Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by tbruckner 887 days ago
Housing prices remaining high because people can't move and people can't buy because of interest rates just shows how stupidly hard it is to build new housing in the US.
2 comments

Home builders operate on borrowed money so high interest rates push up their costs significantly. Worse still, with rates expected to slowly come down they’ll be selling into a market where house prices are likely lower (in real terms). Neither are really connected to how hard it is to build housing (though yes it’s too hard).
Does anyone have a good explanation of why the Federal Reserve isn’t able to have lower interest rates for supply creation activities? It appears that would be a useful tool that would work in favor of their inflation and employment mandate.
Money is fungible, and people WILL arbitrage equal-risk rate differentials, even if you make it illegal.
Economy is doing "good" so there is no need. And there is still large risk of inflation coming back. So it is better to keep rates higher. There is yet no real need to lower rates. So better to wait and see.
The idea is that it could help lower inflation as shelter is a large portion of core CPI. It’s not about lowering the prime rate, but having a lower rate for creation of supply, which would exclude all services (80% of the economy).
The financing for home builders would also be a bit lower if housing were easier therefore less risky to build.

But agree that higher interest rates hurt builders too.

was having this discussion with my father the other day.

The housing crisis seems to be essentially global. It's getting really very bad over here in Australia, we have young families being priced out of even the rental markets and staying in tents and stuff.

I dont understand how the building industry can possibly be going broke when people are clambering for houses to be built!

It’s the “nobody builds used cars” problem.

The people who have the money want high end big houses to be built, so that’s the supply being added.

It’s not being added fast enough to fee up enough “used” smaller houses.