Reply to The Urbanist Cult

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

Reply to "The Urbanist Cult"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The only reason why urbanists have become influential is because their message supports monied interests. There is no other reason. It is certainly not because it is popular nor is it about "racial justice"

Vast majority of Americans prefer not only the exurban to the urban lifestyle, including vast majority of Blacks. Even more hilarious, half of all people that live in urban areas prefer to leave for the exurbs.

These people and their agenda are very and deeply unpopular and thank god that the pandemic is likely to bury them.

[img]https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/ft_2021.08.26_bighouses_03.jpg?w=421[/img][/quote]

Monied interests? SFH NIMBYs have made hundreds of billions in wealth because of the lack of new housing. That's where the money is. Apartment dwellers are "monied interests" now?

LMAO.[/quote]

The monied interests are developers. They’ve made even more money than SFH owners. The only goal that urbanist policies support coherently is maximizing developer profit. Otherwise, it’s an intellectually inconsistent mess of propaganda and hot takes. [/quote]

Not even remotely true. Developers love the fat margins NIMBYs enable by artificially capping the supply of housing.[/quote]

Developers do a lot of artificial capping themselves. Just look at the tens of thousands and pipeline units, the units off the market, and the short-term rentals. When we address those units, I’ll be ready to start blaming NIMBYs. [/quote]

I didn't realize that developers are acting as a cartel. What's your evidence for your claim of collusion?[/quote]

I didn't say there was collusion. It's funny how urbanists always bring that up. Do you know something I don't? Guilty mind, maybe?  Collusion isn't the only mechanism that produces this outcome. Developers are all pretty much dealing with the same economics, so it's not surprising they would make similar choices. They all want to protect their existing returns, they all need to deliver high returns to investors, and low interest rates make it cheaper for them to sit on land than it would be for them to sit on land if interest rates were higher. There's clearly a market inefficiency where urbanists claim a shortage on the one hand but developers claim they're worried about a glut on the other. This is a great place for regulation to step in.[/quote]

No guilty mind (really odd that your mind goes there first), but collusion is the only condition under which developers operate as a monolith. Yes, they face similar economics, but they all have slightly different cost structures, depending on how many projects they have going on at the same time, depending on contracts they've signed, depending on a million other things. In any event, I agree that there is a role for policy - implement a land value tax!

Going back to your original post, I truly don't understand the point you're trying to make. Are we only allowed to talk about NIMBYs when developers have delivered every unit in their pipeline? There are always going to be approved units that haven't been built yet. Developers aren't always able to secure financing, NIMBYs throw up every roadblock and procedural trick to try to prevent anything from being built, and so on. [/quote]

I think it's fair to complain about NIMBYs when the Montgomery County Planning Board stops giving out site plan validity extensions as if developers are entitled to them by right, when developers stop converting apartments to short-term rentals en masse (as happened with the project above the Purple Line in Bethesda), and when we impose some sort of penalty on underutilization and warehousing, whether that's a land value tax or a vacancy tax. (Either policy option probably would cause land values to drop, which would be painful in the short term but would be healthy for the market over the long term.) The case against NIMBYs is more compelling when Montgomery County's inventory of unbuilt units approved in the past six years isn't 20,000.

I disagree that collusion is required. Developers are rational actors, and in Montgomery County they've repeatedly told the Planning Board that they're not building because they're concerned about absorption at the top end of the market.  They've told planning this in requesting site plan validity extensions and in response to the White Flint survey.  The pattern of development in Montgomery County is consistent with what developers are telling planning.  When rents stagnate or fall, they don't start new projects.  We also know that investors and developers alike prefer tight markets because tight markets have less downside risk and because tight markets are more likely to produce windfalls.  Supply chain innovations, such as just-in-time delivery of detached single family units, have also held inventory low and kept prices high. Altogether, that's a strong body of evidence that developers have collectively contributed to skyrocketing housing prices even without collusion.

Finally, developers' inability to secure financing is not caused by NIMBYs. We'd be better off if the process weeded out developers who can't get projects to market and are using low-interest loans to tie up land.[/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