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It Will Never Be a Good Time to Buy a House
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this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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Ehh. I don't think private equity is the main issue. I think that private equity firms would prefer to fund the construction of new housing if they could, but they can't, because of zoning laws. So they opt for the next best thing which is buying up existing housing stock and renting it.
The crux of the problem is zoning laws, single-family zoning in particular. We either need to allow a bunch of undeveloped land to be developed, or we need to allow already-developed land to be converted into more dense forms of housing. I think the latter option is preferable.
Idk in most cities they've now bought more than 50-70% of the houses to rent. The game is to get rid of ownership so you have a captive audience. It's only really possible to get something reasonable out in fuck nowhere
This is happening where I live, and surprise, it's still not fixing the problem. We need rent control.
Zoning changed in Minneapolis and there hasn't been a boom of new construction AFAIK. It's a combination of factors but I think the current situation is maximally beneficial to the capitalist rent seekers so working backwards from that assumption maybe we can't intuit some other causes. Maybe intra class conflict? We'll give it another half decade and see what the housing situation is in places that have updated zoning laws before we can rule that out, I guess
There's some new construction in Minneapolis, but I think a big issue is that a lot of other regs haven't been updated to really enable lower cost apartments. e.g., I think the insane parking requirements still exist? From a red tape point of view it's just so much easier to build a single family home, even if the location makes more sense for a small apartment building or a quadplex.
Anecdotally, I've seen a lot more construction happening in Minneapolis in the last few years than I did 10 years ago, so I think there's at least some movement in a positive direction. It's still an insanely sprawling metro, with miles upon miles of single occupancy detached houses right next to downtowns. I think the only thing that controls the price of housing here is just that the bad winter weather puts the breaks on the influx of new people.