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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I suppose our personal finance math may differ, but two married people making a combined 140 a yr or so, I wouldnt feel comfortable with a 700k house.    (thats on the low end by the way, the ones in Arlington ended up over 1M).   But lets assume 700k here.   You would need 140 for a down payment for an 80/20 mortgage.

Then you factor in property taxes, insurance, etc etc... no effing way two teachers or two nurses are swinging that.

Again-its a fairy tale story "we want affordable houses for teachers and nurses and cops!!"   (then they build 700-1M triplexes, that none of those people will actually buy or be able to afford).

Just admit that. [/quote]

New construction is always going to demand a premium. The issue isn't so much what the new units will cost, but what effect they will have on other units compared to maintaining the status quo.

Scarcity drives prices. More people competing for the same number of homes is going to keep driving prices up faster than incomes.[/quote]

Now we’ve reached the point in the conversation where the YIMBYs admit the program won’t help the people it was supposed to help but tell us not to worry because the effects will just trickle down. The problem with that approach is that very little actually does trickle down (most benefit gets booked as profit), making your approach an ineffective transmission mechanism for support to the middle class.

The other problem with your approach is that developers are much less likely to build while prices are falling, so when prices fall because of a supply shock, the effect is short lived. On top of that, your approach relies on having a supply shock to begin with, and cities that have experienced a supply shock did so only after rents went up way more than they have around here. Your approach is not a sustainable way to increase housing stock and it shouldn’t be a basis for policy. [/quote]

I'm not even sure what you mean by "most benefit gets booked as profit." Yes, when someone sells a new or existing home, whoever previously owned the home will likely make more money than they originally spent on it. That isn't a bad thing.

Similarly, it isn't clear what "supply shock" you're alluding to. There's no chance of a supply shock under this policy, and I'm sure you know that.

Your previous proposal to the housing shortage was sprawl up 270. But have you ever looked at the prices of those homes? New construction will always be on the top end of prices for the location and size.

The new zoning rules aren't going to magically fix our problems overnight or even on their own. But that's not a reason to allow things to continue to get worse at the current pace.[/quote]

What I mean is this: When the government gives a developer an entitlement or a subsidy, the developer takes most of the entitlement or subsidy as profit. It doesn’t result in enough new housing to drive prices down (which is the alleged benefit for the middle class). Otherwise, you’ve totally undermined the sponsors’ alternative theory of the bill, which is that it will increase supply (a positive supply shock) and give pricing relief to consumers.

I never proposed building up 270. But what you said is important: New construction will be on the top end of the market for location and size. The land up 270 is cheaper. You can sell for lower prices and still make money up 270, which is why there’s been so much construction in Frederick.

What the YIMBYs have done is insist on the most type of expensive construction on the most expensive land, and many of them have insisted on this approach to the exclusion of building where land is cheaper. The housing crisis is you. [/quote]

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