[api]

Real estate infuriates me to the point that I find myself hoping it burns to the ground and that the whole industry suffers.

“Real estate always goes up” is treated like a damn entitlement to the point that the financial well being of everyone under 40 today has been sacrificed to it. In 2008 it felt like the entire real economy was put on the chopping block to bail it out.

I’d love for a real estate market that looks like Japan. That way the real economy built around people actually doing things could flourish free from endless real estate idle rent extraction.

[lwansbrough]

Agreed. The de-risking of the housing market has been disastrous for <= millennials.

The de-risking has come in the form of artificial scarcity caused by zoning gatekeeping and outdated fire code, amongst other things. It’s time North America took a hard look at the root causes and fixes them before there is a crisis of confidence in leadership (which is already happened to me - I’m moving out instead of buying in to the insanity.)

[bcrosby95]

It really started with Greenspan's juicing the markets in the early '00s due to the dotcom bust and 9/11. We got a short reprieve after the 2008 crash. But the markets have been fucked up for a while now.

Arguably the '08 crash was bad long term too. As far as I've read, a lot of people got out of the industry after that, which made it even harder to build.

[highcountess]

He was juicing the real estate market before the aughts, and he was even warned before the aughts. There are clear indications and evidence that he did that with designs.

[Zafira]

I think the general consensus is that Greenspan was an ideologist and effectively a useless Fed chair since he didn’t believe in regulation. The only reason he was probably not ousted was because he had enablers with the added leverage that the economy was doing pretty well during his tenure.

[rickydroll]

> The de-risking of the housing market has been disastrous for not(1%class)

fify,

the problems are class-based, not age/generation-based. the intergenerational conflict is fed by the 1% to keep us from paying attention to how they are robbing us.

[brewdad]

It's both. The class of younger generations who can afford to be homeowners is much smaller than it was when previous generations were that age. Sure, it was never easy for most 30 year olds to buy a home but now a 30 year old has had to have a LOT of things swing their way to even consider it.

[wyre]

I don’t mind this narrative and you’re true in most areas, but home ownership is so tightly correlated with generation OP’s comment in not incorrect.

At every age baby boomers were more likely to own a home than millennials at the same age.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synops...

[nordsieck]

None of that would be a problem if people could just build.

We need to double the number of bedrooms in most major cities.

[yowzadave]

You probably mean we need to double the number of bedrooms available for sale/rent

[nordsieck]

> You probably mean we need to double the number of bedrooms available for sale/rent

No. I mean double the total number of bedrooms.

It is absolutely necessary public policy to completely gut the price of real estate across the country. I am aware that it'll be painful.

[yowzadave]

I'm not objecting to causing pain for property owners, I'm saying that doubling the number of bedrooms in a city is nonsensical (if you double the amount of residential area in a city, where will it go?), and also that you're underestimating the impact on the market of a relatively small increase in supply.

[marssaxman]

> if you double the amount of residential area in a city, where will it go?

You don't need to double the area, you just need to double the density, which is easily done by eliminating exclusionary zoning. The scarcity is artificial.

[tzs]

There aren't enough people in most major cities to come anywhere occupying that many bedrooms. Are there enough people in rural areas, suburbs, and minor cities that want to move to major cities to supply renters for them?

[nordsieck]

> There aren't enough people in most major cities to come anywhere occupying that many bedrooms.

Right now.

But that's because it's too expensive to live there, so people move to outlying areas. But if the cost of housing starts to drop, people will start moving in, which will stymie the cost declines.

I'll admit that I'm not intimately familiar with all of the large cities in the US, but Seattle would be a slam dunk. The suburbs are way more populace than the city itself.

Same with San Francisco, although that city has more problems than just a shortage of housing.

I'm not sure to classify New York City, but Manhattan could easily double its bedrooms with no shortage of demand.

[majormajor]

You ain't gonna make it cheap, exactly, in those places. Look at Manhattan compared to Seattle - there's ALREADY far more dense housing in NYC than Seattle, yet prices stay high. People will be willing to pay more for those places with more amenities. That will continue.

But you're gonna make it a lot more livable and arrest the rate of inflation.

[nordsieck]

It may never be cheap, but it should be possible to drive down the cost of housing to the cost of construction. A big part of getting lots of building done is to take a chainsaw to existing regulation.

* No minimum lot size

* No parking space requirements

* No single family zoning in the city - minimum is multi-family, 15 stories.

* No requirement to match the character of the neighborhood

* No height based additional setbacks

* No rent control

* Get rid of the anti-dorm laws[1]

* No historical preservation without the city buying the property in question

* No building plan for the city - replace it with a "shall issue" policy where the city has to have some affirmative reason to block the permit or it gets issued by default.

There's probably a bunch more that should probably be done away with; those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

---

1. It's very common in cities to ban dwellings that house more than x (typically 4) un-related adults.

[charlie0]

Voting with your feet is the most practical option.

[jjav]

I know it's not what seems like the most fun solution but there is merit in this.

For anyone in their 20s or 30s.. you only have so many years even if it seems life is long. If your current city makes it impossible to have the housing you want you have two choices. Try to change it, which is noble but can take many decades. Or move.

I can't fault anyone for trying to change it since improvement is a great cause. But do you want to find yourself 60 years old, still waiting for those changes?

I'm on the younger side of GenX so not in my 20s anymore. But when I was in my 20s I wanted to desperately live in my chosen city (Manhattan). I tried everything but it was way too expensive to reasonably rent, forget buying. I gave up and moved and bought a nice house for less money than a closet in Manhattan.

[charlie0]

The compromise here could be you can now have vacations in Manhattan. There's an odd thing that happens to most of us where we become convinced we HAVE TO live in certain places and we get tunnel vision because of that. Personally, I think the sweet spot is living 20-40 minutes of such places. It tends to be more peaceful further from downtown areas, considerably more affordable, yet still close enough you could day-trip it and enjoy the amenities.

[jjav]

> I think the sweet spot is living 20-40 minutes of such places

Well it's more than that (where is it cheap 20 minutes from Manhattan?), but in general you're right.

Move out to the suburbs, far enough that it's cheap(ish) but you can still visit.

[yunwal]

There are really really good reasons why certain places are expensive vs. cheap. Having no access to walkable areas, fresh food, education, safe water, or public amenities in general is not a dignified way to live for most people. It's not about fun, it's about your health, community, support system. Changing that situation in cheaper areas is not necessarily going to be easier than changing housing affordability.

[jjav]

> Having no access to walkable areas, fresh food, education, safe water, or public amenities in general is not a dignified way to live for most people.

These things are easily found outside of Manhattan (in my example, or whichever large downtown area you prefer).

In my little suburb I can walk to just about everything I could need, multiple farmers markets for fresh food (probably more than in Manhattan since there are many farms within an easy drive; not too many farms in Manhattan!), top rated schools, public parks, libraries, theaters, etc.

The only thing missing here compared to Manhattan is tons of bars within walking distance for the nightlife. There are a couple breweries within walking distance so that's good enough for me, given all the tradeoffs.

[yunwal]

> These things are easily found outside of Manhattan

True, but in my experience every place that’s satisfactory on these fronts is also getting insanely expensive, even the suburban areas. I currently live in a walkable small town and COL in walkable areas is essentially the same as, say, Astoria, without nearly as many transit options or amenities.

[charlie0]

I'd challenge that. I recently moved and was able to find a place that had all that and was cheaper. Having lived in big cities all my life, I totally believed that only big cities had this. Of course, now that I challenged myself to look outside the box, I was finally able to find something.

[mitthrowaway2]

I don't know of anywhere that I can move to in Canada that has the zoning rules I want and also a hospital. I'm not sure I could even find a place sans hospital. I think that means I have to vote with my ballot, not my feet.

[inhumantsar]

what zoning rules do you want?

[j7ake]

Calgary, Edmonton.

[api]

That’s what our family did.

[majormajor]

> “Real estate always goes up” is treated like a damn entitlement to the point that the financial well being of everyone under 40 today has been sacrificed to it. In 2008 it felt like the entire real economy was put on the chopping block to bail it out.

Real estate took a bath in 2008. So much that it scared developers and investors so much that they slowed building to ridiculous paces

If you want reasonable housing prices in the US you need either:

- to change demand so people want to leave today's dense and expensive cities and stop competing-up the prices. The "RTO is all about commercial real-estate" true-beleivers think remote work alone could do this, but the last few years aren't providing strong evidence of that. Density and geography have other appeals.

- or, some way to re-start massive construction in those in-demand areas to push rents and individual-unit pricing down... but in this case, the price of the real land would actually go way up (there's no development if there's no future value > present value)

[freitzkriesler2]

Hear hear. It's time for a teddy Roosevelt figure to come along and gut real estate investors.

[petre]

The US no longer has politicians like Teddy Roosevelt anywhere in sight.

[mtalantikite]

I mean, Bernie was pretty close until the machine behind the Democrats worked as hard as they could to force Biden. They almost took Bernie off the ballot here in New York when it was clear Biden was getting the nomination.

[bamboozled]

I realized the other day, and I might've been in denial about it, but I cannot return to my home city as it's just too expensive now. Even if I wanted too I simply couldn't afford it without introducing quite immense financial stress into my life.

In some way I hope it crashes as well, just so I can get back in if I wanted too, but on the other hand, so many of my friends and family have bought into the "real estate always goes up" mantra that if it goes backwards, they will be ruined financially. With interest rates up and their mortgage repayments going up dramatically, I've already seen more divorce than I ever imagined I'd see. The financial pressure just broke marriages.

In hindsight, I'm probably better off now that I moved away to a cheaper place in the mountains and leave nearly debt free. I invest my money rather than give it back to the bank with interest.