It’s worth noting that there just isn’t enough supply that’s actually in play in the market to rent or buy. Housing has two levels of demand because shelter is a need: there’s the inelastic demand (I need shelter and I’ll pay almost any price to make sure I have it) and elastic demand (I want to buy a house as an investment or a vacation property). This bubble isn’t going to pop because it’s not a true bubble; the supply of housing is below the need for housing that manifests as demand (the inelastic demand), which has sent the price skyrocketing because you’ve got people trying to satisfy a very deep inelastic demand with very shallow inelastic supply. That’s had the knock-on effect of making it so that now the people just trying to find shelter are directly competing against people trying to find investments, and while the investors almost always have more money than you do, it also means that the price ceiling (the absolute maximum anyone is willing to pay for that property) gets raised even higher.
The reason why we got here, why the supply got so low on the first place, is because we basically stopped building houses after 2006. Even when we did start building houses again, I think the rate at which we’re building them never fully recovered. There’s a few other problems I’d be happy to get into, but here’s the gist: the only housing really getting built without federal grant money is single family homes. We are NEVER going to solve the housing crisis by building not quite enough single family homes year over year. It just takes too much time and money to build too little capacity. So, what can you do about it?
Well, there’s great news. If you live in a city or even a modest size town, and most people do, there’s a really good chance you have a city council that meets regularly. This council has A LOT of control over what gets built in your city or town! In fact, they can control the zoning, and if your city is like mine, it’s probably 90% exclusionary low-density single family home zoning by surface area, and probably has outrageous parking minimums that all but guarantee both a housing supply shortage and a lack of services (groceries, small cafes, etc) in those neighborhoods (which also raises your cost of living because now you NEED a car). They always have a public comment period so that people can raise issues that they feel are important.
Go to these council meetings and tell at them about how there isn’t enough housing being built. They will cry about how they can’t control the free market, but they can and do via zoning codes. If you keep the pressure up over time, you can make progress. If you meet other like-minded people there and network with them, you can make progress. You can get out there and make this change, it is within your reach.
Like 10% of all housing sits vacant, the lack of supply in the market is not just a lack of units, it’s also a strategy by investors to keep prices high.
It’s worth noting that there just isn’t enough supply that’s actually in play in the market to rent or buy. Housing has two levels of demand because shelter is a need: there’s the inelastic demand (I need shelter and I’ll pay almost any price to make sure I have it) and elastic demand (I want to buy a house as an investment or a vacation property). This bubble isn’t going to pop because it’s not a true bubble; the supply of housing is below the need for housing that manifests as demand (the inelastic demand), which has sent the price skyrocketing because you’ve got people trying to satisfy a very deep inelastic demand with very shallow inelastic supply. That’s had the knock-on effect of making it so that now the people just trying to find shelter are directly competing against people trying to find investments, and while the investors almost always have more money than you do, it also means that the price ceiling (the absolute maximum anyone is willing to pay for that property) gets raised even higher.
The reason why we got here, why the supply got so low on the first place, is because we basically stopped building houses after 2006. Even when we did start building houses again, I think the rate at which we’re building them never fully recovered. There’s a few other problems I’d be happy to get into, but here’s the gist: the only housing really getting built without federal grant money is single family homes. We are NEVER going to solve the housing crisis by building not quite enough single family homes year over year. It just takes too much time and money to build too little capacity. So, what can you do about it?
Well, there’s great news. If you live in a city or even a modest size town, and most people do, there’s a really good chance you have a city council that meets regularly. This council has A LOT of control over what gets built in your city or town! In fact, they can control the zoning, and if your city is like mine, it’s probably 90% exclusionary low-density single family home zoning by surface area, and probably has outrageous parking minimums that all but guarantee both a housing supply shortage and a lack of services (groceries, small cafes, etc) in those neighborhoods (which also raises your cost of living because now you NEED a car). They always have a public comment period so that people can raise issues that they feel are important.
Go to these council meetings and tell at them about how there isn’t enough housing being built. They will cry about how they can’t control the free market, but they can and do via zoning codes. If you keep the pressure up over time, you can make progress. If you meet other like-minded people there and network with them, you can make progress. You can get out there and make this change, it is within your reach.
Like 10% of all housing sits vacant, the lack of supply in the market is not just a lack of units, it’s also a strategy by investors to keep prices high.