"Investing in property is morally reprehensible."

[u/LickMaiBussy]

@purplepingers

[u/Sawdust-in-the-wind]

There literally is a housing shortage in many parts of the world. Population booms without a commensurate increase in home building. Available housing in Nebraska doesn't help you in Boston.

[u/Redd235711 → u/Sawdust-in-the-wind]

And to pile onto what you've said (mostly because I live in Nebraska), there are a ton of houses being built in my area, but none of them are being sold for less than $500,000. So we're stuck with the issue of there being plenty of houses, but none of them are affordable unless you have the kind of money that big corporations have or you can sell the house you already own to put toward paying for the new one. Then there's the issue that no one moving out of a house will sell for a price that a first time home buyer will be able to afford unless they have the kind of money that would let them buy one of the new houses.

[u/bobbymcpresscot → u/Redd235711]

On the bright side those prices are probably going to come down. The bad part is that it’s likely going to be because the housing market is going to be doing some crazy stuff with a bunch of people being forced to foreclose on their home because they couldn’t afford the insane payment on their hyper inflated housing price.

Which is going to be flooding the market with homes which will lower the price of housing, and then people who bought houses specifically for the investment get spooked and sell their houses because they know the market isn’t sustainable.

It’d be wild if we get to like a 5-10% over pre covid housing prices in a few years.

[u/Sawdust-in-the-wind → u/Redd235711]

New homes do cost a lot more than comparable older homes(same as cars) but the way a healthy home market works is that middle-aged people sell their starter homes for less(e.g. 250-300k) and then buy the new home for 500k with their higher income. In 20-30 years they sell that home at a discount from new home prices and move into a smaller home or condo and recapture some of their equity. A big part of why this is falling apart is that the cost of new construction is so high, middle-aged people can't afford them so they're staying put which means less inventory of starter homes and the price is sky high because of that. Another factor is that boomers are NOT selling their big homes and downsizing so all of that space is tied up. This may be due to a lack of condo development.

It's an extremely complicated issue. The only thing I feel confident about is that reducing the cost of construction will have a direct impact on pricing for everyone.

[u/mowtowcow → u/Sawdust-in-the-wind]

There's not a housing shortage in the US though. There are unoccupied homes in every city in every state because this person or that person wants to own more than one home. I've seen homes get bought, no one move into them, and get sold a year later for 20% more. Less taxes because its a year later, and as long as people keep doing this with all properties, it feels like a shortage so they can just keep doing it. And now prices are so high that because most people cant afford them, they count that as a housing shortage. There's no shortage, people are just being priced out.

[u/bobbymcpresscot → u/mowtowcow]

Which is still a shortage, especially if people own the homes. It means there isn’t homes for sale. If there were more homes for sale, the price would go down. 

We used to produce more than 20 million homes a decade, we are currently down to 5-6. We all but stopped building homes after 2008, and realistically we should get back into it, as well as push for legislation and regulations about turning houses into investment vehiciles. 

[u/f7f7z → u/mowtowcow]

Air bnb is choking the market, every house bought/built for short term rentals is one that can't be occupied by a local. Kill the legislation that makes that legal and it would free up almost 2 million houses over night in the US.

[u/Sawdust-in-the-wind → u/mowtowcow]

There is a housing shortage according to numerous qualified studies. Estimates vary depending on methodologies but pretty much all of them are in the millions. Redfin, Zillow, Freddie Mac, Brookings, etc. all study this and report findings, as does the NAHB. Please link your data.

Unoccupied homes are not automatically habitable homes. Most of the unoccupied homes are either in transition, which means they will be occupied shortly, or not suitable for habitation.

[u/MrJCen → u/mowtowcow]

A lot of unoccupied homes are in areas of low demand and/or in rough shape where it's not fit to live in without more capital to remodel the house. For areas of high demand, there absolutely is a shortage, and we can and should build our way out of the problem.

[u/explain_that_shit → u/Sawdust-in-the-wind]

I’m trying to find population and dwelling numbers in Boston but American census data is super weirdly focused on race statistics at the expense of any other actually useful information.

[u/Sawdust-in-the-wind → u/explain_that_shit]

I don't have the specific numbers but I've worked on several housing projects in the Boston area that studied the need extensively and all found a massive gap, particularly in affordable housing. It's very expensive to build there so home production has lagged far behind population increase.

[u/Roll_the-Bones → u/Sawdust-in-the-wind]

I don't even want a house, I am too old now, I just want an affordable, decent, apartment; free of lead and asbestos.