its a supply issue
Pretty sure we have a fair amount of empty houses in the us due to private equity buying them up for profit.
Literally. Some dumbfuck on Twitter was arguing about this issue the other day saying it’s not blackrock or other such private equity firms, the problem is too much regulation preventing new housing being built. But there’s houses empty fucking everywhere. They’re building shit constantly in my city, 3 story townhouses, giant CUBE apts, and the price only ever goes up
If you add AirBnB, apartements empty for speculation and furnished apartments (not standard in germany) together you get, conservatively, something like 6 - 7% of the housing in Berlin being caught up for that bullshit at any given point in time and yet this has never convinced anyone that while yes, build more, the nimby bullshit here is annoying, there might also be, you know, some other problems.
EDIT: Furnished apartments skirt all sorts of rental regulations since, in principle, they're for like people on longer work trips. Realistically they're also just vacation homes or get used to house like 20 rumanian ~~slaves~~ migrant workers in a two bedroom while they build the next glass dildo
When someone says something so abundancephobic you gotta hit em with that Ezra Klein stare
Every homeless person could get 16 vacant properties in the US.
I currently work in property management. I worked on a small highrise that had a 20% vacancy rate, and they weren't lowering prices. Their strategy seemed to be get a tenant in with an absurd lease length with a bunch of incentives and then make it so unaffordable, they couldn't move. For instance, no first month rent, and $200 off for the next year, but people were getting water bills in the multiple hundreds for a single month for a 2 bedroom with 2 adults and 2 children.
Pretty sure Zillow is part of the fuckin problem
They are, but they don't get a cut of the sell price, so more turnover is likely better for them
I like to say that for housing to be affordable the price of housing needs to drop by 90% so people can afford it. This gets me into arguments.
Fewer new construction projects....
I have blocks and blocks and every wooded inbetween space around here getting bought up, chopped up, and slapped with high density 3 floor 
starting from the low low price of $450,000. There isn't a field or wooded area left.
Do these people live on another planet?
I get so depressed when I go on Google Maps streetview and compare present and past images of one of the streets I grew up near.
15 years ago it was a narrow 2-lane street surrounded on both sides by tall trees and the occasional house that was built in like the 1930s. Now it's a 6-lane stroad with 5-over-1 apartments, McMansions, shopping plazas and fast food joints. Yet somehow there's still a "housing shortage" and businesses are struggling to stay open.
Houses get built as a way to make money, not as a way to get people into a home. 
Unless the problem is “we were idiots in thinking that rising property values are a good thing” I don’t want to hear it.
Anything short of “quintuple the housing stock of cities and pop the real estate bubble’ isn’t serious. If we want to solve the homelessness problem. Investors and homeowners need to have their ill-gotten wealth ripped away from them.
Want money? Hire me so I can make you money.
we were idiots in thinking that rising property values are a good thing
Literally just had my friends idiot brother argue this over the weekend... They live in the last "affordable" (laughably) area on long Island and now that he's a homeowner he was saying how the whole area should have higher home values, that the area "deserves" it, if it just wasn't for "those people" that live here bringing it down (you know what people he means...)
When I asked who the hell could afford to buy 700k+ houses he literally said "rich people."
...literally kicking the ladder down behind him because it would benefit him.
Average Long Islander tbh
Raze the suburbs and build affordable mid density. Especially anything near the LIRR. I grew up in a town in Nassau where everything within a mile of the LIRR station is still single family homes, except a short main street strip with one floor of apartments over ground floor businesses.
And consolidate the school districts. It's racism barely couched in classism, actively reproducing segregation.
Bit idea, when republicans talk like that. Just say “you want housing to be more expensive? How’s that working out for California? But enjoy paying more taxes because you want to feel fancy, I guess…”
Anything short of “quintuple the housing stock of cities and pop the real estate bubble’ isn’t serious.
This isn't really serious either, that's a massive investment that wouldn't address the root problem of houses being a financial asset. If you want to pop the bubble, outlaw landlords, mortgages, and owning a house that stays empty for more than six months. Then prices will necessarily crash until people can actually afford them. (And yes, also build more, and build public housing for the people that still leaves behind.)
72% of outstanding mortgage debt has interest rates below 5%.
for reference: current 30 year fixed is 6.66%
anyway that line made me look up some data... check this shit out:
now, obviously, this is just people using traditional financing, so it doesn't include private equity but damn.
pandemic era financing was a unique moment in the last 12 years and also... that portion paying >6% juice is like, committed, to being part of the show. I know I'm an outlier in fiscal decision making generally, but even imagining taking out a massive loan at that amount makes me lose-my-apetite upset.
additionally, these interest rates push up HELOC rates and with all the tariff whiplash and logistical bs giving cover to raise materials prices... I don't see how anybody not crazy (without strong savings) is even fixing broken shit in older homes, let alone building anything.
with capitalists squatting on vacants and short term rentals going hog wild, it feels like we're entering an even more fucked up era of housing. like god dam.
30 year fixed is 6.66% 
Hey Zillow CEO, let me fix that for you
for listing in list_of_listings:
listing.set_price(min(0.05*listing.get_price(), .001))
I asked chatgpt and it said I was a very smart big boy and that you should roll this right away as it's production ready!
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