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[quote=Anonymous]Did anyone listen to this last week -- it was really interesting. Here's the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/24/podcasts/the-daily/housing-crisis-michigan.html

It get's into the factors that led to the housing crisis we're in now starting with how the 2008 crash altered the economics of building new homes and how millenials entering the housing market changed demand (and then how Covid changed it again). Really interesting.

The part I found most interesting was how spiraling housing costs are kind of like a contagious disease. People in large expensive cities (like DC) get priced out as the costs spiral upward. So they leave those cities for more affordable places -- exurbs or small cities or towns. And as those places get an influx of people who have been priced out of major cities but have more money than locals (and sometimes remote jobs paying more than local jobs would) the cost of housing in these locations also starts to spiral. It's interesting because it demonstrates how interconnected the real estate industry is even in different locations.

If you are wondering what the solution is the conclusion they (Conor Dougherty the journalist being interviewed) comes to is that the main solution is we need to build way more housing and specifically within the "affordable housing" price point for working and middle class people. He gets into why this isn't happening but the main reason is that after the sub-prime crash the economics of homebuilding changed a lot and now builders are not really incentivized to build a lot of moderately priced units. The cost of land and labor and materials is such that it's generally more cost-effective to build fewer units but make them high end and target upper income buyers. This means that even the housing that is being built actually contributes to rising housing prices because it's skewed so heavily towards high end housing.

What we really need is a bunch of smaller non-lux housing.[/quote]

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