Category Archives: Housing

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 →

Somebody over at Bloomberg named Karl Marx, excuse me, Karl Smith, thinks America should become a nation of renters. Homeownership made sense, he says, when ownership costs were low relative to rent. But now, due to something he calls “financialization,” homeownership is too expensive, and so we should abandon the American dream of high levels of homeownership.

It may be self-serving for them to say so, but realtors are right to say that homeownership is a key to building wealth. Photo by Chris & Karen Highland.

Apparently, due to fast-rising home prices, private investors such as pension funds are buying homes and then renting them out. Homebuilders are even building homes with plans to rent them instead of selling them. Continue reading →

As previously noted here nearly three years ago, Hong Kong is one of the densest and least affordable housing markets in the world. According to Chinese University of Hong Kong geography professor Ng Mee Kam, the region’s housing shortage “is more like an artificial shortage.”

That’s because Britain only allowed development on 25 percent of the territory’s land, and the government of China has continued this policy since it took over in 1997; the other 75 percent is owned by the government. The dense area packed with high rises occupies just 3.7 percent of the land and such high rises are prohibited on the other 21 percent or so that is developed. Continue reading →