Again -- we did not induce demand for single family homes via zoning. That's not what zoning does. You're very focused on single family housing so you're not thinking about all of the other zoning pieces out there.

Imagine that there was no zoning. There would be no barrier to a chemical waste company putting their facility in the middle of housing. Or a company like Walmart buying up all of the land and putting supercenters there. We zone things commercial and industrial and residential, primarily to protect residential consumers from the predations of commercial and industrial interests. We don't induce single family housing demand via zoning, we protect residential communities with it.

To lay some additional ground work on how this works. When the city has a huge plot of land with nothing on it, they zone it out. They want a mix of commercial and residential to create a positive vibrant community. To that end, they have multiple types of residential zoning. Developers come by and decide that want to build stuff. The people who build multi-family bid on those parcels, the people who build single family bid on those parcels. But either group could bid on the other parcels and then petition to have the zoning changed and explain why. So why don't developers bid on the single family parcels and convert them to mixed use or multi-family? Demand and profits.

The thing you're complaining about in the suburbs is the exact opposite in many metropolitans. In those areas, investors are buying up single family residences and petitioning to have them rezoned as multi-family so that they can build out 2-4 unit apartments or condos and sell them for massive profits.

But no one moves into the suburbs to get multi-family housing so there's very little demand in the suburbs to convert a single family house into a multi-family or mixed use property. In the city centers, it's the opposite.

You have your demand pressure backwards. The zoning reflects demand, it doesn't create it.

I didn't say we should get rid of all zoning laws, of course we need some euclidean zoning laws and don't need industrial plants popping up in residential neighborhoods. But there's no need to zone so much land for single family zoning, its actually bad for the municipalities since it doesn't generate dense enough tax bases to generate sufficient revenue to pay for the maintenance cost of these suburbs. Hence cities should incentivize the building of mixed use, multi-family developments via tax breaks.

If anything they should buy some land and build it themselves. And the thing is this benefits people looking for single family detached homes since it adds to the housing stock generally and induces demand for alternative forms of housing, bringing the price of detached single family homes down. An ideal neighborhood shouldn't have on cookie cutter form of housing for miles. It should be a mixed of various home types including detached single family homes as well as commercial and retail established dotted across the area within walking/biking distance of the residences. Part of this would be driven by residences themselves who can add density by renovating single family homes into multi-family ones and/or into mixed use establishments

how do you reconcile your excellent points with the facts that a.) basically nobody wants to ride a bike b.) basically everybody wants a car c.) easily half the country isn't healthy enough to ride a bike in the extreme weathers, maybe not even mild weather d.) why should the taxpayer subsidize something they don't want/want to use?

honest questions

I don't think most people actively want either a bike or a car, they want to use the most efficient form of transportation available. Right now in most of the US that's a car. A bike is a terrible idea given there is a lack of safe, efficient bike infrastructure. So even if an establishment is within biking distance, people won't bike there if its not safe and convenient.

You don't have to be in great shape to be able to ride a bike, in fact for people with bad knees its a recommended exercise and its seen as a light cardio exercise when compared to running or swimming. As far as the weather example, people bike in countries like Finland even in below freezing temperatures. They don't in a country like Canada because there are barely any bike lanes in Canada and they are not well maintained. In FInland they are plowed regularly when it snows and so people continue biking.

Spoiler: Biking in freezing weather in Canada vs FInland

Cities should build bike lanes because they reduce traffic fatalities and congestion and are cheaper to build and maintain when compared to car roads. The idea that people won't use them is undermined by the fact that cities that invest in safe and efficient bike infrastructure see bike use go up, especially for short trips. This benefits drivers as well as people biking for short trips reduces traffic congestion making driving more efficient for those who, for whatever reason, want or need to drive.