[oceanplexian]

The house doesn’t go up in value, houses depreciate. Hence why the IRS let’s you take a tax break for depreciation if you use one for business purposes. It’s the land that goes up in value and land will never be a sustainable resource.

As the saying goes- they aren't making any more land. Land (in an area with a growing population) is a finite resource, like gold or precious metals. Nothing about it is an illusion, if you re-zone for dense housing, it will actually further accelerate the increase in price for a single family home since the land underneath is now has more utility.

[seventhtiger]

Land is effectively infinite. But it's a non-fungible ranked good. For something like real estate your entire lifestyle depends on your ranking, including ability to work. It's a community wide constant auction.

It is naturally a race to the bottom. As long as a community is getting wealthier, the competition will be more fierce.

You can develop more land as fast as possible. Unless you're lowering the ranking of the whole area, then again as the community develops competition will become more fierce.

How much does a home cost? $(however much the second buyer can maximally afford) + $1.

[nine_k]

Land may be "effectively infinite", but desirable land isn't.

Land in the middle of a desert in Arizona may be ridiculously cheap, but few people ever choose to live there (or can actually pull that off). OTOH land on Manhattan, or on the Miami beachfront, is for some reason quite limited.

[justnotworthit]

"desirable" isn't fixed. Once pheonix was "a desert in Arizona". (I'm not arguing that all land is equal).

[formerly_proven]

> How much does a home cost? $(however much the second buyer can maximally afford) + $1.

Which, as a corollary, also means that with double income now being the norm, prices are basically doubled on their own. This also means everyone who doesn't participate in comphet can get fucked.

[seventhtiger]

I've thought about this a lot, and this is happening in real time where I am in Saudi Arabia. The break neck transition from single income households to double income households.

Employment is never a choice. You either can't work, or you must work. Choosing not to work means getting priced out by everyone who does work for all ranked goods.

If you could put a value on a stay-at-home spouse's labor, you can work out whether this was a positive or negative to the family's economy. You see that at the low income end, a double income society forces the family to have a lot less just to compete for rent. Educated professional couples earn more, while outsourcing house labor to the low income families. Capitalists are very happy because they doubled the supply of their labor.

Essentially you see a person go from full time cooking for their family and raising their kids, to working at a fastfood restaurant and babysitting other people's kids for minimum wage, while their own family gets no support.

[Aloha]

I mean I'd like you to have a word with the local appraisal district on that.

The appraisal for my land value is pretty fixed, but the value for improvements changes wildly.

[WalterBright]

Building vertically in essence creates more land.

[smileysteve]

They aren't making more land, but in many places, they are making habitable, service-able land - and vice versa.

[darth_avocado]

> The house doesn’t go up in value… it’s the land that goes up

There’s a lot more to price of a house than land or the house itself. A good schooling district, lower crime, access to good commercial businesses, and a bunch of other things dictate the value of a house.

[skybrian]

The value of the land includes the benefits from living in the community. There is land you can't build on and it has much lower value. (Restrictions on agricultural land, for example.)