It seems like incentivizing marriage and families again would go a long way. When everyone thinks they can and should be single, the housing requirements double.
I live alone in my house. It was built in the late 1940s. This house likely housed couples with children, 3-5 people, instead of the 1 it holds today.
Coupling up would reduce housing demand, and should in turn lower prices as availability increases.
NoraCodes · 19h ago
> When everyone thinks they can and should be single, the housing requirements double.
In the circles I run in, most people who don't live with a romantic partner have at least two long-term roommates, mostly friends from college or made in adulthood. Several of these three to five person groups own detached homes together that no pair of them could possibly afford.
Famously, Shawnee, KS banned "co-living" a few years back, because (in the city council's opinion) too many people were living with others.
rbanffy · 1h ago
> When everyone thinks they can and should be single, the housing requirements double.
The number of houses doubles, but not their volume.
missedthecue · 21h ago
Interestingly, high housing costs should incentivize intersexual cooperation but they don't seem to be doing so. From observing revealed preferences, it seems a lot of young people would rather go back and live with mom and dad than get married at 22. This isn't to mention the tax breaks most people benefit from when they get married, which at US median incomes can add up thousands of dollars back in your pocket every year.
But it doesn't seem to be enough. The median age of first time marriage keeps creeping up and up. It's over 30 now in the US and higher in the EU.
BobbyTables2 · 21h ago
The doubling of the standard deduction in Trump’s first term means interest isn’t deductible for practical purposes. Same thing with charitable donations!
Not sure what real tax breaks there is if both people make similar income. Otherwise if only one works, they’ll definitely see lower taxes thanks to the doubling of the standard deduction (plus exemption for the spouse).
missedthecue · 19h ago
Only 29% of American spouses earn similar amounts.
Ancalagon · 23h ago
thats kicking the can down the road for an even worse crisis when all those kids grow up in 20 years
al_borland · 23h ago
Can you elaborate on that? Are you saying we're doing kids a favor by having them grow up with single parents, because that will force more housing to be built, so they can grow up and be single parents too? Is this a good future for them?
I get the population will still grow, and we will likely still need some amount of housing growth over time, but we don't need nearly as much as we think we do.
We also don't need to avoid the middle of the country. The population has been moving to the coasts, while the Midwest has lost a ton of people since the manufacturing moved elsewhere. With a lot of companies, there is no reason they can't be in the midwest where there are a lot more affordable homes, and a lot of space. We should be looking to draw people from these HCOL areas to help bring back these cities. It seems like a win-win situation.
dragonwriter · 22h ago
> With a lot of companies, there is no reason they can't be in the midwest where there are a lot more affordable homes, and a lot of space.
I would argue that if they aren’t there now, there probably is a reason that you are overlooking.
If you need non-remote employees at all (and if you don’t, where the company is located with regard to housing doesn’t mean anything), then there is a cost to not locating where people with the skills you want currently are, and also a cost to not locating in a place where the people you want to hire would want to be.
> We should be looking to draw people from these HCOL areas to help bring back these cities. It seems like a win-win situation.
I’m sure when you just state it as a goal without a concrete plan or costs, it seems that way: we should just wave a magic wand and make people’s preferences changed so what isn’t in demand is in more demand and what is in demand os in less demand. Simple!
When you try to come up with w concrete plan to do that is when it becomes more problematic.
wahern · 22h ago
> We should be looking to draw people from these HCOL areas to help bring back these cities.
This is one of the arguments for high-speed rail. The primary reason to move to a HCOL city is employment opportunities. The rapid growth of rail, both street cars and commuter trains, early last century allowed metropolitan regions to expand by allowing people to work downtown but live further away, dramatically easing housing pressure. The advent of the interstate highway system originally had a similar effect, though later also a fracturing effect, especially outside the few cities capable of holding their core.
High-speed rail promises to achieve the same thing, just as it has elsewhere around the world. Certainly it's a promise CAHSR is selling, and a major reason we should strongly support it. And it's one of the primary justifications it runs through the Central Valley rather than taking the shortest route between SF and LA. It puts Central Valley cities squarely into the SF and LA metro regions, not only creating opportunities for existing Central Valley residents, but allowing people to move further out, reducing housing pressure. You simply can't achieve the same thing with bigger airports and more flights, not until flying cars become ubiquitous.
nradov · 20h ago
Even if CAHSR is built as planned (I have my doubts about that) it won't be practical for people to live in the Central Valley and commute to the Bay Area for work. It will just take too long to drive to the local rail station, ride to one of the three planned Bay Area stations, and then transfer to some other public transit to get to work.
What we ought to do is encourage more economic development and business growth in the Central Valley instead of trying to cram more and more stuff into the Bay Area. The infrastructure there is already overloaded, and it's geographically constrained by water and mountains.
gedy · 19h ago
Yeah if they had really wanted to help commuters, HSR should have been built down the 101 corridor on the central coast, not the central valley..
wahern · 3h ago
A quick look at a topographic map of California suggests HSR through the Central Coast would be significantly more expensive, especially the southern half. Moreover, the Central Valley has more than 3x the population and significantly more land available for expansion, presumably in large part because of the topography. Also, I believe there are more Federal forest lands a Central Coast route would have to get through, which in retrospect might have proven a fatal choice.
Paralleling I-5 seems like a much stronger argument, though I'm not sure that would have been better and it may have never gotten off the ground at all. For one thing, Stockton, Fresno, and Bakersfield might not have supported CAHSR if it bypassed them. But also, AFAIU, Federal funding was contingent on following the routes laid out in the national high-speed rail plan drawn up in the 1990s, and the recommended California line went through the big Central Valley cities.
What's really held back CAHSR has been the law suits and related dithering (e.g. environmental reviews more prolonged because of the expected law suits). That sapped momentum, and momentum is everything; time is money. That loss of momentum also means CAHSR is having a much harder time getting over the humps, literally (tunneling through the mountains) and figuratively (financial support for the tunneling). If construction had proceeded as fast as it has in most other countries, people wouldn't be perennially debating the chosen CAHSR route.
seanmcdirmid · 22h ago
Japan calls those super commuters. I thought it would be too expensive, but after some searching it seems to be a very common thing. I really wouldn't want to live that life though.
burnerthrow008 · 9h ago
> Can you elaborate on that?
There are not enough houses, and you are encouraging more long-term demand for houses…
> We also don't need to avoid the middle of the country. The population has been moving to the coasts
Maybe a better question to ask yourself is why people prefer living on the coasts. What government policies draw them from the cheap places to the expensive places? How can you copy those policies to convince people to move back?
seanmcdirmid · 22h ago
I think a stronger push for WFH for those jobs that can obviously support it can solve a lot of problems. The federal government was leading the way before Trump, I feel like we are heading backwards in a lot of ways in the last 6 months (toward the 1950s and not the 2050s), but there are actual real solutions that we are just refusing to pursue.
lurking_swe · 23h ago
this assumes immigration rate stays constant. nobody said it needs to…
more_corn · 19h ago
What’s stopping you?
theconomist · 21h ago
I don't know, it may be good for the economy, at least it's better than ghost cities
Don’t need to do what China did, can use other countries with adequate housing as a different model, like where I live, Tokyo. Ample housing construction driven by the market not by central planning, paired with large amounts of fast public transportation to increase the amount of livable area near the city center; loose zoning requirements; simple and easily understood checklists evaluated by a fast and efficient civil service bureaucracy for permitting with minimal involvement of the courts (the opposite of the USA); convenient and self sustaining neighborhoods. You can still get small apartments within 15 mins of public transit commute distance to central Tokyo in nice neighborhoods for less than $400/mo; there’s a foreign speculation problem in the most central areas (likely to be clamped down soon) but by and large it’s affordable to live here.
NathanKP · 19h ago
The graph showing the difference between home price index, and consumer price index does not consider that many of the items in the consumer price index are heavily subsidized by the government.
So another story we could be seeing here is that heavy government subsidies are barely managing to keep consumer prices down in many categories, except for housing.
My general opinion: we don't have just a housing emergency. We have a general emergency across many, many categories. If the government stops all these subsidies we'd see prices for everything else skyrocket across the board to match housing prices. Then wages would be forced to rise too, and you'd see the true underlying crisis: hyperinflation. Houses are worth so much because they are one of the best hedges against hyperinflation. If the US dollar gets inflated my house suddenly gets very easy to pay off and its now my primary form of wealth. So no wonder housing is so expensive.
lif · 1d ago
Now, strictly based on anecdotal, however, might there be a grain of truth to:
developers mass-producing cheap, inhumane housing, set on tiny parcels designed to maximize developer profit MEETS most potential buyers/renters have zero interest in that crap
?
FireBeyond · 22h ago
I live in a cul-de-sac built in the 80s. The lot next to me was vacant when I bought four years ago (it burnt down soon after, and was never rebuilt).
Owner sold the lot three years ago and a developer built a home there that the new owners moved into two years ago.
Barely a month goes by without some vehicles from the developer or their subcontractors being at the house. They've done two foundation repairs, relaid the driveway, there's drywallers, plumbers, electricians, even the fencing needed repair.
When I was young, I thought "builder grade" was a good thing, now I know it as "cheapest materials you can possibly find, thrown together as fast as humanly possible".
throwmeaway222 · 1d ago
All those things declared an emergency REALLY ARE to more than half the population. All the TDS aside, yes.
I think the main thing we need to do is make a federal property tax for any unused house or rental. Something that billionaires can afford, but only for their personal homes - and something that will basically force all landlords to sell immediately. Every actual real property will be forced onto the market in seconds and everyone will be able to buy a house that needs one for pennies on the dollar. It will be amazing. Let's start with 1000% per hour.
Nevermark · 23h ago
Source of these ideas: Economist Henry George.[0]
When land is taxed, but the property on it is not, and rates are normalized to maintain neutral tax flow due to the change:
1. Someone who owns land with little productive development, will see a large tax increase.
2. Someone who owns the adjacent same-sized plot, with higher value development, will pay the same tax, instead of a prior much greater tax.
So development isn't taxed, making development more attractive, as it will have a higher return.
Much greater incentive to usefully develop land. Much greater disincentives to holding relatively less usefully developed land.
Also good alignment:
(1) a land tax, taxes the exclusionary asset, paying a tax on essentially rents the land from the community. Which makes sense.
(2) Not paying a tax on development, removes a wealth tax on any land owner from any financial scale.
(3) That wealth tax on wealth disincentivize development, relative to other investments.
(4) The lower property taxes on less developed land, that we have now, means that high value property wealth tax, is subsiding the returns of Lower development land owners.
(5) And that imbalance accounts for lands use as a financial instrument, instead of land + use, as the investment. Holding land prices up, while subsidizing non-development holding.
The elimination of most land-price driven investment, would reduce a massive amount of artificial demand, resulting in more supply and lower prices, for those who wanted to make returns by further developing the land.
> Something that billionaires can afford, but only for their personal homes - and something that will basically force all landlords to sell immediately.
Not possible, because if its a tax an unused homes or rentals, what it would force people to do is either:
(1) make it qualify as “used”, or,
(2) destroy the residential structure on the land to preserve the value of the underlying land, which would no longer have an unused home or rental on it.
(Of course, you’ll never get the Constitutional amendment needed to carve out a new exception to both the prohibition on unapportioned direct taxes and the takings clause of the 5th Amendment that you’d need for that, so its moot anyway.)
jvanderbot · 1d ago
What do you do about all the homeowners who are now paying for a home that has lost value? They just take a walk? What about the sellers who can't sell their house for what they owe now? They just take the same walk? And the banks and mortgage backed securities, even the stable ones, are now worth jack? What about the 401K accounts that now lose 20% or their value because it was all piled on housing related funds unbeknownst to the investor?
It amounts to a mass seizure and redistribution, except those who were seized from still have to pay back what they borrowed, so it's even worse!
recursive · 23h ago
Affordable housing seems in direct conflict to the interests of those using their home as an investment or store of value, strategically or not.
As a home owner, I think the best move for the country as a whole probably doesn't align with the financial interests of the current home-owning class.
The idea of a home as investment seems to inevitably cause this kind of conflict.
Ericson2314 · 22h ago
You are right we have a stupid set up, but actually there is an easy way out:
a lot of SFH get turned into dense apartments, and a lot of homeowners get rich as hell because they own the land.
We should have a LVT, so the landholders don't get too rich, but it can be a bit lower than ideal (which would mean that conversion to apartment is break even because future earnings - cap ex and taxes net out)
jvanderbot · 22h ago
That's only part of the problem. It doesn't need to be an investment, but causing a purchased item, one that is almost exclusively purchased with loans, to plummet in value burdens purchasers for decades with needless payments. Might as well just garnish wages and redistribute to your chosen demographic
Ericson2314 · 22h ago
We're gonna bail these leveraged-to-the-gills normies out, with profits to them, on the condition that SFH ownership society is destroyed — never again.
Only condo homeowners, and people living in truely rural areas "irrationally", will remain.
recursive · 9h ago
We got ourselves into this. Getting out will be painful but I don't see any other way out.
panny · 1d ago
>Localities rather than the federal government must have the final say in zoning laws and regulations.
Zoning in Japan is at the national level. Japanese houses are WAY cheaper than American ones, while being of better quality at the same time.
ggm · 1d ago
I may misunderstand it but Japan has two important differences:
Firstly, a significant number of houses are one family lifetime. People clearfell and rebuild routinely. The marginal value of a home is different when it's lifetime is constrained. Not all houses by any stretch, but its far more common.
Secondly Japan's population is shrinking. It's further along a pathway the developed economies share absent immigration. Thus, there is far more housing stock to head of population.
There is a third reason and it is perhaps more relevant: Japan's zoning laws are bizarre. You can put a house up next to a tire recycling plant, and have a Zen temple across the road and a sofa factory operating out of your front verandah. Nobody seems to care. California take note.
codingdave · 1d ago
What criteria do you have in mind when you say "of better quality"? They are not built for longevity, which is also why they are cheaper. It is a completely different approach to what a home is.
And FWIW, homes in the USA have a massive variety of quality. Generalizations about such things are going to be flawed.
FireBeyond · 22h ago
> What criteria do you have in mind when you say "of better quality"? They are not built for longevity, which is also why they are cheaper. It is a completely different approach to what a home is.
New construction in the US is also absolutely not built for longevity unless you are paying a significant markup for actual craftsman materials and labor (and this would amount to less than 0.1% of new construction, probably closer to 0.01%). Of my friends who work as GCs and similar, a lot of homes built in the mid-90s are considered tear-downs, and they believe that number will only increase.
panny · 21h ago
>What criteria do you have in mind when you say "of better quality"?
The builds are superior and so are all the appliances inside the home. Let's compare,
American - Japanese
Hole in the ceiling with wires hanging out - standardized ceiling sockets which can plug in and out different light fixtures and support their weight. Every light fixture in the country can fit the same socket.
Cheap asphalt shingles - Standing seam metal roof with heated embedded gutters (this roof, with no heating, in the US costs more than the whole Japanese house)
Tank water heater, runs out of hot water, fills up with sediment - Tankless water heater with adjustable temperature control panel, never runs out of hot water
Primitave toilet, leaks, just jiggle the handle! - Toilet with heated seat, bidet, hand washing sink in the top of the tank, eco and full flush options, plays privacy music, motion detector lifts the lid to greet you, automatic flush when you stand, and a wireless panel to control all this on the wall beside it.
Washer, dryer requires 220V special plug and a vent hose that is a fire risk, seperate units - ventless washer and dryer in one unit no bigger than a single American unit, washes and dries 6Kg loads (twice that if just washing), self cleaning. Just throw your clothes in, come back later to clean dry clothes. Space efficient and all it needs is water, a drain, and a standard two prong plug.
Central HVAC system requing expensive dust collecting ductwork, not energy efficient - quiet minisplit, inexpensive to purchase, install, and operate. Doesn't blow dust everywhere.
Winterizing? You need to call a plumber, pay him several hundred dollars, takes hours because your tank hot water heater is full of sediment, he blows compressed air into the pipes blowing nasty crap all over your sinks where it will stay since there's no way to wash it until the water is turned back on - All plumbing is routed with zoned cutoff valves. Each zone has a spigot at the lowest point in the house. Turn off the zone, open the faucets, then open the spigot for that zone. Gravity drains the water out of the pipes and into a drain out to the sewer. Winterize the entire house in 30 minutes flat with nothing more than a pipe wrench.
Shallow bath tub, which will empty your tank water heater in no time. But you'll never really use it because you have to sit in a tub full of your own filth, gross - Deep bath tub you can fill with your tankless water heater, hot water up to your neck, room for two. the shower head is beside the bath, not in it and the entire bath is a wet room. You clean your dirty filth off with the shower before getting into the clean bath water. The bath has massage jets and a reheater so you can warm the water back up if you just feel like soaking in it for hours.
Electric stove, maybe gas. Low tech, burns your house down. - IH cooker. Easy to clean, turns itself off if it detects you left it on with no pan or an empty one.
>They are not built for longevity
Immediately after WWII, they were not, because the country was destroyed and people needed houses fast. Those houses are all gone now. The ones standing today are very well built. Better built than houses in the US. It comes down to a lot of little things. The technology is better and the entire layout of the home makes much more sense in Japan. It all works together in harmony, and you really feel it once you come back to America. Here you spend so much time cleaning and dusting and moving laundry around the house and never really warming up with a nice bath and always a dirty feeling butt because you just have toilet paper and just wanting to go back to Japan because you've experienced a much better standard of living there. But you're here now in a house that cost 10x as much, but it feels like you're camping in a tent by comparison.
jmye · 19h ago
This is an almost impressively dishonest set of comparisons. Wow.
denimnerd42 · 22h ago
I'm not sure it's possible to expand the housing supply. Inflation has made the cost of constructing new housing almost impossible. In fact he even has a graph comparing cpi to case shiller. I would argue that case shiller correctly models inflation where as CPI has been neutered and is no longer an effective model of inflation.
Basically we're at a point where used housing is actually far more valuable than list price because it would be absolutely impossible to rebuild any used house for anywhere near the amount it sold for.
presentation · 20h ago
In major high cost of living American cities, the majority of cost is in land and regulatory uncertainty especially in California - years of lawsuits and public comment hearings etc for any changes to the built environment, zoning restrictions, large parking requirements causing more land to be needed, inability to produce dense housing (and therefore more units to rent out) on any parcel of land, and so on.
It’s hard to change these policies in part because the basis of American wealth for most people IS the value of their real estate, so anything that would reduce the cost of a house will also reduce the wealth of a large swath of society. And rent control warps thing, by making existing renters also benefit from the status quo by locking in their rents, leaving only new renters as those who demand cheaper housing - the very people with the least electoral influence given that they’re usually younger and not established in the communities they’re moving into.
We need ways to align incentives so that these people can clearly understand their personal benefit from the good that densification would bring, alongside a reorientation to base their wealth on something that isn’t shelter.
USA is not the only place with inflation, but it still ends up with housing far more expensive than other countries. That’s because of policy primarily, material costs secondarily.
dilyevsky · 21h ago
I don’t know what inflation you mean but imo most of the cost increase is due to increased code requirements, labor shortage, and permit fees. These are quite fixable without any macroeconomic tricks
cco · 20h ago
Those three reasons are all still under the umbrella title "inflation".
I live alone in my house. It was built in the late 1940s. This house likely housed couples with children, 3-5 people, instead of the 1 it holds today.
Coupling up would reduce housing demand, and should in turn lower prices as availability increases.
In the circles I run in, most people who don't live with a romantic partner have at least two long-term roommates, mostly friends from college or made in adulthood. Several of these three to five person groups own detached homes together that no pair of them could possibly afford.
Famously, Shawnee, KS banned "co-living" a few years back, because (in the city council's opinion) too many people were living with others.
The number of houses doubles, but not their volume.
But it doesn't seem to be enough. The median age of first time marriage keeps creeping up and up. It's over 30 now in the US and higher in the EU.
Not sure what real tax breaks there is if both people make similar income. Otherwise if only one works, they’ll definitely see lower taxes thanks to the doubling of the standard deduction (plus exemption for the spouse).
I get the population will still grow, and we will likely still need some amount of housing growth over time, but we don't need nearly as much as we think we do.
We also don't need to avoid the middle of the country. The population has been moving to the coasts, while the Midwest has lost a ton of people since the manufacturing moved elsewhere. With a lot of companies, there is no reason they can't be in the midwest where there are a lot more affordable homes, and a lot of space. We should be looking to draw people from these HCOL areas to help bring back these cities. It seems like a win-win situation.
I would argue that if they aren’t there now, there probably is a reason that you are overlooking.
If you need non-remote employees at all (and if you don’t, where the company is located with regard to housing doesn’t mean anything), then there is a cost to not locating where people with the skills you want currently are, and also a cost to not locating in a place where the people you want to hire would want to be.
> We should be looking to draw people from these HCOL areas to help bring back these cities. It seems like a win-win situation.
I’m sure when you just state it as a goal without a concrete plan or costs, it seems that way: we should just wave a magic wand and make people’s preferences changed so what isn’t in demand is in more demand and what is in demand os in less demand. Simple!
When you try to come up with w concrete plan to do that is when it becomes more problematic.
This is one of the arguments for high-speed rail. The primary reason to move to a HCOL city is employment opportunities. The rapid growth of rail, both street cars and commuter trains, early last century allowed metropolitan regions to expand by allowing people to work downtown but live further away, dramatically easing housing pressure. The advent of the interstate highway system originally had a similar effect, though later also a fracturing effect, especially outside the few cities capable of holding their core.
High-speed rail promises to achieve the same thing, just as it has elsewhere around the world. Certainly it's a promise CAHSR is selling, and a major reason we should strongly support it. And it's one of the primary justifications it runs through the Central Valley rather than taking the shortest route between SF and LA. It puts Central Valley cities squarely into the SF and LA metro regions, not only creating opportunities for existing Central Valley residents, but allowing people to move further out, reducing housing pressure. You simply can't achieve the same thing with bigger airports and more flights, not until flying cars become ubiquitous.
https://hsr.ca.gov/communications-outreach/maps/
What we ought to do is encourage more economic development and business growth in the Central Valley instead of trying to cram more and more stuff into the Bay Area. The infrastructure there is already overloaded, and it's geographically constrained by water and mountains.
Paralleling I-5 seems like a much stronger argument, though I'm not sure that would have been better and it may have never gotten off the ground at all. For one thing, Stockton, Fresno, and Bakersfield might not have supported CAHSR if it bypassed them. But also, AFAIU, Federal funding was contingent on following the routes laid out in the national high-speed rail plan drawn up in the 1990s, and the recommended California line went through the big Central Valley cities.
What's really held back CAHSR has been the law suits and related dithering (e.g. environmental reviews more prolonged because of the expected law suits). That sapped momentum, and momentum is everything; time is money. That loss of momentum also means CAHSR is having a much harder time getting over the humps, literally (tunneling through the mountains) and figuratively (financial support for the tunneling). If construction had proceeded as fast as it has in most other countries, people wouldn't be perennially debating the chosen CAHSR route.
There are not enough houses, and you are encouraging more long-term demand for houses…
> We also don't need to avoid the middle of the country. The population has been moving to the coasts
Maybe a better question to ask yourself is why people prefer living on the coasts. What government policies draw them from the cheap places to the expensive places? How can you copy those policies to convince people to move back?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underoccupied_developments_in_...
5 Years On, China’s Property Crisis Has No End in Sight https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/business/china-property-d...
For example notice the item categories in the index: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
And then compare them to the companies in the subsidy tracker: https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent-totals
So another story we could be seeing here is that heavy government subsidies are barely managing to keep consumer prices down in many categories, except for housing.
My general opinion: we don't have just a housing emergency. We have a general emergency across many, many categories. If the government stops all these subsidies we'd see prices for everything else skyrocket across the board to match housing prices. Then wages would be forced to rise too, and you'd see the true underlying crisis: hyperinflation. Houses are worth so much because they are one of the best hedges against hyperinflation. If the US dollar gets inflated my house suddenly gets very easy to pay off and its now my primary form of wealth. So no wonder housing is so expensive.
developers mass-producing cheap, inhumane housing, set on tiny parcels designed to maximize developer profit MEETS most potential buyers/renters have zero interest in that crap
?
Owner sold the lot three years ago and a developer built a home there that the new owners moved into two years ago.
Barely a month goes by without some vehicles from the developer or their subcontractors being at the house. They've done two foundation repairs, relaid the driveway, there's drywallers, plumbers, electricians, even the fencing needed repair.
When I was young, I thought "builder grade" was a good thing, now I know it as "cheapest materials you can possibly find, thrown together as fast as humanly possible".
I think the main thing we need to do is make a federal property tax for any unused house or rental. Something that billionaires can afford, but only for their personal homes - and something that will basically force all landlords to sell immediately. Every actual real property will be forced onto the market in seconds and everyone will be able to buy a house that needs one for pennies on the dollar. It will be amazing. Let's start with 1000% per hour.
When land is taxed, but the property on it is not, and rates are normalized to maintain neutral tax flow due to the change:
1. Someone who owns land with little productive development, will see a large tax increase.
2. Someone who owns the adjacent same-sized plot, with higher value development, will pay the same tax, instead of a prior much greater tax.
So development isn't taxed, making development more attractive, as it will have a higher return.
Much greater incentive to usefully develop land. Much greater disincentives to holding relatively less usefully developed land.
Also good alignment:
(1) a land tax, taxes the exclusionary asset, paying a tax on essentially rents the land from the community. Which makes sense.
(2) Not paying a tax on development, removes a wealth tax on any land owner from any financial scale.
(3) That wealth tax on wealth disincentivize development, relative to other investments.
(4) The lower property taxes on less developed land, that we have now, means that high value property wealth tax, is subsiding the returns of Lower development land owners.
(5) And that imbalance accounts for lands use as a financial instrument, instead of land + use, as the investment. Holding land prices up, while subsidizing non-development holding.
The elimination of most land-price driven investment, would reduce a massive amount of artificial demand, resulting in more supply and lower prices, for those who wanted to make returns by further developing the land.
Land's use as "gold" is incredibly wasteful.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George
Not possible, because if its a tax an unused homes or rentals, what it would force people to do is either:
(1) make it qualify as “used”, or,
(2) destroy the residential structure on the land to preserve the value of the underlying land, which would no longer have an unused home or rental on it.
(Of course, you’ll never get the Constitutional amendment needed to carve out a new exception to both the prohibition on unapportioned direct taxes and the takings clause of the 5th Amendment that you’d need for that, so its moot anyway.)
It amounts to a mass seizure and redistribution, except those who were seized from still have to pay back what they borrowed, so it's even worse!
As a home owner, I think the best move for the country as a whole probably doesn't align with the financial interests of the current home-owning class.
The idea of a home as investment seems to inevitably cause this kind of conflict.
a lot of SFH get turned into dense apartments, and a lot of homeowners get rich as hell because they own the land.
We should have a LVT, so the landholders don't get too rich, but it can be a bit lower than ideal (which would mean that conversion to apartment is break even because future earnings - cap ex and taxes net out)
Only condo homeowners, and people living in truely rural areas "irrationally", will remain.
Zoning in Japan is at the national level. Japanese houses are WAY cheaper than American ones, while being of better quality at the same time.
Firstly, a significant number of houses are one family lifetime. People clearfell and rebuild routinely. The marginal value of a home is different when it's lifetime is constrained. Not all houses by any stretch, but its far more common.
Secondly Japan's population is shrinking. It's further along a pathway the developed economies share absent immigration. Thus, there is far more housing stock to head of population.
There is a third reason and it is perhaps more relevant: Japan's zoning laws are bizarre. You can put a house up next to a tire recycling plant, and have a Zen temple across the road and a sofa factory operating out of your front verandah. Nobody seems to care. California take note.
And FWIW, homes in the USA have a massive variety of quality. Generalizations about such things are going to be flawed.
New construction in the US is also absolutely not built for longevity unless you are paying a significant markup for actual craftsman materials and labor (and this would amount to less than 0.1% of new construction, probably closer to 0.01%). Of my friends who work as GCs and similar, a lot of homes built in the mid-90s are considered tear-downs, and they believe that number will only increase.
The builds are superior and so are all the appliances inside the home. Let's compare,
American - Japanese
Hole in the ceiling with wires hanging out - standardized ceiling sockets which can plug in and out different light fixtures and support their weight. Every light fixture in the country can fit the same socket.
Cheap asphalt shingles - Standing seam metal roof with heated embedded gutters (this roof, with no heating, in the US costs more than the whole Japanese house)
Tank water heater, runs out of hot water, fills up with sediment - Tankless water heater with adjustable temperature control panel, never runs out of hot water
Primitave toilet, leaks, just jiggle the handle! - Toilet with heated seat, bidet, hand washing sink in the top of the tank, eco and full flush options, plays privacy music, motion detector lifts the lid to greet you, automatic flush when you stand, and a wireless panel to control all this on the wall beside it.
Washer, dryer requires 220V special plug and a vent hose that is a fire risk, seperate units - ventless washer and dryer in one unit no bigger than a single American unit, washes and dries 6Kg loads (twice that if just washing), self cleaning. Just throw your clothes in, come back later to clean dry clothes. Space efficient and all it needs is water, a drain, and a standard two prong plug.
Central HVAC system requing expensive dust collecting ductwork, not energy efficient - quiet minisplit, inexpensive to purchase, install, and operate. Doesn't blow dust everywhere.
Winterizing? You need to call a plumber, pay him several hundred dollars, takes hours because your tank hot water heater is full of sediment, he blows compressed air into the pipes blowing nasty crap all over your sinks where it will stay since there's no way to wash it until the water is turned back on - All plumbing is routed with zoned cutoff valves. Each zone has a spigot at the lowest point in the house. Turn off the zone, open the faucets, then open the spigot for that zone. Gravity drains the water out of the pipes and into a drain out to the sewer. Winterize the entire house in 30 minutes flat with nothing more than a pipe wrench.
Shallow bath tub, which will empty your tank water heater in no time. But you'll never really use it because you have to sit in a tub full of your own filth, gross - Deep bath tub you can fill with your tankless water heater, hot water up to your neck, room for two. the shower head is beside the bath, not in it and the entire bath is a wet room. You clean your dirty filth off with the shower before getting into the clean bath water. The bath has massage jets and a reheater so you can warm the water back up if you just feel like soaking in it for hours.
Electric stove, maybe gas. Low tech, burns your house down. - IH cooker. Easy to clean, turns itself off if it detects you left it on with no pan or an empty one.
>They are not built for longevity
Immediately after WWII, they were not, because the country was destroyed and people needed houses fast. Those houses are all gone now. The ones standing today are very well built. Better built than houses in the US. It comes down to a lot of little things. The technology is better and the entire layout of the home makes much more sense in Japan. It all works together in harmony, and you really feel it once you come back to America. Here you spend so much time cleaning and dusting and moving laundry around the house and never really warming up with a nice bath and always a dirty feeling butt because you just have toilet paper and just wanting to go back to Japan because you've experienced a much better standard of living there. But you're here now in a house that cost 10x as much, but it feels like you're camping in a tent by comparison.
Basically we're at a point where used housing is actually far more valuable than list price because it would be absolutely impossible to rebuild any used house for anywhere near the amount it sold for.
It’s hard to change these policies in part because the basis of American wealth for most people IS the value of their real estate, so anything that would reduce the cost of a house will also reduce the wealth of a large swath of society. And rent control warps thing, by making existing renters also benefit from the status quo by locking in their rents, leaving only new renters as those who demand cheaper housing - the very people with the least electoral influence given that they’re usually younger and not established in the communities they’re moving into.
We need ways to align incentives so that these people can clearly understand their personal benefit from the good that densification would bring, alongside a reorientation to base their wealth on something that isn’t shelter.
USA is not the only place with inflation, but it still ends up with housing far more expensive than other countries. That’s because of policy primarily, material costs secondarily.