For Sale: Closet for $335,000

From London, the least-affordable housing market in the world, comes news that a 77-square-foot closet can be yours to live in for just $335,000 (plus an estimated $59,000 to clean it up and add such luxuries as electricity and heat).

Such high prices are the result of green belts and an anti-housing planning process. While this closet is in one of the wealthier parts of London, other recent real estate deals in England include:

• A five- to ten-foot-wide building being sold as a home for $933,000.
• A 255-square-foot room (with a 55-square-foot patio) being sold as a home for $479,000.
• A beach cabin made out of packing crates sold for $95,000.
• A 320-square-foot former public toilet converted to a home sold for $335,000.
• A 54-square-foot storage closet converted to an apartment rents for $1,400 a month. (Sorry, web links to these other deals are no longer live.)

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These prices are insane. Think American housing markets are immune? Think again.

According to Coldwell Banker, a standard 2,200-square-foot single-family home sold last year for anywhere from under $150,000 (in some cities in Texas, Michigan, and North Dakota) to more than $1.7 million (in some communities in southern California). That’s anywhere from $60 to $800 a square foot — a difference of more than 1,200 percent.

Of course, someone (you know who I mean) is going to say, “But southern California has a nicer climate than Texas or (shiver) North Dakota.” Yes, but the 2000 census showed that nearly 95 percent of all California residents live in just 5 percent of California’s land (you can find my summary of census urban areas by state here or you can look it up yourself at the Census Bureau web site). Allowing people to spread out a little more would greatly relieve housing prices and give more people an opportunity to enjoy that wonderful climate. (And climate doesn’t explain why a home in Boulder costs 2.5 times as much as a home in Colorado Springs.)

Our friend Dan blames unaffordable housing on homeowners who manipulate the planning process to increase their wealth. I’ve stated before that I am dubious about this because the planners repeatedly tell the public that land-use regulation doesn’t make housing unaffordable and that their goal is to create mixed-income communities for people of all economic classes.

But let’s say homeowners know exactly what they are doing when they manipulate the planning process. Ultimately, that process was envisioned by planners like Dan. Were those planners so stupid that they did not realize that their process would make housing unaffordable? Or did they think that housing affordability was unimportant compared to such vital issues as creating a sense of community or having vibrant streets? Or did they know exactly what was going to happen and think it was a good thing because affordable housing allows Americans to waste too much land on large yards?

Regardless of the answer, I don’t want to put our future in the hands of people who create this kind of a planning process. The result of this process is that only the wealthy elite get to live in places with a nice climate. And when they achieve this (as they have in places like San Francisco, Boulder, and Portland), they congratulate themselves for being “progressive” and sneer at the “right wingers” who think that land-use restrictions should be relaxed so that more people can own their own homes. Ain’t America grand?