Category Archives: Housing

Last week, the California legislature passed a Senate Bill 9, which bans single-family zoning. The YIMBYs — really YISEBYs (yes in someone else’s backyard) — claim this is a victory for more affordable housing, but it isn’t. In fact, it is a victory for densification, and density has never made housing more affordable.

Not only are higher densities not more affordable, data from 429 urban areas in the 2019 American Community Survey indicate that higher densities are incompatible with housing affordability; specifically that densities above 4,000 people per square mile almost inevitably drive median housing costs to more than four times median family incomes.

Like Oregon’s anti-single-family zoning law, California’s law effectively allows up to four homes on every lot that now has one. And, like Oregon’s law, experts agree that it will be many years before SB9 has any effect on housing prices, if it ever does. Continue reading →

Evergrande, China’s second-largest property developer, has said that it might not make interest payments on its bonds this week. Some are calling this China’s Lehman Brothers moment, and while that might be an exaggeration, a default could have serious repercussions throughout China’s, and perhaps the world’s, economy.

Click image to download a four-page PDF of this policy brief.

Evergrande is not a state-owned company, but its problems trace back to China’s socialist history and the Communist Party’s continuing control of the national economy. Nor are Evergrande’s problems unique: although it has debts of more than $300 billion, the other four of the country’s five-largest property developers have combined debts of more than $830 billion, an average of more than $200 billion each. Continue reading →

In Boston, a ten-foot-wide “skinny house” went on the market two weeks ago for $1.2 million, a 33 percent gain over the last time it sold four years ago. That’s more than $1,000 a square foot for what the realtor says is a 1,165-square-foot home (though Zillow says it is only 800 square feet). The house sold in one weekend for an undisclosed amount.

Sold for at least $1.2 million. Photo by Rhododendrites.

Bidding wars in San Francisco suburbs are setting records for premium prices above the asking price. Nearly 7.5 percent of homes are sold for more than 30 percent of the list price. Continue reading →

On Wednesday, the White House introduced a four-point plan to “increase affordable housing supply” nationwide:

1. Increase rental housing with various low-interest loan and tax credit programs;
2. Increase federal loan programs for manufactured housing and two- to four-unit homes;
3. Focusing existing home loan programs on individual homebuyers rather than investors; and
4. Encouraging state and local governments to use American Rescue Plan funds to build affordable housing and to reduce exclusionary zoning.

Most of these points do nothing to increase housing supply. The first two mainly redeploy funds that are already being spent on housing into slightly different housing programs. The third assumes that speculators are driving up housing prices and denying homeownership to families when in fact the “large investors” that Biden proposes to exclude from federal home loan programs are merely responding to rising prices. Almost no new homes would be built as a result of any of these three points.

Only the last point has the potential to increase housing supply, but will do so in the most expensive ways possible. Government construction of so-called “affordable housing” is usually anything but affordable, with cities and states often spending twice as much per square foot as private builders on new homes. Continue reading →

Paul Krugman needs to learn some geography. Last week, he wrote, “there’s no more room for housing” in California unless they build up. After all, he notes, “San Francisco is on a peninsula, Los Angeles is ringed by mountains.”

This is not the kind of housing Californians want, but it is the kind of housing they are going to get under restrictive policies advocated by Krugman and others who believe in “building up,” not out. Photo by Junkyardsparkle.

Yes, San Francisco is on a peninsula. But, immediately to the south of the city is San Mateo County, which — according to census data — is 68 percent rural open space. South of San Mateo is Santa Clara County, home of San Jose, which is 74 percent rural. Continue reading →

Sociopaths are people who “have no regard for others’ rights or feelings, lack empathy and remorse for wrongdoings, and have the need to exploit and manipulate others.” That definition perfectly fits New Urban planners and the environmentalists who support them.

I could be referring to planners eager to inflict congestion on commuters in order to persuade a few of them to take transit. But today I’m referring to planners eager to drive up housing prices in order to force more people to live in multifamily housing. Continue reading →

Although master-planned communities are quite common in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, they are few and far between in California thanks to strict land-use laws and an anti-development mentality. So it is good to learn that a 15,663-home master-planned community will be built near Hesperia, just a half-hour north of San Bernardino and a little more than an hour from downtown Los Angeles.

To be called Tapestry, the community will be built on 9,366 acres of former ranch lands, of which 4,933 acres will be set aside as open spaces and parks. The homes centering around a 700,000-square-foot commercial area will include all kinds of housing from condos and town homes to single-family homes on 18,000- and 21,500-square-foot lots. Continue reading →