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by pound 2314 days ago
not sure what exactly is 'short term' here, but simple example re. supply and demand and prices:

1) there is a 100 single family homes somewhere.

2) there are 300 people looking who need to live in that somewhere

3) on top of 100 single family homes now we have 400 units built

..

Can it be that price of the units for sale may get reduced for competitiveness?

2 comments

The price the NIMBY in the parent's example would care about is the price of the SFH they already owned. That price goes up - it's now harder to find SFHs, and the land value is also increased because it could be turned into 4 units that will add up to more value than the prior 1.

https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2020-01-3...

Here's an agent discussing this happening right now:

> Traditional sales comping remains relevant, but it should no longer be the single factor when determining price. Recent legislation allowing additional dwelling units (ADUs) is a game changer, as savvy investors and agents understand that accurate comps should now include not only neighborhood sales prices but also potential revenue from future ADU development.

> Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed a slew of bills that will allow property owners to build a backyard home of at least 800 square feet or convert a garage, office or spare room into an additional living space. Single-family zoning effectively evaporated on Jan. 1 when the new laws went into effect.

If NIMBY's only cared about money this would be a fucking gold mine for them.

The hassles of having tenants make it not worth the extra income for a lot of people who would only have one. There are real examples of tenants destroying a place and moving out leaving the landlord a large cost to fix the place up. There are real examples of tenants using various discrimination and tenant rights laws on false claims to get months of cost free living. I make no claim as to how common it is, but if you are landlord stuck with the evil tenant it doesn't matter if is only 1 in a million who is that evil.
Sure, in this scenario the "protecting their property value" person would just cash out and sell to the developer who's gonna be good with tenants and is willing to pay more since it's no longer single-family-restricted.

But the opposition to upzoning here in LA and the Bay Area is largely coming for qualitative reasons instead of quantitative reasons. And that's lost when you reduce your argument to "they only care about their property values" so you lose any chance to convince them...

Flip it on its head a bit.

Let's say you live in a neighborhood of mostly single family homes. A new law is passed changing the zoning to allow higher density, and other barriers to building up are reduced or eliminated.

A few people near you sell their homes; they're bulldozed and are replaced with multi-family units. Sure, over the short term, your home value might drop because of greater supply helping to meet demand.

However, over the long term, or even medium term, two things may happen:

1. Your home value goes up because single family homes are less available, and are more desirable.

2. Your home value goes up because developers want to buy your home in order to build a multi-family dwelling there.

Meanwhile, more people are able to live nearby, more affordably, likely cutting down their work commute and increasing their quality of life. I guess the incumbent owners really are that selfish that they fight tooth and nail to prevent others from increasing their quality of life.