Topic: The U.S. Needs More Housing Than Almost Anyone Can Imagine (Read 343 times)

not really

imagine you had to work 12 hours a day in london to get £1m a year salary just to pay london property

buy a house 50mins from london by train and 10 minuts from train to house (like i said an hour commute)

buy a house for $200k with a £10k rail season ticket per year
meaning £400k all in, over a 20 year mortgage

and here is the thing

instead of working 12 hours (with a 2x 10 commute from london apartment)
meaning leaving home at 7:50am and returning home at 8:10pm
for £1m that just PAYS THE MORTGAGE in city living

rural home:
leave at 8am. (gotta admit everyone loves them extra 10mins in bed)
get to work by 9am. (work 8 hours for £666k)
leave work at 5pm get home by 6pm(instead of 8pm)

and earn £666k where £400k goes on your home mortgage and commute
and you get to then spend £266k spare income in the extra two hours per evening you get at home to play with the wife and kids longer

..
personally
i would not want to city-live just for the sake of telling people "i earn £1m before bills" but have no physical spare cash after paying the mortgage and being tired and depressed with no family time

i would prefer the same pay per hour. but have less hours so less tired. les stressed. get to have a calm commute to work and enjoy the hour travel there and back to cool down from work. and get to have 2 hours extra with family(happy&calm) AND have an extra £266k to spend AFTER BILLS

oh and instead of having a small single persons apartment.. in smog city.
i have a nice rural bigger house in clear air country

(where i live now. it snowed during the night. if it snows again, we can walk to the field behind the house and the kids can sled down the field.. something that cant be done in a london apartment)

You are loosing time and time = money
5 days a week x 48 weeks a year (52 weeks - vacation and holidays) = 240 days
240 days x 2 hours a day = 480 hours a year
480 hours x 20 years = 9600 hours there is a cost to that.

I am not figuring in the time it takes you to get from your house to the train station. Since from one side of a city to another also takes time.

At least here in the US living in a place like NYC also means you don't need a car for the most part. And with things like zipcar if you do need to go somewhere one is available. So you save on cost of owning a car and insurance and such.

Some people like the city, others like the country, but in the end you have to do what works for you.

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Yup, I remember back in the mid 70s how people were saying that NYC is too expensive for people to live there and it's crime filled and everyone is leaving and it's going to go bankrupt and so on.

I put it into the category of when people say "It's to crowded, nobody goes there"

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It's also a matter of generating headlines.
Within an hour train ride of NYC housing is still expensive. Bump that up to a 90 minute train ride it really starts to drop. A lot. Like a whole lot.
But as I posted above time = money that is an extra 200+ hours a year on the train. (30 minutes extra each way = 5 hours a week = 225+ hours a year) and the longer the train ride the more expensive it is. But saying you can still be a short(ish) train ride away and have a nice place as franky1 said, does not generate the clicks on the headlines.

On the other hand salaries in NYC are way above what other places pay and finding work is easier. Case in point I have a friend of a friend who just got fired from twitter. Single no ties to be here. Got a job offer from another big tech company, could stay here in NYC and make about 5% more then he was getting at Twitter OR move to SF and make about 10% more OR move to Texas and take a 20% pay cut.

Yeah, he is staying here. With 20% cut in TX he would probably be in about the same financially possibly a bit better BUT and this is a big BUT said other tech company is the ONLY major employer for about a two hour drive. So if it does not work out he is screwed. The new job implodes here in NY there are enough other places to work. Someplace (and I really did forget the name of the town) on the TX / OK border for tech the options are a lot more limited.

-Dave

I do not know, but the solution in such cases may be to have service real estate with small areas that are owned by funds managed by the state. These real estate aims for housing directly and away from speculation, while the rest of the real estate belongs to economic activities in terms of speculation and achieving a return from it.
Singapore almost succeeded in solving this problem, I had read somewhere the details of their plan.

what i notice. is people see a house for $100k
take out a $130k mortgage
get the house + a 'nomad' mobile home

and then rent out their home for a premium above mortgage. so that they get their mortgage paid(by someone else(the renter)) and get some passive income from the premium

but hey if other people wanna sell their home and buy a van and then spend all that house sell income vacationing. thats on them
if i was them they should have done the smart plan. use the real estate game to get gains

I noticed the growing number of videos on youtube over the last 12-18 months, of people living in boats, vans and tiny of grid cabins. There is a growing number of people who try to break the cycle of ever rising real estate prices, and there is also a huge demand of ordinary people to find out about these topics. These videos have millions of views from people all around the world. I think most of the western countries face the same problem like in the USA. More housing is needed because more people are singles and live alone, or in smaller families. And the housing is concentrating on a few large cities which offer the best employment option. People are not willing to commute long distances anymore and rather pay higher rent prices to live in trendy new area. The main issue I see in my country is that old houses and office buildings needs to be converted in apartments, also large apartments will be split into two smaller apartments as they can get more money for them. And this process takes many years, the whole housing situation can't be fixed within 2-3 years.

In my opinion, the best way to prevent a real estate crash is to provide incentives for more affordable housing in the US. This could be done through tax breaks for development, or lowering the cost of land by lowering property taxes while increasing infrastructure funding. There are also other ways, such as increasing density in large cities to create more housing units. But at the same time it's not just about building new houses and apartments, of course you also need to pay attention to the quality of these houses and apartments.

Not only in the United States, but anywhere in the world when your salary does not match your local prices, you have no ability to buy a house. You may choose to take out a loan, then it will be your stress for decades to come. Some people choose to rent a house for life, while others choose to put pressure on themselves. There is no way, this is your own choice. It is possible to have a side hustle outside of your regular job. Otherwise, the rich will become richer and richer, and the money of the poor will flow to the rich.

people are not paying a premium for city living due to lack of housing

there are many apartment blocks with vacant apartments.
they pay a premium to not have to commute for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening

yes they can save themselves alot of money living outside the city. but its time thats a premium

imagine your a city worker. earning $500k a year
where of your 12 hours of awake life 2 hours of it is spent/wasted in commuting (16%)
if you can bring that down to just 30 mins (1/4th) wouldnt that be worth maybe 10% of your income
so $50k on a 20 year mortgage is $1m

broadly speaking paying ~$1m on a city home over 20 years means you get 90 minutes of spare time to relax and enjoy life

time is money and money is time

no point earning $500k if you got no spare time to enjoy it. might aswell keep $450k and enjoy 90minutes of freetime to enjoy your homelife each day

Tell me - but besides New York, there are no other cities in the USA that are acceptable for life? You still look at the center of Tokyo, or Paris, or Berlin ... Or ROME .. Or Monaco? Or the Vatican... Or Zurich? You will be surprised - but there, too, real estate prices are not 10.000 dollars / euros for a cozy apartment!....
Why ? Well, because the capitals / financial centers, and it is always expensive there. But I'll tell you a secret - just don't tell anyone you can live in other cities, yeah!
Why doesn't Warsaw or Prague suit you? Beautiful European cities! Or like Helsinki? Or like Covilhã in Portugal? Or the lovely Italian cities of southern Italy? And this is just a drop in the bucket of thousands of other beautiful cities!!! And if you want to live in Manhattan in New York - save money

its more like a select amount of people own more then a dozen properties each, all vacant and used just for investment

there is enough housing but its just that the prices went up too fast in previous years meaning they either have to correct back down fast. or stagnate for years until real value catches up

I have to say it is not even all about "building" a house but more about how real estate became an investment for way too many people. The reality is that you could pay 20% of a house, and get the 80% with a loan and that loan will be a paid back by the renters on your home.

There are many examples where you buy a house, pay 800 per month and you rent it out for 1000 dollars per month so you make even a small profit, which means if you put it aside, that is another payment every 4 months, if one person stays for about 5 years, they pay 6-7 years of loans basically, and that's great for home owners. This resulted with people having multiple houses, and it is not about scarcity in general, it is scarcity in the market, all the house on sale gets sold very quickly for this profitable reason.

If the US the country that we all consider as the superpower needs more housing what about the other country, just saying.

I am not from the US but I am recently browsing about housing prices that for me and everybody else is insane is a million dollars to purchase a small apartment in New York City and there is some youtube show how much the price for monthly rent the $500 is for couple of meter damnnnn

plot rent control against against locations with the most homeless against locations where freezing to death isn't going to happen.


Canada also has some homeless problems. 

But, go talk to those homeless in Canada.  Engage..   99% of them are all drug addicts(of one sort or another) and or people with mental health conditions.   

In my opinion this is a sign of our failing healthcare system over lack of housing.

When considering a country like the USA, where the population is growing due to reasons like international migration, it is clear that the availability of housing must be improved. In addition, while many homes are offered, their costs do not benefit the average person. Despite the fact that houses don't fall out of the sky  , the enormous demand for property is making prices absurdly high. Housing is a necessity that we cannot live without, and I believe that the government should implement more plans for constructing more cheap homes. For example, in my nation, homes are expensive since 85% of them are owned by the private sector.

here in the UK
buying just a apartment in the mid city of london can be £1m+
yet 1 hour train commute someone can get a house of bigger liiving space for £200k

the price of the commute if done 5 days a week for 20 years is way way way way less than £200k combined. meaning a saving for £600k

yep all-in you can have a nice size countryside house with good views and quiet living and commute to work in london knowing your only 1 hour away. all for $400k on a 20year mortgage.. or pay 1 million and still be 20 minutes from workplace

I am not from the USA, but I have seen some memes which basically mock people (specially young adults) which are worried/upset about the price of living (renting) in big cities, while at the same time they think living in small towns (in the same state) where there is more affordable housing is not an option.

I wonder whether those memes are an exaggeration or not in the current state of housing there and the mentality of young adults.

Not for nothing, but those are fantastic options for people who are willing to live that way (and I would if I could afford to travel the country in a van).  And as you said, people effectively being locked out of big cities like San Francisco and NYC isn't a new thing at all.  It's been that way since before I was born and I seriously doubt it's going to change.
                 
I also don't quite understand the argument that it's unfair that people who can't afford to live somewhere....can't live there.  That sounds like the kind of whiny "capitalism is evil" crap that left-wingers like to spew on about.  Life isn't fair and this world owes neither you nor I nothing.                                                           

1. It was very rightly noted that real estate is not always a good investment vehicle. There are many such examples. It is human nature to look for a place where it is more comfortable, more convenient, safer, more profitable, so migration will always affect the demand and price of real estate. Migration leads to both an increase and a fall in prices.

2. Dense urban development - a disease of large cities where there is no proper planning. Although, with a large and active population growth - multi-storey residential complexes - this is the only way to satisfy the demand for real estate.
On the example of my hometown of Kyiv (Ukraine) - 35 years ago, there were only a few skyscrapers of 20+ floors. Now most of the buildings are 18-25 floors. In the suburbs, as long as the territory allows, 4-5-storey complexes are being built, they are more comfortable. Although in Kyiv there are residential mini-complexes located in the park / forest area, which gives a more comfortable stay.

What is good - after the boom and bubble in the real estate market in 2009-2010, prices have become more adequate, and the terms of sale are more comfortable in terms of financial burden.

I don't know how it occurs to you to post such fascist propaganda on this forum. USA doesn't need more houses, it needs the ones that are already there to be better distributed, it needs some laws to prohibit people from owning more than two houses and put more taxes on their ownership, blah, blah blah blah.

Now seriously, why do you think California has such high RE prices? Because of junk regulations and high taxes. Solving the housing problem both supply and price is as easy as removing regulations and lowering taxes. Add to that cutting government spending and states like California would go back to being net receivers of people instead of having an exodus of people fleeing. That is what needs to be done and not

there is enough housing being built. however there needs to be enough of those houses/apartments that are already being built put into the bottom tier of affordability that meets the 30% of minimum wage rent amount

i know that those on minimum wage dont like living in apartments in locations that remind them of "urban projects/social housing" but the price of materials and labour means they wont get a mansion for minimum wage

towns and cities just have to make sure there is housing for the populations of different economic tiers affordability.

EG if 60% of a city are minimum wage. 60% of housing has to be minimum wage tier housing.
its not about "more housing" than already planned development.  its about housing that fits the economic populous

this can be achieved easily
states know how much citizens earn via tax filings so they can easily plot out the populous into lists of populous per tier and doing the same with house valuations and work out which housing needs more built in which tier group to meet the need.

not build excess housing just to crash the entire market. but just plan the standard housing expansion to meet the tier group that needs it most at the time

EG if standard early planned production was 100k housing
if more millions move to the area where expensive housing has more demand then use the 100k planned in standard expansion to be X% higher tier. and if more min wage families have people reaching "nest leaver age" then Y% of them 100k housing to be built at the bottom tier price.

summary
if a city has 10m homes. with a 1% population growth. they know thats 100k homes.
they then calculate that say 10% are top tier income earners 30% mid tier and 60% bottom tier earners.

so they only offer development permits to make 10k mansion level market, where developers can sell at top market rate.
30k permits for mid market rate. and 60k apartments that cannot sell/rent to market above tier rate of min wage

where it then plans out the development better without crashing the whole market with silly idea's of "just build 300k homes and crash the whole market"