Just how widespread is the housing shortage?

[truckboattruck]

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It is tough to do Section 8 in some places. My daughter tried to incorporate Section 8 in a project she is working on in Dallas, and overnight the Review Board and the community turned hostile.

well look on the bright side...since she didnt rent to section 8 she will still have a functional property at the end of the contract

[Kraenen]

Not widespread enough to slow down immigration and foreign rent-seeking apparently. Less new people taking homes and buying places they don't live in would have a pretty strong change on whether the natives can find a place to live.

[Spectral]

Don't worry, the housing markets should crash again in the next year or so as the new tax plan kicks in.

If that occurs, would you regard it as strong evidence that previous policies were highly distortionary?

I wouldn't be surprised if prices for relatively expensive housing (the sort purchased by people for whom a cap on SALT and home interest deductions matter) do drop as the market finds equilibrium with the new caps, but I'd mostly just view that as an adjustment away from unnecessarily favoring the purchase of expensive housing.

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It is tough to do Section 8 in some places. My daughter tried to incorporate Section 8 in a project she is working on in Dallas, and overnight the Review Board and the community turned hostile.

As someone that's both a long-time renter and that has experience working on the property management side of things, I'd certainly turn hostile. People that are living in new apartment buildings in major cities are paying a lot for that privilege - the last thing they/we want is to have the same thing given away to lower class people that (in my experience) behave noticeably worse and run down the properties we live in. No one has less investment than the continued quality and maintenance of a property than someone that's not paying for what they're getting.

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The problem is you're framing this all wrong, everyone thinks they can live wherever they want. They think I want to live in 'x place' so I'll move there and find 'y job' later. The reality is this people need to evaluate what skills they have and then understand what industries that allows them to work in. From there they need to start looking for jobs and finding out where they are located then narrow their list down to where they'd most want to live based on the options available.

Too many people work it backwards and pick a place to live before understanding if that is even a viable location for the jobs available that they have the skills for.

This is valid even for people that have fairly high-end skills. When I was getting ready to make a big life move, my postdoc advisor gave me a quick bit of advice that stuck with me - you can choose what you want to do or where you want to do it, but most of the time you don't get to pick both. I personally chose the where and decided to go do something that was pretty alien to me at the time and it's worked out fine, but yeah, if you want to pick a location you're probably going to have to step outside your comfort zone.

[Rasulis]

Thats exactly the problem with EVERY community. When I purchased my house I did so because the real estate taxes were reasonable, and the area was quiet and open. So what happens? Developers expand the community and more people move to the area (for the same reasons) and taxes are starting to climb, there is increased traffic and its no longer as open.

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Those types of homes are so unattractive.

To me it is more a matter of inconvenience. A good architect can make any home look good. One of the most memorable home I have even seen was of a vertical construction. It was built into the hillside (Dictionary Hill in Spring Valley). The third-story (living room, kitchen, dining area, garage, ½ bath) is at the same level of the street. The second story is the bedrooms (3) and baths (2). The ground floor is partial basement (family room, bunk room & laundry). The third and second stories have wrap-around decks with a large deck area on top of the garage.

The best part was the view. To the south one can see Sweetwater Reservoir and then all the way across the border into Mexico, to the west the view extends all the way to the coast, and to the east the mountains. Another big plus, my wife was doing an open house during a hot summer day in August, and we did not have to turn the A.C. on. The cool Pacific Ocean sea breeze kept the entire house cool.

In case I forgot, no yard. Only built-in planters along the deck. A big plus for me.

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As someone that's both a long-time renter and that has experience working on the property management side of things, I'd certainly turn hostile. People that are living in new apartment buildings in major cities are paying a lot for that privilege - the last thing they/we want is to have the same thing given away to lower class people that (in my experience) behave noticeably worse and run down the properties we live in. No one has less investment than the continued quality and maintenance of a property than someone that's not paying for what they're getting.

I am not making a moral judgement. Just pointing out that building affordable housing is not as easy as some people like to think.

[IzorkX]

Kinda the same thing in Denmark. People want to live in the big cities even tho they are up to 10 times or more expensive than the country side.
I bought a house in the country (mind you this was a deal of a lifetime, and cost me literally nothing) but they are always so much cheaper here, but people don't want to commute every day. I drive 1 hour each way to work, and I don't mind it at all (in denmark you get compensated pretty much all the money you spend on car/bus/train etc through taxes if you live far enough from work). I simply dont understand the mindset of only wanting to live in the city. This is why so many houses are empty in the country here.

[Rasulis]

I just want to add several items.


High-flying home prices are about to get another jolt

Basically cost of construction materials is going up.

Labor in the housing industry is tight. I drove by Ramona on Monday, and saw a sign "General Contractor looking for carpenters. $45 per hour."

Increasing mortgage rate makes people reluctant to sell their house.

The lack of inventory is a double edged sword. People are reluctant to sell because they are concerned that they may not be able to get a replacement home. Which in turn reduce the inventory of available homes even more.

Forgot to add Airbnb.

[bufferunderrun]

That and the land value in California coastal cities are some of the biggest issues with building affordable housing. We can take a look at data from Lincoln Institute of Land Policy from 1st quarter 2016.

At one end of the spectrum we have a city like Birmingham, where the value of a 180k house is broken down into 166k on the structure and 14k on the land.

A home valued at 272k in Chicago is 240k structure and 32k land.

Dallas, home value 262k; 185k structure and 77k land.

Houston, home value 250k; 188k structure and 62k land.



That land value makes it very hard to build affordable housing along the coast.

i don't understand do the land in USA is completely owned by privates? Didn't the state/city/feds own the majority of it?