Reply to Greater Greater Washington as a news source

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

Reply to "Greater Greater Washington as a news source"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Loosening zoning laws is going to make zero difference to housing prices. It's odd how people have convinced themselves this is some kind of silver bullet to high housing prices. [/quote]

Supply and demand doesn't apply to the housing market?[/quote]

Yes, it does, and that's the problem for those selling zoning as the easy answer to everything.

They always want to focus on the supply side of the equation, and assume that if they just bring more housing units onto the market, prices will decline. But what about demand? If prices were to actually go down, demand would go up because that's what happens when prices fall.

Housing prices will never actually fall no matter how many units they build because it will always been exceeded by demand. There's millions of people who would happily move into the District (do you think people want two hour commutes?) and there isn't space to build millions of new housing units. 
[/quote]

This is entirely true. In the case of an essential good like housing, the demand will always be there but it will shift in the type of demand.
For example, with housing prices being sky-high, a lot of young professionals live together in group houses with roommates. You build more housing, prices go down or stabilize for a time, young professionals start to move out and find their own apartments. Demand increases, prices go up again. People's behavior reacts to the prices, not the other way around. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics