| ▲ | lifeisstillgood 6 hours ago |
| >>> The city changed zoning regulations to allow construction of large apartment buildings, particularly near jobs and transit. In 2018, voters approved a $250 million bond measure to build and repair affordable housing. Permitting processes were reformed to speed development and reduce costs. All three of the five things most economists say about house building - and each one will hit house owning voters hard making it hard to replicate. But none the less a triumph of common sense :-) |
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| ▲ | 01100011 an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| As a homeowner I have zero objections to apartments built near jobs and transit (which also means away from my house). I also don't think apartments directly compete with single family housing. Like, they do, but only in certain situations and at certain levels of occupancy and the economy. I am strongly opposed to building homes in stupid places, worsening traffic or overburdening infrastructure. This is why I tend to strongly oppose ADUs. If you want to turn my neighborhood into a dense urban environment, fine, but buy my house and my neighbors' houses, bulldoze them, and build proper urban density. I also have a lot of skepticism regarding our housing shortage. You can go find people making the same arguments about housing shortfalls in 2006(underbuilt for years, new family formation, prices will remain high...). But then something happened, and it wasn't that 10% of Americans suddenly died. Suddenly we had more homes than we needed. Why? Because housing demand is related to economics. Now that we're slowing down reproduction and kicking out or scaring off immigrants we're likely setting ourselves up for another round of oversupply. "Good!" Well, tell that to the soon to be unemployed home builders. |
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| ▲ | tasty_freeze 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If you are in your terminal home, then yes, selfishly one would want the value to go up. But if you ever plan on moving to another home, sure dropping prices mean you get less, but it also means you pay less for your next purchase. If you are in your terminal home, you also want low prices until the week before you eventually sell your house, as Texas has a high property tax rate to make up for the lack of state income tax. |
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| ▲ | cheriot 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > and each one will hit house owning voters hard making it hard to replicate In a negative way? |
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| ▲ | bombcar 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | As a home owner I don't really care about number go up. I'd rather it go up than down, sure. But staying level would also suit me fine. Going down might be nice, perhaps I could buy the neighbor's house and combine the lots and make a nice set of row houses ... House go up being important is really only needed if I'm using it for leveraged appreciation and doing something like dragging the cash out like a piggy bank; but that's a tiger that will have to be dismounted eventually. | |
| ▲ | maxerickson 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | As a homeowner, I want number to go up. These things push against that. Really, I'd prefer not having policies that tend to push up housing prices or discourage people from moving, but here we are, those types of policies are common. | | |
| ▲ | gtowey 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > As a homeowner, I want number to go up. Which is myopic. As a homeowner, I want cities to be livable and affordable for those who want or have to live there. I don't care if the value of my home changes one cent. It's honestly kind of useless, because it's not like I can sell the house and buy a nicer one. All the houses are more expensive so it's always going to be a lateral trade. It only helps if you sell and move to a lower cost of living area. It's kind of a sham that we have been conditioned to treat housing as an investment. Housing is where people live, it shouldn't be a commodity to be hoarded. | | |
| ▲ | WarmWash 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You can arbitrage markets for retirement, which is largely why people want their home values to increase. Their home is another form of 401k, and those mortgage payments aren't going to the bank or a land loed, they're going to their future. It's a minority of people who are ok never capitalizing on their home value. | |
| ▲ | maxerickson 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | So you are saying you are a reactionary? Did you even try to read my entire comment? | | |
| ▲ | gtowey 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I read it as presenting the reductionist side of the argument. Not saying that you personally believe it's good or right, only that it is what the majority of homeowners would think. In that sense I agree with the current state of reality. But what I am saying is that if we want to change that reality -- and it most certainly is possible to change -- it will take people rejecting the status quo. And there at least some of us who are already there. |
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| ▲ | wbobeirne 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | As a home owner in Austin, I want my friends to be able to afford homes too and not feel like they have to move to have a yard and a family. Bring on the new construction. | | | |
| ▲ | cheriot 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Growth and fewer restrictions on what can be built makes your land more valuable. Apartment buildings in place of detached houses means rent prices can go down while land prices go up. | |
| ▲ | natpalmer1776 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | As a former homeowner in Texas, I wanted the number to go down for lower property taxes. Taxes accounted for almost 1/3 of my monthly mortgage payments by the time I sold, and are a significant barrier to affordability of homes when values tend to vastly outstrip the rate of inflation leaving typical households struggling even with the homestead tax exemption. The only people in the low income neighborhood I grew up in that could afford to weather this wave of out-of-state and investment banking homebuyers were those who were of retirement age and had their property taxes “frozen” at an affordable level. |
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| ▲ | mr3martinis 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
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