[Kalium]

At the risk of being contentious, it may be worth considering that there is no place on earth where the demand to live there is truly infinite. This suggests that demand can be sated and prices brought down with sufficient supply.

Of course, there is such a thing as induced demand for housing. Studies of it show that it's not so strong as to eliminate the effect of adding supply to a tight market.

With these in mind, why would we not expect demand to eventually fall behind supply as California approaches something resembling a healthy housing market?

[civilized]

I will never understand why so many people are absolutely convinced, on the basis of seemingly no explainable evidence, that basic economics doesn't apply to housing.

[missedthecue]

Because understanding it means their housing price should go down. If they can pretend supply/demand doesn't apply, they can keep advocating NIMBY policies that increase the price of their house year after year.

[civilized]

Yeah, it's weird. If building more housing will cause the value of their neighborhoods to skyrocket, why not do it and make a killing? Are we to believe that their deep sentimentality about neighborhood character overrides any consideration of the supposedly massive amounts of cash on the table?

[Kalium]

I find it best modeled as a collective action problem. SF in particular, and California in general, has handed out vetos on housing with a quite free hand.

There are a great many people who have no particular reason to want to change their surroundings. Especially when they are keenly aware of how many of their neighbors will happily shoot down any effort they might make to make a killing.

In short, the massive amount of cash is realistically not on the table in the eyes of many. What they do have is civic pride, property taxes decades out of step, and an ever-appreciating asset. All of which they can reasonably expect to pass on to their children.

[civilized]

So no one wants to enormously increase the value of their ever-appreciating asset by allowing for more housing to be constructed? Because of... civic pride? Really?

I'm a homeowner in a desirable area. In my area I see the urge to veto upzoning and keep the riff-raff out, keep traffic from getting worse, etc. pitted against the desire to increase affordability by upzoning. That opposition of interests makes sense. The idea that I could make a killing from upzoning never occurred to me. It seems very implausible.

[Kalium]

People willing to sell and leave are happy to consider it. People who don't want to leave in the near term are very interested in keeping the riff-raff out and thus in fending off structural changes that would let you make a killing. Thus all the vetos that make it easy to keep your neighbors in line should they start thinking about that money. Accusations of greed destructive to the community are easy to level and rarely require much in the way of substantiation.

Upzoning is both a way for you to make a hefty chunk of change and an affordability issue. It's often more difficult to impugn the motives of people seeking to improve affordability, however.

Look at it in numbers, though. A million-dollar property on a large lot could become two duplexes, each unit $300k-$500k. Or a six or eight story building with multiple units on each floor. There's money to be made there for the likes of you and me. Neighbors who don't get a cut but want to keep the riff-raff away would like us to not consider it.

[Spivak]

I don’t think that people are denying the economics, only that for high-demand housing the game is different.

The price of housing isn’t completely elastic since for a given area it’s a function of the available salaries in the area. You hit a ceiling where above which there are no buyers and below which you get 20 cash offers the day you list.

So oddly the thesis is that housing prices are actually too low and we’re playing by concert ticket rules. Part of this has to do with the availability of mortgages as a function of income. And that there is so much demand for housing at a given price that any increase in supply we could actually realistically build would just get bought up instantly at the current price and we can’t increase the supply enough to actually drive prices down.

[civilized]

> we can’t increase the supply enough to actually drive prices down.

Well you'll never do it with that attitude!

Seriously, though. Every action taken in the US, other than the government spending trillions of dollars, is so piddly that no one gets to see a meaningful impact of any policy. And so people make up theories unconnected from reality, with no skin in the game, because nothing will ever actually change.

[civilized]

On reflection, I don't think I buy your premises here:

1. Salaries (and spending proclivities) are hardly so tightly banded that X is affordable for everyone who might want to move to an area and X+1 isn't. Tech company salaries alone vary a ton.

2. Housing prices are not set in a centralized way like concert ticket prices.

Those points notwithstanding, I do agree that if there's tons of pent-up demand for a product, tiny increases in supply are not going to change a seller's market into a buyer's market. It may take a lot of supply to overcome induced demand, market psychology and price stickiness, but there is an amount of added supply that would do it. It's just not the case that every rich person in the world wants to move to, say, San Francisco. Once you've built enough, you're going to have inventory that is moving slower than the sellers would prefer, and sellers will then lower price to make that inventory accessible to a wider pool of buyers.

[mixmastamyk]

Oh no, there are an incredible number of econ deniers everywhere these days. Every time an apartment building is proposed for a parking lot in California for example, they come out of the woodwork.

[zepto]

Neither will I. The number of people who think you can build an infinite number of homes in a finite space of land, or who are unaware of network effects, is surprising.

[civilized]

Apple can't build an infinite number of computers either. Chiquita can't grow an infinite number of bananas. And both of these companies are deeply networked in the global economy. So what will happen if Apple triples its computer production, or Chiquita triples its banana production? Does the price magically increase like housing does in NIMBY economics?

[missedthecue]

This is the skyline of the Bay Area.

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/q4QVkPZrTO8_USbDEe6nPfz8w8c=...

This is the skyline of Hong Kong.

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59f3777b64b05f...

Hong Kong has cheaper housing while also have 10x as many residents. Same goes for places like Tokyo, Singapore, and Shenzhen. No, you can't create more land, but you can create more housing.

[zepto]

That Bay Area skyline picture is bullshit. A photo covering a small part of SF, that you can only take from one angle.

Here is another one: https://www.lavocedinewyork.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/s...

[missedthecue]

That's the business district, not the residential district. Corporations generally don't lobby against another skyscraper going up next door like "concerned citizens" do.

Moreover, you will find no part of Hong Kong that looks like the photo of SF which I shared.

[zepto]

That ‘business district’ as you call it, has many large residential towers.

[zepto]

The argument that that the only reason shenzen housing is cheaper than SF is density is absurd on its face.

If your argument is that we can increase SFs population by 10% to maybe get a 30% reduction in average home price, then I agree. But that doesn’t change affordability.

[missedthecue]

That's why I used more examples than only Shenzhen.

[zepto]

The same logic applies. Manhattan is only 10% cheaper and yet is 4x denser. Clearly density doesn’t solve the cost problem.

[tzs]

It is because basic economics is only a crude approximation for real world economics. That's why Economics departments at universities require you to take a few courses after Ec101 before they will give you a degree in the subject.

[civilized]

So after I take many more advanced economics courses, I will understand the unexplainable reason why housing prices will never go down no matter how much supply is increased? And why this conclusion is so certain that there is neither any evidence nor any need for evidence?

[zepto]

> with sufficient supply.

You keep saying this as if supply can be increased arbitrarily. It simply can’t.

You can increase density for short while until you hit limits, but network effects will keep demand increasing as you do.

Obviously demand is not infinite, but there is no reason to suppose that currently desirable places can be made affordable.

[Kalium]

> You keep saying this as if supply can be increased arbitrarily. It simply can’t.

True! You eventually run into physical limits of density and what we are capable of constructing. However, this naively seems likely to be far higher than we have now.

Some back of the envelope math is in order, then. SF has a surface area of about 30,000 acres. Kowloon Walled City, a very dense place that actually existed, had between 33,000 and 50,000 people in 6.5 acres. Extrapolating, that puts SF at a possible maximum population of between 152 and 230 million people. That's using construction technology from the 60s and 70s, so we could perhaps do better today.

With this in mind, it does seem likely that the density of the SF Bay specifically and California in general could be reasonably increased. There's quite a lot of room for opportunity to house people between SF's current population of 875000 and a population several times that of California.

> You can increase density for a while, but network effects will keep demand increasing as you do.

Sure! As I touched on previously, induced demand in housing is a very real effect. You're absolutely right. However "any induced demand effects are overwhelmed by the effect of increased supply". https://appam.confex.com/appam/2018/webprogram/Paper25811.ht...

I believe, and please correct me if I am mistaken, that what is described here as induced demand is what you are referring to as network effects.

> Obviously demand is not infinite, but there is no reason to suppose that currently desirable places can be made affordable.

Expensive places have been made less exorbitantly expensive before. That seems like an excellent reason to suppose that a currently desirable place can be made affordable. I understand that this is a matter of opinion on which reasonable people might differ.

[zepto]

> Expensive places have been made less exorbitantly expensive before.

Places like SF? What examples are you thinking of?

Manhattan is a lot like SF, but is 4x the density. It has done very little to prevent prices rising.

[nobody9999]

>Obviously demand is not infinite, but there is no reason to suppose that currently desirable places can be made affordable.

That's a fair point. But no one (at least not in the comments I've read so far) has discussed the converse: making less desirable places (which are affordable) more desirable.

There are many places which have experienced huge population decreases over the past 50 years or so.

And many of those places are in pretty difficult economic circumstances too.

While many of the most lucrative jobs are in or near urban centers (driving up the price of housing in and around those areas), it's clear that many of those same jobs can be done remotely.

And so what's stopping folks from moving from, say, the New York City area to small towns New York, Pennsylvania or Ohio?

The reasons are several and are self-reinforcing:

1. Large urban areas have lots of economic activity, generally leading to improvements in infrastructure and facilities;

2. Small towns have less economic activity, generally leading to fewer improvements in infrastructure and facilities;

3. Young people flock to densely populated areas because that's where other young people are and where opportunities for economic and career advancement exist.

These (and other) issues lead to the high price of housing in densely populated areas and the slow death of small towns.

So what does this have to do with expensive housing in densely populated areas? A lot.

Improving the infrastructure in small towns (municipal (mult-)gigabit fiber to the premise, fast and reliable rail links to population centers, rezoning to allow more rentals -- both houses and apartments, incentives for small businesses, etc., etc., etc.) could make them much more desirable places to live.

Those, combined with the ability to work remotely, could remedy a significant portion of the housing price issues we face.

If a small town could support remote knowledge workers, other people and businesses would move in to support them.

Over the long term (50+ years), this could significantly redistribute population (and housing) in ways that would be a huge benefit to the economy.

Unfortunately, most people and corporations are only concerned about the next quarter or, at most, the next fiscal year.

There are valid, sustainable ways to deal with these issues, but unless we focus on the medium to long term (10-50 years), it will never happen.

More's the pity.

[catlikesshrimp]

You could have said all that in fewer words:

You "just have" to found new cities. Sounds difficult.

[nobody9999]

That's really reductive and doesn't represent my point of view at all.

Do you want me to explain it again?