681
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
681 points (96.5% liked)
News
21693 readers
4288 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I'm in Salt Lake City, for example, and a recent article has the necessary salary to afford a home around $140,000/year. I moved here in part because it was a much cheaper alternative to D.C. and the minimum salary to own a home is still $140,000.
This is one of the problems caused by zoning laws in the United States, rather than move to a more productive city full of opportunities, you were forced to move to a less productive city because DC has artificially caused housing to be expensive.
People are moving for affordability rather than economic opportunities.
I also have a (likely unpopular) opinion that this is not something that you should do. I read the CNN money articles, and I did one of these moves. What I found is that while the price of living may be less (a difference that is increasingly becoming marginal as more move to "cheap" areas), lost earnings can sometimes eat up more than the difference in the cost of living.
In simpler words, yes, it's the case that you can live a bit better in a "cheap area" on the same dollar amount, however, high COL regions often also offer higher salaries. So you might be able to get a steak for the price of a burger in a big city, but in some cases you're going to miss out on 30-50k of salary per year....so...maybe not the best move.
I also share this view, but unfortunately a lot of people are still moving bc of "affordability"
I'd rather live in a LCOL city than ever have a shoebox in NYC again
I'd rather NYC remove their famously restrictive building code, and live in a nice affordable apartment in NYC and the economic opportunities it provides.
The DC mess is entirely on the mayor and city council allowing developers to run rampant and price the average homebuyer (who have fucking high five to mid six figure salaries) out of the market. It's unreal and while people try to claim the recent crime wave is bad parenting, the fact that no one can afford a house is a major part of it. Doesn't help that property taxes can jump by 17-40% per year whenever some developer sells a house in your neighborhood for 2.5x what they bought it.
This is where I like owning property in California. Prop 13 goes a little too far, but it prevents you from being yuppyed out of your house and having your taxes jacked up because a hipster decided to start flipping houses in your neighborhood.
For those that don't know, this is what prop 13 does (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13):
EDIT: Until the last sentence I'm pretty with them. Why push grandma out of her house? But it shouldn't necessarily apply to commercial real estate and corporate owned crap.
Ironically Prop 13 is one of the reasons California housing market is such a mess right now.
Yeah it's a double edged sword. It also perpetuates suburban sprawl because schools are usually funded through property taxes (which, why? But ok) older areas of cities tend to have crappier schools because the taxes remain low. In order to get around this they build new municipalities that will allow additional taxes, and then you've got another suburb in a fire risk area with a better school that'll attract families.
LOL, no. The mess -- in DC and every other major American city -- is entirely on the zoning code not allowing developers to run rampant enough, and instead enshrining single-family houses even when demand warrants multifamily.
DC is rapidly converting affordable homes into multifamily luxury units. Developers running rampant jacked up costs citywide.
Also, the city is less than 10 square miles and built on a swamp. Just based on infrastructure it can only handle so many people before it runs into serious issues.
No, you just fail to realize that prices would've been jacked up even higher if developers weren't increasing the housing supply.
How? Most individuals wouldn't sell their house for double unless the demand is there because they can't really afford to let the property sit while they're trying to buy a new place. The developers buy the properties before they hit the market for more than asking, split the property, make minor improvements, sometimes make things worse, then crank up the price. Meanwhile, there was definitely someone who was willing to buy at the seller's original price, they just never got the chance.
Okay, it sounds like there's a misunderstanding. You're talking about house flippers, while I'm talking about razing single-family houses to build apartment buildings in their place.
Yeah we're likely talking past each other a bit. Also, unlike most cities where multiunit buildings will include 3 br or more units, DC just doesn't. It's entirely possible to have kids and live in a condo or commie block style housing, a lot of the world does it. But all those places also account for the fact that needs change and sometimes people need more space. Removing 3 br units from the market decreases housing supply and increases the rental supply. Basically the city is turning into a renter's market because, unsurprisingly, no one wants to buy half a house for double the price. So rental companies will come in and buy those two unit buildings to convert into rental properties and in the process remove supply. It's a very fucked up system.
Fun fact: in a lot of places, 3+ bedroom apartments are rare mostly because of excessive minimum parking requirements (e.g. "1 space per bedroom") that will never get used, but makes them uneconomical to build.
Ironically DC needs more developers. It's one of the most economically productive areas of our country. The opportunities to improve your life are endless there. People shouldn't be blocked from pursuing a better life because someone person doesn't want to live next to a duplex on someone else's property
Okay but the developers exclusively flip affordable properties into luxury properties. Middle income housing is rapidly disappearing, the average 3 br costs like $800k to $1MM. The big new thing is buying a single family rowhome that would fit a family of 4-6 (or more) and turning it into a 2-unit condo with an HOA where each unit is only a 2 br and charging double or more what they bought the house for (buy the house for $850k, now trying to sell each unit at $890k). It's absurd, unsustainable, displaces the local population, and ironically decreases the number of people that could have lived on the property.
This only exists because local government has made it so hard to build housing. This is the outcome when you limit supply.
Think about what would happen if there were artificial government limits on the amount of shoes that could be made. Only luxury shoes would be produced.
Maybe elsewhere but not in DC, the city government has courted developers hard since before the pandemic. There are legal building restrictions because of the large number of historic properties but that doesn't explain why costs are skyrocketing as supply increases. The answer is the supply that's increasing is not the 3-5 br that people need when they hit their 30s and 40s. You can have a ton of studios but that doesn't really help a 3 person family. Likewise you can have 3 br condos for $1.2MM and still not help the average buyer.
They're still not building enough, unfortunately. The largest generation of Americans has entered the housing market. Building 13,000 houses a year just isn't very mcuh after decades of restriction and shortages.
There are some pockets of affordability out there.
The map in this article is nice (though you have to scroll through some annoying stuff to get there):
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/06/homes/housing-market-prices-affordability-dg/
I would guess those would be the areas of next major population influx as people continue to flee high cost of living in other areas. Climate change making much of the west and southeast more unattractive in the long run too. While the more affordable areas are still relatively cheap compared to the rest of the country, most of them have already been seeing large spikes in housing prices too. We need some major policy changes to encourage cheap and higher density housing, better use of land in general, can't just keep building only single family homes in low density areas sprawling out forever.