Widespread affordable housing shortage. There is an abundance of unaffordable housing. he proposed solution, brand new housing, will never solve this.

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mothballed 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

I literally just built a house for ~$60k a couple years ago. A burned out trailer even in a rural shithole with no jobs in my state is about $100k+. An actual functional house, $250k+. This is counter-intuitive but it makes sense in context of the recent COVID 0 real interest mania.

Meanwhile all the shithole land with no "dwelling" on it was never eligible for mortgages so people weren't able to bid it up to oblivion on debt that they locked in with 30 year mortgages so you get weird results like the cost of vacant land is way cheaper than the same piece of land with a house that can really only be bulldozed (latter would be cheaper in most times in history). End result is I built an entire house on property cheaper than a burned out uninhabitable trailer. Building on unmortgagable land is a way to bypass the fact houses are all locked up in 30 year loans at negative real interest rates.

End result is it's far cheaper to build a house than buy even a shitty burned out one because to do the latter you have to buy someone out of their money printing machine of a negative real rate loan, which obviously they are only willing to do for a king's ransom.

------ re: location ---------

I won't share my address but if you are looking to do this yourself: look up fishing canneries in Alaska, most of them are close enough to cheap plots you could do this on, often even without permits or property tax. These canneries are also usually desperate for workers and pay a livable wage to those with refrigeration technology certifications.

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postalrat 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'd like to see what kind of house you built for 60k. My assumption is its some small maybe 300 sqft box with no sewer you spent many hours yourself building. Not something something most people would do and while cheap in dollars certainly isn't affordable if you are putting a lot of work into it.

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mothballed 6 days ago | parent [-]

It's basically looks like a glorified rectangular shed but it does have sewage, electric, water, and hvac. Not very impressive but every single person I've had over who's lived in an apartment has expressed interest in learning how to do the same over paying rent out the ass for a similarly sized uninspiring shit-box and ending up with no equity.

The only people that have been over that have been unimpressed are people already living in an actual house, but that's not really the target audience for this kind of thing.

---- re: below [my account is throttled] ------

I speculated on an old well share that turned out to be good, so got a well for basically nothing. If you don't have such luck you can haul water.

I use septic, which in some counties (mine) no requirement you be licensed to build. It can be built with only a shovel and some pipes and concrete if you are on an extreme budget, although helps a lot more if you can get ahold of an excavator.

	▲	badc0ffee 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Is it well water and a septic system, or is it serviced?

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AnimalMuppet 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If I understood you correctly, land that has no building on it is not eligible for a mortgage, and is therefore cheaper to buy? With the downside that you have to pay cash, because you can't get a mortgage either?

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mothballed 6 days ago | parent [-]

Yes the land value is so insanely cheaper on un-mortgagable properties in my state, it's off the charts.

I have developed land in my county so I'm familiar with the costs to develop, buy land, place utilities etc. (I did not become a land developer on purpose, only because I realized this absolutely crazy arbitrage)

It would cost you about $200-$250k to buy a rural small acreage land with a manufactured home on it. If you pay cash for the land and drop the exact same manufactured home on it, it would only cost you about $150k, and you would get a brand new house instead of a "used" one.

There is huge pent up demand for someone to just buy a huge swath of small acreage properties and just drop the cheapest manufactured home you could on it as the non-luxury starter home market is currently not being met. You could pretty much double your money. I'm not sure why this isn't being done en masse although a few private actors seem to be doing it and making a killing.

	▲	Melatonic 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Doesn't the cost of adding sewer / power / etc add up a ton ? Does that not require permits ?

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red-iron-pine 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

show us where this is. give me a google map coordinate.

and then show me where the jobs are.

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0xy 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This is not true. Building all types of housing increases the supply of affordable housing.

Build a new luxury apartment, and someone moves from a mid tier apartment into it, and someone moves from an affordable apartment into that, and so on.

Price is a function of constrained supply. The type of supply is not important to increase the numbers.