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by iambateman
670 days ago
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Housing can’t be both a good investment AND affordable. As a kid, I was told that my house was a good investment and the houses rise in value overtime. Now, I own two houses which of both appreciated by about 9% per year for a decade. We agree there is a problem. But I doubt the premise that land hoarding is the key issue. It seems to me that everyone wants to live in a 3,500 square foot detached house near the city. But only so much of that exists. At least one major reason is that neighborhoods actively fight the installation of semi-dense housing because it would “ruin the character of the neighborhood.” This gets encoded in zoning. The people who have most power over local zoning regulations are neighborhood boards, not home builders. |
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That and related factors (likelihood to commit crimes of the sort that affect home values, say) are a lot of why communities try to keep affordable housing away. High prices are your buy-in to good schools if you can’t afford good private schools. Once you’ve bought in at a price inflated by school quality, you definitely don’t want to see that slip or there goes all the money you spent (maybe literally all of it—I’ve seen premiums for “good” versus “just ok” districts near one another that are well into the levels of mortgage down payments—20%, 30%)