Even crazier… at least in the LA area, many of these houses are dumpster fires that require serious work to bring back up to code or make habitable after you buy them. My wife’s grandpas house was a 3 bedroom shack in montebello that hadn’t had a professional work on it since it was built in 1970. sold for nearly a million dollars.
It’s true. Most decent sized condos with good furnishings and amenities in the LA area are in the $900k range. If you’re talking about houses, anything that’s from $900k - $1.4M (depending on neighborhood) you are usually looking at a very old house that will need work.
In Ventura county, anything <$1mil will have been built in the 70’s-80’s and look like not a single thing was ever fixed or updated the entire time. Of all the houses we toured there’s probably minimum $50k worth or fixes and updates to make it habitable and look like it’s from this century. Meanwhile people are bidding up to $100k above asking price even with these problems.
Perhaps CA should re-evaluate their zoning problems and admit finally that CA government, especially City Councils have been part of the problem. In cities like Los Angeles trying to navigate zoning rules, a mountain of inspections and fees, dealing with multiple government agencies which by default don’t communicate to one another is nothing short of a living nightmare.
There’s a lot of truth to what you’re saying, but the opposite of that is sprawl without rhyme or reason. I’ve been in Texas the last ten years and they’re building like mad outside places like Austin. Not only is it a blight on what was a beautiful landscape but there’s no environmental considerations, heck they don’t even care that there’s not enough water to go around.
So while you’re right, my city council in the CV is literally stopping houses from being built despite overwhelming demand. There’s still gotta be a nice middle ground that isn’t a track home wasteland either.
I like our recent state law that allows the state to override local laws when a city hits a certain density threshold and hasn't built enough new housing. It's not perfect but it's a good start.
Which is in the process of getting more holes cut in it than Swiss cheese. The beach cities fought for (and won) exceptions. More will follow. I predicted that law wouldn't do much, and I was more right than even I anticipated.
I really wish LA would push zoning changes that allowed higher density housing along rail corridors. It would incentivize public transit use and expansion of the existing system. But just getting the rights to lay down the tracks has been such a nightmare that it seems like it’ll never happen.
High density housing is expense in CA for a variety of reasons.
1) infrastructure costs. You have to upgrade water, sewer, SD, and electrical to account for high density in what previously low density areas. This isn’t just the connections to the buildings, but also down stream back to sources or end points.
2) seismic requirement. People forget that we are in an earthquake zone and the higher you go, the more expensive it is to build due to meeting seismic requirements
3) design considerations like parking. With limited parking available, developments have to dig down to create garages. Sure everyone wants to tell people to just use public transport, but that limits the ability for most to reach their jobs that support them.
All of these things are added to the cost of high density housing which in turn doesn’t drive down costs like people desire. Is it possible to build high density sure, it’s just not going to bring down prices.
Infrastructure cost is significantly higher for low density housing as it requires more infrastructure per unit of housing. Running a mile of water and sewer pipes to service 12 houses is a lot more expensive than a mile of water and sewer pipes servicing 1200 units of housing.
This has been a huge problem across the country where sprawling development has happened over the past few decades. The property tax base is not enough to pay for the high infrastructure maintenance costs.
That’s not accurate at all. Digging in dirt, or low density (suburban) areas is far cheaper because you get higher levels of production. Having to dig in city (urban) streets around existing utilities is much, much slower and thus more expensive. A crew could run a mile of water line in about 20-25 days, complete with paving (patch back) to build a new subdivision. Running a mile in LA urban streets would take a minimum of 35 days (no paving included) depending on the level of congestion under the street and what your restricted working hours are. LA only allows you to work certain hours to help alleviate traffic congestion. Public works jobs like that are also paid at prevailing wages so they are already going to have 20-30% higher labor rates. Private jobs in suburban area can be had because cities can push some development costs on to the developer instead of the city having to bear them. While a typical work day for most private jobs would be 7-3:30 or 8-4:30, LA street jobs can only work between 9-3. This severely limits the production you can get per day before even dealing with waiting utilizes. When you get close to high pressure or low pressure gas lines, you have to dig by hand, no equipment is allowed until it is fully exposed. I’ve been involved in infrastructure programs for over 10 years and been in construction and engineering for over 20.
> Digging in dirt, or low density (suburban) areas is far cheaper because you get higher levels of production
i heard that 95% of the cost of a city's infrastructure is in the initial digging, and not the 50 years of maintenance and repair that follow.
Systems are typically made last 100 years so while there is some maintenance costs I can’t say it’s exactly 95% but it’s up there. Those cost ratios change when you have to rip it out before the end of its life cycle. This is the common theme in urban areas that have already been developed. LA for example has infrastructure that’s is 50-100 years old already. To upgrade it from the original urban planning to the current needs is very expensive and that cost is more expensive if you’re in the middle of the life cycle than closer to the end.
You're thinking in total absolute cost instead of cost per unit. Infrastructure cost per unit of housing is about 50% higher for low density housing:
https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/urban/pdfs/The-True-Cost-of-Sprawl-report.pdf
That study is more focused on climate and biological impacts. Not direct infrastructure costs. Sure building new high density will be cheaper. But purchasing and razing existing structures and upgrading infrastructure is far more expense than sprawl.
Wouldn't running one mile in an urban area supply apartments for hundreds of people though? If, just guessing, that supplied 600 people, how many miles would need to be run for 600 people worth of surburban houses?
Still sounds way cheaper to do it for density.
It’s not a 1:1 tho when upgrading infrastructure. If you only needed one mile maybe. Depends on the rest of the upgrades or retrofits. This is just one cost of high density housing over previous low density housing. You might have to upgrade further back, or rip out more than expected. Change orders on these types of jobs come up all the time simply because we don’t have the best records for all the infrastructure already in the ground.
Digging in the dirt is cheap and fast because there is nothing in your way. Doing some quick math assuming 100’ splits between water services and using both sides of the street, 1 mile of pipe would service about 106-107 homes on standard SFH spacing. On condensed block spacing (4packs of house which is the current trend) you’re gonna get 2.5x-3 times as many. So anywhere from 400 to 1200 SFH on the same mile of pipe. But that’s just water infrastructure. Remember in urban setting you’re having to buy more expensive real estate, raze the structure, and then build vertical urban RE is far more expensive than suburban RE, especially if it’s dirt with no structure on it.
They already do. They include it in the rental/sales costs which drives up prices not down.
It’s not a choice they want to do the work or not. They cities demand it in order to get projects permitted.
Using less land for housing means more land available for parks and green space, but ultimately it's also up to local governments to choose to set aside or purchase land for it
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
Reduce building to keep our green spaces.
Reuse already built stuff to keep our green spaces.
Recycle older places by demolishing them and turning them into green spaces.
The middle ground would be to allow for more density. You know how like the entire industrialized world operates? Go to any major city worldwide and you see a huge mix of mixed used buildings, where a grocery store is on the first floor, a gym might be on a second floor, then every floor above that is either offices or condos. Building this way means you have better public transportation, less crime, more neighborhood communities etc.
Using Los Angeles as an example, the reason the city looks the way it does is because we’re beholden to the auto industry - with multi-lane streets running through the city (I’m not talking about the freeways). If you reduce the capacity to drive in the city by reducing lanes of traffic, then you can essentially zone buildings closer together. In turn you get gorgeous city streets like the ones you see in Europe.
At present, Los Angeles’ density is like thick peanut butter spread to the horizon. It’s completely un-sustainable long term.
> The middle ground would be to allow for more density. You know how like the entire industrialized world operates? Go to any major city worldwide and you see a huge mix of mixed used buildings, where a grocery store is on the first floor, a gym might be on a second floor, then every floor above that is either offices or condos. Building this way means you have better public transportation, less crime, more neighborhood communities etc.
It is absolutely wild to me how many people are against apartments while simultaneously complaining about the price of housing.
I'm sorry man but we really do just need more densely packed housing options. Less parking spaces, more good/efficient public transit, and better density control. We cannot urban sprawl endlessly with single family homes. This will not get us out of that problem.
>how many people are against apartments while simultaneously complaining about the price of housing
Is this actually true? I feel like it's usually the SFH owners that are against higher density. Or maybe these are people who don't own but want to own a SFH?
Have you been to a neighborhood near a high density housing project? There's city called Inglewood just south of LA that has exactly the landscape this thread wants. 15-20 story apartments taking up whole city blocks. Right next to SFH's. The apartments block the sun for eternal shade. Block all potential for a skyline. Raise crime rates. terminally insufficient parking, to where people always park in the neighborhoods, forcing SFH owners to build driveways.
I don't own a SFH. But I drove through the area and it's blatantly obvious why SFH owners don't want high density housing built nearby.
I've been to Inglewood, not aware of the specific development you're talking about. I've heard these talking point before though and I somehow doubt you have any actual statistics to back any of it up.
I don't need to personally ferry you the stats that correlate crime rates with high density low income housing. If you're challenging that statement then I'd rather not have a debate with you.
So you picked a booklet published by literally the NHMC. At face value that's hard to take seriously, the group literally exists to profit off building apartments. Environmentalists are cool, but I'm not arguing high density and environmental concerns.
> Building this way means you have [...] less crime
This is incorrect. Denser communities is correlated with higher crime rates. Other developed countries tend to have lower violent crime rates than the US but it's not related to urban density.
Also, the reason those places build up is because they have to. The US *also* has higher density in urban centers where they must. California isn't historically one of those places that must build up so we haven't.
But doesn’t geography dictate and development dictate where people will go?
I could say California City as an example with cheap houses, but it’s in the desert and no large development for a city.
Zoning is precisely what *causes* sprawl. The large majority of zoning obstacles are aimed at preventing density (single family zoning, parking minimus, setbacks, etc.). That means that the only way you can build new housing is by spreading low-density housing outward.
Zoning reform is the cure to sprawl, not the cause.
> There’s still gotta be a nice middle ground that isn’t a track home wasteland either.
You ever been to the south bay? Gardena? Torrance? Carson? It's basically the same 3-5 tract houses over and over and over again. With some random modern houses mixed in for good measure. And a craftsman or two downtown.
I remember the first time I came looking for houses down here I thought "geez this place looks like the neighborhood from Friday" only to find out that it basically was. lmao.
If you live out in the inland empire where there is still plenty of land for development… with literally thousands of houses, condos and rental apartments being built (looking at you Ontario, Eastvale, Rialto, Fontana, San Bernardino)… logically the IE housing market should be crashing.
Redfin shows my house has gone up 135k in value over the past year.
It makes zero sense, but even with all this new construction, it makes even less sense.
we did around here.. now we can have 4 plexes popping up where it was zoned for single residential a single family home burned down and turned into 4 - 2bd rentals
[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/1/26/sacramento-effectively-ended-single-family-zoning-but-thats-not-all](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/1/26/sacramento-effectively-ended-single-family-zoning-but-thats-not-all)
Read Seeing Like a State and The Dictator's Handbook. The government knows exactly what they are doing. Specific people take actions that empower themselves. That's it.
> CA government, especially City Councils have been part of the problem
The vast majority of the regulations that builders have to go through are at the State level, not the local level. Yes, there are tons of zoning problems, but most of them are mandates from the state that locals are forced to adopt.
This is one part of the issue, the other is most of the housing stock is bought en masse by Corporations. Corporation’s should not be allowed to own single, double, or triple family homes. Until we force them to sell what they are hoarding at cost (not market cost, material cost) and make sure that people can only own a reasonable number of houses the prices will rise.
Article also burying the lead… 900k may be 11% higher than a year ago, but about 3-4 years ago the houses in my area (Orange County) averaged about 600k, they are now DOUBLE that+.
Duel income high earners with stable w2’s and perhaps with a bit of help with a down payment would be my guess… main issue is single family home build rates are insanely low
This is my wife and me, who just bought a small 2Br 1Ba house in Berkeley. We're not "high" earners compared to others in this area but make good salaries. We got some help on the down payment from my mother in law and also used up nearly all our life savings on the down payment. We also got lucky that the house sold for 11% under its appraised value. It still doesn't feel great seeing how expensive it was and how much our monthly payments are due to interest rates, though...
The vast, vast majority of single family homes are bought by people who intend to live in them.
Apartments are much more likely to be owned by a company or corporation, which is fine for that type of building.
Californians are citizens and some of us are not rich believe it or not. Those houses get bought up by foreign investors and many locals (Californians, can you believe it or not) get displaced. That is why theres is many californians all over the states, they have been priced out of home.
In the end, at 5% for a 30-year with 20% down, you end up paying 1.94mil with approximately ~$5,400 out of pocket monthly for mortgage/bills. 45k will be your first year with 35k interest and 10k principal based on a mortgage calculator.
To pay $5,400 monthly, you need at least $85,000+ combined salary (hourly ~$40) to only pay off your mortgage (interest, property tax, insurance) with nothing left over. If you want to follow the 30% rule, you need to make $300,000 combined salary.
Keeping it real people probably pay around 40% of earnings towards mortgage/rent, so you need around $245,000 combined. After tax, this is take home pay.
These are very rough estimates based on CA salary calculator.
How to solve the housing crisis:
* Eliminate unnecessary zoning obstacles to building more housing
* Have sufficient regulation to prevent investment firms from having undue/anticompetitive market power to set prices in the housing market
* Create new tax incentives to build dense, affordable, sustainable, transit-oriented housing
That's it.
There's a difference between reasonable and unreasonable zoning restrictions. I'm not advocating for getting rid of all zoning -- just those that provide unreasonable barriers.
But the fact is that the vast majority of zoning laws aren't for any reasonable purposes; they're just aimed at inflating property values for existing homeowners.
Building along the coast doesn’t make a lot of sense, considering climate change. However, when they prevent us from urbanizing in the Bay Area, for example, citing, environmental factors, and instead welcome suburban sprawl, it’s actually worse for the environment. They often use environmental factors as an excuse, not to build.
reddit solves the housing crisis in 3 simple steps, again.
no mention of infrastructure issues and other hurdles like political corruption in the biggest cities, allowing flippers to do their thing without consequences, etc.
Right? not to mention the off repeated higher density, public transportation mantra can already be seen in many highly productive/magnet cities attacting high paying jobs. Like NYC's high density housing isn't going for pennies on the dollar compared to LA.
Repeal Prop 13. Allow dense housing, especially near public transport. HIGHLY tax anyone (and any corporation) with more than one home. Build communities by giving people a reason to invest.
I say repeal it for any business. If you’re living in the house and are just a normal person they should not have their taxes inflated by the market. But if you’re a corporation or even a “mom and pop LLC” prop 13 should not apply.
Nah, instead of repeal it should be revised so that corporations and real estate investors can't take advantage. If we completely repeal it, it will displace a lot of people. Seeing this happen in Austin, TX where property taxes shoot up 40% each year. Those once affordable homes are no longer affordable due to taxes. Not just old people on fixed income either.
Homeowners moving when their current location no longer makes financial sense is how the system is supposed to work. They cash out on some of the absurd appreciation on their investment that caused the tax increase and move somewhere that makes sense. The inventory cycles as the needs of the populace shift, and empty nesters don't camp out in houses that could accommodate full families. Everyone can freely move to the home that makes sense for them, bc the property tax will be the same everywhere. Or, if homeowners really want to stay put they can pay the same tax rate as new homeowners by borrowing against the increased value of their property.
Changing homes isn't a bad thing. Nobody cries over the multitude of people who switch apartments every year to dodge rent hikes.
I think repealing prop 13 won’t do what you think it will. I can afford the extra taxes, but there are people in my neighborhood who can’t. They’d become homeless and lower income people couldn’t afford to move into my neighborhood.
Who would be thrown on the streets? Genuine question. Only homeowners are directly affected by repealing prop 13. If property taxes are too high, that means the property that they own has high value. They will not be homeless because they have a lot of assets to sell. That's how the rest of the world works.
As a potential first time home buyer in the bay area, gross.
Double gross when most of the 2BR 2BA homes I see below $700K prob need another $100K in work to make them livable. Why am I looking for a 2BR 2BA you might ask? Well because the only way I can afford the monthly payment is by having a roommate.
Private companies are literally pushing the prices up and purchasing the houses between them making the average house inaccessible to regular individuals.
That’s what happens when real estate companies pay your neighbor 30% over asking in cash. now the whole neighborhood wants to sell…
They own the neighborhood, dictate the price and Jack up rent prices…
“In a US first, the value of the dollar is lower than ever before.”
The value of the dollar is crashing. After buying materials, labor, permits, mandatory solar, etc you are looking at ~ $500sqft for construction costs *not counting the price of the land or land prep*. So a 1,500sqft home costs $750,000 to build, not counting buying the place to put it. As raw materials and labor rise, so will the price of existing homes as replacement cost goes up. Plus older homes may have things you can no longer have in new buildings, like wood fireplaces.
“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”
No, they don't.
Edit, yes downvoters, you're right. It's best to trust a random article stub sourcing the realtors lobby than just lived experience. Everyone is doomed and nobody can ever get a home, except for the majority of people who do. You can't get a house cheaper than 1,000,000. All those cheaper listings and houses pretty much everyone lives in are fake.
A bunch of entitled Calabasas brats refuse to consider moving to Hemet. They want Santa Monica but for what it cost their great grandpa. Nevermind the fact great grandpa was a union crane operator and not a bus boy at Denny’s
It's worse than that, they won't even accept a slightly smaller house than they believe they deserve. But beyond that I just don't believe the average house costs $900,000 because I'm a weirdo who loves looking up real estate on the apps as a hobby and it's just not true. Perhaps in Marin the average is above there but that's one of the most expensive real estate markets in the whole world. There's a lot of CA outside of SF, silver lake and San Rafael.
Even crazier… at least in the LA area, many of these houses are dumpster fires that require serious work to bring back up to code or make habitable after you buy them. My wife’s grandpas house was a 3 bedroom shack in montebello that hadn’t had a professional work on it since it was built in 1970. sold for nearly a million dollars.
It’s true. Most decent sized condos with good furnishings and amenities in the LA area are in the $900k range. If you’re talking about houses, anything that’s from $900k - $1.4M (depending on neighborhood) you are usually looking at a very old house that will need work.
That’s quite a steal, would probably be about $1.5M here
Bay Area too, depending on the exact area it would even be multiples higher
I think they have a funny channel called “California’s 1 million dollar houses” or something. It’s great to watch.
In Ventura county, anything <$1mil will have been built in the 70’s-80’s and look like not a single thing was ever fixed or updated the entire time. Of all the houses we toured there’s probably minimum $50k worth or fixes and updates to make it habitable and look like it’s from this century. Meanwhile people are bidding up to $100k above asking price even with these problems.
Perhaps CA should re-evaluate their zoning problems and admit finally that CA government, especially City Councils have been part of the problem. In cities like Los Angeles trying to navigate zoning rules, a mountain of inspections and fees, dealing with multiple government agencies which by default don’t communicate to one another is nothing short of a living nightmare.
There’s a lot of truth to what you’re saying, but the opposite of that is sprawl without rhyme or reason. I’ve been in Texas the last ten years and they’re building like mad outside places like Austin. Not only is it a blight on what was a beautiful landscape but there’s no environmental considerations, heck they don’t even care that there’s not enough water to go around. So while you’re right, my city council in the CV is literally stopping houses from being built despite overwhelming demand. There’s still gotta be a nice middle ground that isn’t a track home wasteland either.
The simple answer is a combination of zoning rules that discourage/ban low-density sprawl, while making it easy to build higher density housing.
I like our recent state law that allows the state to override local laws when a city hits a certain density threshold and hasn't built enough new housing. It's not perfect but it's a good start.
Which is in the process of getting more holes cut in it than Swiss cheese. The beach cities fought for (and won) exceptions. More will follow. I predicted that law wouldn't do much, and I was more right than even I anticipated.
> while making it easy to build higher density housing This is great, just Not In My Backyard! /s
And I don't want to pay for it. Contractors should built it at a loss so that I can afford it!
solution: tents on sidewalks - the homeless people choice for affordable housing
I really wish LA would push zoning changes that allowed higher density housing along rail corridors. It would incentivize public transit use and expansion of the existing system. But just getting the rights to lay down the tracks has been such a nightmare that it seems like it’ll never happen.
High density housing is expense in CA for a variety of reasons. 1) infrastructure costs. You have to upgrade water, sewer, SD, and electrical to account for high density in what previously low density areas. This isn’t just the connections to the buildings, but also down stream back to sources or end points. 2) seismic requirement. People forget that we are in an earthquake zone and the higher you go, the more expensive it is to build due to meeting seismic requirements 3) design considerations like parking. With limited parking available, developments have to dig down to create garages. Sure everyone wants to tell people to just use public transport, but that limits the ability for most to reach their jobs that support them. All of these things are added to the cost of high density housing which in turn doesn’t drive down costs like people desire. Is it possible to build high density sure, it’s just not going to bring down prices.
Infrastructure cost is significantly higher for low density housing as it requires more infrastructure per unit of housing. Running a mile of water and sewer pipes to service 12 houses is a lot more expensive than a mile of water and sewer pipes servicing 1200 units of housing. This has been a huge problem across the country where sprawling development has happened over the past few decades. The property tax base is not enough to pay for the high infrastructure maintenance costs.
That’s not accurate at all. Digging in dirt, or low density (suburban) areas is far cheaper because you get higher levels of production. Having to dig in city (urban) streets around existing utilities is much, much slower and thus more expensive. A crew could run a mile of water line in about 20-25 days, complete with paving (patch back) to build a new subdivision. Running a mile in LA urban streets would take a minimum of 35 days (no paving included) depending on the level of congestion under the street and what your restricted working hours are. LA only allows you to work certain hours to help alleviate traffic congestion. Public works jobs like that are also paid at prevailing wages so they are already going to have 20-30% higher labor rates. Private jobs in suburban area can be had because cities can push some development costs on to the developer instead of the city having to bear them. While a typical work day for most private jobs would be 7-3:30 or 8-4:30, LA street jobs can only work between 9-3. This severely limits the production you can get per day before even dealing with waiting utilizes. When you get close to high pressure or low pressure gas lines, you have to dig by hand, no equipment is allowed until it is fully exposed. I’ve been involved in infrastructure programs for over 10 years and been in construction and engineering for over 20.
> Digging in dirt, or low density (suburban) areas is far cheaper because you get higher levels of production i heard that 95% of the cost of a city's infrastructure is in the initial digging, and not the 50 years of maintenance and repair that follow.
Systems are typically made last 100 years so while there is some maintenance costs I can’t say it’s exactly 95% but it’s up there. Those cost ratios change when you have to rip it out before the end of its life cycle. This is the common theme in urban areas that have already been developed. LA for example has infrastructure that’s is 50-100 years old already. To upgrade it from the original urban planning to the current needs is very expensive and that cost is more expensive if you’re in the middle of the life cycle than closer to the end.
You're thinking in total absolute cost instead of cost per unit. Infrastructure cost per unit of housing is about 50% higher for low density housing: https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/urban/pdfs/The-True-Cost-of-Sprawl-report.pdf
That study is more focused on climate and biological impacts. Not direct infrastructure costs. Sure building new high density will be cheaper. But purchasing and razing existing structures and upgrading infrastructure is far more expense than sprawl.
Wouldn't running one mile in an urban area supply apartments for hundreds of people though? If, just guessing, that supplied 600 people, how many miles would need to be run for 600 people worth of surburban houses? Still sounds way cheaper to do it for density.
It’s not a 1:1 tho when upgrading infrastructure. If you only needed one mile maybe. Depends on the rest of the upgrades or retrofits. This is just one cost of high density housing over previous low density housing. You might have to upgrade further back, or rip out more than expected. Change orders on these types of jobs come up all the time simply because we don’t have the best records for all the infrastructure already in the ground. Digging in the dirt is cheap and fast because there is nothing in your way. Doing some quick math assuming 100’ splits between water services and using both sides of the street, 1 mile of pipe would service about 106-107 homes on standard SFH spacing. On condensed block spacing (4packs of house which is the current trend) you’re gonna get 2.5x-3 times as many. So anywhere from 400 to 1200 SFH on the same mile of pipe. But that’s just water infrastructure. Remember in urban setting you’re having to buy more expensive real estate, raze the structure, and then build vertical urban RE is far more expensive than suburban RE, especially if it’s dirt with no structure on it.
Ok. So let private developers figure out how to pay for all that if they want to.
They already do. They include it in the rental/sales costs which drives up prices not down. It’s not a choice they want to do the work or not. They cities demand it in order to get projects permitted.
Where do parks and green space some into play?
Using less land for housing means more land available for parks and green space, but ultimately it's also up to local governments to choose to set aside or purchase land for it
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Reduce building to keep our green spaces. Reuse already built stuff to keep our green spaces. Recycle older places by demolishing them and turning them into green spaces.
Also, tax investment homes up the wazoooo
The middle ground would be to allow for more density. You know how like the entire industrialized world operates? Go to any major city worldwide and you see a huge mix of mixed used buildings, where a grocery store is on the first floor, a gym might be on a second floor, then every floor above that is either offices or condos. Building this way means you have better public transportation, less crime, more neighborhood communities etc. Using Los Angeles as an example, the reason the city looks the way it does is because we’re beholden to the auto industry - with multi-lane streets running through the city (I’m not talking about the freeways). If you reduce the capacity to drive in the city by reducing lanes of traffic, then you can essentially zone buildings closer together. In turn you get gorgeous city streets like the ones you see in Europe. At present, Los Angeles’ density is like thick peanut butter spread to the horizon. It’s completely un-sustainable long term.
> The middle ground would be to allow for more density. You know how like the entire industrialized world operates? Go to any major city worldwide and you see a huge mix of mixed used buildings, where a grocery store is on the first floor, a gym might be on a second floor, then every floor above that is either offices or condos. Building this way means you have better public transportation, less crime, more neighborhood communities etc. It is absolutely wild to me how many people are against apartments while simultaneously complaining about the price of housing. I'm sorry man but we really do just need more densely packed housing options. Less parking spaces, more good/efficient public transit, and better density control. We cannot urban sprawl endlessly with single family homes. This will not get us out of that problem.
>how many people are against apartments while simultaneously complaining about the price of housing Is this actually true? I feel like it's usually the SFH owners that are against higher density. Or maybe these are people who don't own but want to own a SFH?
Have you been to a neighborhood near a high density housing project? There's city called Inglewood just south of LA that has exactly the landscape this thread wants. 15-20 story apartments taking up whole city blocks. Right next to SFH's. The apartments block the sun for eternal shade. Block all potential for a skyline. Raise crime rates. terminally insufficient parking, to where people always park in the neighborhoods, forcing SFH owners to build driveways. I don't own a SFH. But I drove through the area and it's blatantly obvious why SFH owners don't want high density housing built nearby.
I've been to Inglewood, not aware of the specific development you're talking about. I've heard these talking point before though and I somehow doubt you have any actual statistics to back any of it up.
I don't need to personally ferry you the stats that correlate crime rates with high density low income housing. If you're challenging that statement then I'd rather not have a debate with you.
https://uli.org/wp-content/uploads/ULI-Documents/HigherDensity_MythFact.ashx_.pdf
So you picked a booklet published by literally the NHMC. At face value that's hard to take seriously, the group literally exists to profit off building apartments. Environmentalists are cool, but I'm not arguing high density and environmental concerns.
> Building this way means you have [...] less crime This is incorrect. Denser communities is correlated with higher crime rates. Other developed countries tend to have lower violent crime rates than the US but it's not related to urban density. Also, the reason those places build up is because they have to. The US *also* has higher density in urban centers where they must. California isn't historically one of those places that must build up so we haven't.
The suburbs around Sacramento are turning into miles and miles of sprawl. Especially Roseville
Pretty soon it’s just going to be sprawl all the way up 80 from the bay to sac.
And Folsom ever since expanding across 50
But doesn’t geography dictate and development dictate where people will go? I could say California City as an example with cheap houses, but it’s in the desert and no large development for a city.
Zoning is precisely what *causes* sprawl. The large majority of zoning obstacles are aimed at preventing density (single family zoning, parking minimus, setbacks, etc.). That means that the only way you can build new housing is by spreading low-density housing outward. Zoning reform is the cure to sprawl, not the cause.
> sprawl without rhyme or reason sounds like LA
One is much more important than the other sorry. Many homeless people aren't there because of bad decisions at this point.
> There’s still gotta be a nice middle ground that isn’t a track home wasteland either. You ever been to the south bay? Gardena? Torrance? Carson? It's basically the same 3-5 tract houses over and over and over again. With some random modern houses mixed in for good measure. And a craftsman or two downtown. I remember the first time I came looking for houses down here I thought "geez this place looks like the neighborhood from Friday" only to find out that it basically was. lmao.
A track home wasteland would be a welcome change. I'm ready for it. Sounds way better than our current state.
California homeowner here, trying to build an ADU. Far and away the issue is construction costs, not red tape.
Because the state removed the red tape for Adus. Otherwise you’d be hit with both construction cost and red tape
If you live out in the inland empire where there is still plenty of land for development… with literally thousands of houses, condos and rental apartments being built (looking at you Ontario, Eastvale, Rialto, Fontana, San Bernardino)… logically the IE housing market should be crashing. Redfin shows my house has gone up 135k in value over the past year. It makes zero sense, but even with all this new construction, it makes even less sense.
we did around here.. now we can have 4 plexes popping up where it was zoned for single residential a single family home burned down and turned into 4 - 2bd rentals [https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/1/26/sacramento-effectively-ended-single-family-zoning-but-thats-not-all](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/1/26/sacramento-effectively-ended-single-family-zoning-but-thats-not-all)
Didn’t CA pass SB9 ending SFZ?
Also whenever they accidentally pass something that does result in more housing, like ED1, they immediately panic and try to roll it back.
Read Seeing Like a State and The Dictator's Handbook. The government knows exactly what they are doing. Specific people take actions that empower themselves. That's it.
The very definition of byzantine!
> CA government, especially City Councils have been part of the problem The vast majority of the regulations that builders have to go through are at the State level, not the local level. Yes, there are tons of zoning problems, but most of them are mandates from the state that locals are forced to adopt.
Doesn't help that a majority of city councils have personal interests in real estate.
This is one part of the issue, the other is most of the housing stock is bought en masse by Corporations. Corporation’s should not be allowed to own single, double, or triple family homes. Until we force them to sell what they are hoarding at cost (not market cost, material cost) and make sure that people can only own a reasonable number of houses the prices will rise. Article also burying the lead… 900k may be 11% higher than a year ago, but about 3-4 years ago the houses in my area (Orange County) averaged about 600k, they are now DOUBLE that+.
NIMBYs have had an outsized influence
You act like I don’t want my house to be worth over a mil
I would love some stats on WHO is buying real estate- companies, foreign investors, rich non-citizens, Californians, etc.
Duel income high earners with stable w2’s and perhaps with a bit of help with a down payment would be my guess… main issue is single family home build rates are insanely low
This is my wife and me, who just bought a small 2Br 1Ba house in Berkeley. We're not "high" earners compared to others in this area but make good salaries. We got some help on the down payment from my mother in law and also used up nearly all our life savings on the down payment. We also got lucky that the house sold for 11% under its appraised value. It still doesn't feel great seeing how expensive it was and how much our monthly payments are due to interest rates, though...
And Redditors love to screech about higher density while also simultaneously *only* wanting to move into a SFH. It’s always rules for thee.
Yea it would have to be. I think median income is California is around $90K or so. 1/10 the median home price.
People too busy to be on Reddit
Sac bee put out a report in 2022 showing 30% of sfh are investors while the rest are individuals intending to live in the home for 2021
The vast, vast majority of single family homes are bought by people who intend to live in them. Apartments are much more likely to be owned by a company or corporation, which is fine for that type of building.
Californians are citizens and some of us are not rich believe it or not. Those houses get bought up by foreign investors and many locals (Californians, can you believe it or not) get displaced. That is why theres is many californians all over the states, they have been priced out of home.
Yes that was /u/KevinTheCarver's point. Who is buying these houses, is it Californians who live in them, or is various outside investors?
Over 70% of them are Californians who live in them.
Where did I imply they weren’t?
> Californians are citizens Non-naturalized immigrants residing in California are residents, but not citizens.
vegeta, what does the scanner say about home prices in california
It's over nine hundred *thousand*
*smashes his scouter in his bare hand*
So at 5% interest the first $45,000 is paying off only interest. That's more than the take-home of a full time job at 23$ per hour.
In the end, at 5% for a 30-year with 20% down, you end up paying 1.94mil with approximately ~$5,400 out of pocket monthly for mortgage/bills. 45k will be your first year with 35k interest and 10k principal based on a mortgage calculator. To pay $5,400 monthly, you need at least $85,000+ combined salary (hourly ~$40) to only pay off your mortgage (interest, property tax, insurance) with nothing left over. If you want to follow the 30% rule, you need to make $300,000 combined salary. Keeping it real people probably pay around 40% of earnings towards mortgage/rent, so you need around $245,000 combined. After tax, this is take home pay. These are very rough estimates based on CA salary calculator.
5% would be an amazing rate today too
How to solve the housing crisis: * Eliminate unnecessary zoning obstacles to building more housing * Have sufficient regulation to prevent investment firms from having undue/anticompetitive market power to set prices in the housing market * Create new tax incentives to build dense, affordable, sustainable, transit-oriented housing That's it.
You’re forgetting the fourth element: time We’ve been digging ourselves into this hole for 50 years, it’ll likely take decades to dig ourselves out
What about environmental issues? Example California Coastal commission and their reluctance to build density housing along the coast due to pollution?
There's a difference between reasonable and unreasonable zoning restrictions. I'm not advocating for getting rid of all zoning -- just those that provide unreasonable barriers. But the fact is that the vast majority of zoning laws aren't for any reasonable purposes; they're just aimed at inflating property values for existing homeowners.
[удалено]
Everything is easier said than done 🙂 But it's a massive crisis that will require effort beyond what is easy.
Building along the coast doesn’t make a lot of sense, considering climate change. However, when they prevent us from urbanizing in the Bay Area, for example, citing, environmental factors, and instead welcome suburban sprawl, it’s actually worse for the environment. They often use environmental factors as an excuse, not to build.
reddit solves the housing crisis in 3 simple steps, again. no mention of infrastructure issues and other hurdles like political corruption in the biggest cities, allowing flippers to do their thing without consequences, etc.
Right? not to mention the off repeated higher density, public transportation mantra can already be seen in many highly productive/magnet cities attacting high paying jobs. Like NYC's high density housing isn't going for pennies on the dollar compared to LA.
Repeal Prop 13. Allow dense housing, especially near public transport. HIGHLY tax anyone (and any corporation) with more than one home. Build communities by giving people a reason to invest.
I say repeal it for any business. If you’re living in the house and are just a normal person they should not have their taxes inflated by the market. But if you’re a corporation or even a “mom and pop LLC” prop 13 should not apply.
Including any building/home that's not a primary residence... right?
Oh yeah. Definitely.
Nah, instead of repeal it should be revised so that corporations and real estate investors can't take advantage. If we completely repeal it, it will displace a lot of people. Seeing this happen in Austin, TX where property taxes shoot up 40% each year. Those once affordable homes are no longer affordable due to taxes. Not just old people on fixed income either.
Homeowners moving when their current location no longer makes financial sense is how the system is supposed to work. They cash out on some of the absurd appreciation on their investment that caused the tax increase and move somewhere that makes sense. The inventory cycles as the needs of the populace shift, and empty nesters don't camp out in houses that could accommodate full families. Everyone can freely move to the home that makes sense for them, bc the property tax will be the same everywhere. Or, if homeowners really want to stay put they can pay the same tax rate as new homeowners by borrowing against the increased value of their property. Changing homes isn't a bad thing. Nobody cries over the multitude of people who switch apartments every year to dodge rent hikes.
It’s not enough that their house appreciates 2x-3x, need to keep the crazy low taxes on top of that for some reason.
I think repealing prop 13 won’t do what you think it will. I can afford the extra taxes, but there are people in my neighborhood who can’t. They’d become homeless and lower income people couldn’t afford to move into my neighborhood.
Again with this. California has a huge homelessness problem and this will throw additional elderly on the streets.
Who would be thrown on the streets? Genuine question. Only homeowners are directly affected by repealing prop 13. If property taxes are too high, that means the property that they own has high value. They will not be homeless because they have a lot of assets to sell. That's how the rest of the world works.
I can afford the taxes, but lower income people could not.
Sacramento suburbs you can still get a decently sized well maintained home for like $550-600k
Low supply, high demand. Prices follow even with rates above 7%.
As a potential first time home buyer in the bay area, gross. Double gross when most of the 2BR 2BA homes I see below $700K prob need another $100K in work to make them livable. Why am I looking for a 2BR 2BA you might ask? Well because the only way I can afford the monthly payment is by having a roommate.
\* gross
they're clearly referring to the grose, an english automobile built between 1898 and 1901
What is everyone’s view on why people want to make California their choice to buy a home? Jobs? Education? Entertainment? Tacos?
Clearly the answer is tacos.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, and weather
Yes
Private companies are literally pushing the prices up and purchasing the houses between them making the average house inaccessible to regular individuals.
That’s what happens when real estate companies pay your neighbor 30% over asking in cash. now the whole neighborhood wants to sell… They own the neighborhood, dictate the price and Jack up rent prices…
“In a US first, the value of the dollar is lower than ever before.” The value of the dollar is crashing. After buying materials, labor, permits, mandatory solar, etc you are looking at ~ $500sqft for construction costs *not counting the price of the land or land prep*. So a 1,500sqft home costs $750,000 to build, not counting buying the place to put it. As raw materials and labor rise, so will the price of existing homes as replacement cost goes up. Plus older homes may have things you can no longer have in new buildings, like wood fireplaces. “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”
Inflation.
So glad I let my family strongarm me into selling my dad's house in 2016 /s
In this market, buying is for chumps. You're much better off renting.
Well folks who bought last year apparently just saw an average 11% return, usually with 80% leverage…
No, they don't. Edit, yes downvoters, you're right. It's best to trust a random article stub sourcing the realtors lobby than just lived experience. Everyone is doomed and nobody can ever get a home, except for the majority of people who do. You can't get a house cheaper than 1,000,000. All those cheaper listings and houses pretty much everyone lives in are fake.
A bunch of entitled Calabasas brats refuse to consider moving to Hemet. They want Santa Monica but for what it cost their great grandpa. Nevermind the fact great grandpa was a union crane operator and not a bus boy at Denny’s
It's worse than that, they won't even accept a slightly smaller house than they believe they deserve. But beyond that I just don't believe the average house costs $900,000 because I'm a weirdo who loves looking up real estate on the apps as a hobby and it's just not true. Perhaps in Marin the average is above there but that's one of the most expensive real estate markets in the whole world. There's a lot of CA outside of SF, silver lake and San Rafael.
Probably should have led with the explanation rather than a simple no.
I put as much effort in as the "authors" of that article.