Reply to We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

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Reply to "We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes."

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

That would demand that every single "developer" is in cahoots and a huge, thousand-person conspiracy.

Yeah, champ. That's it. These "evil" companies, who make money by building things (hint, different companies do the building and operating) are just sitting in their offices, doing nothing.

What are you smoking? Can I have some?

Nimby, homeowner, shills. This entire forum.[/quote]

You seem to have a distorted, utopian GGW view of how this actually works, so let me see if I can help you understand it better. Start by asking yourself if any one of the for-profit developers in Seattle was happy that its new projects generated less than their expected returns or that their existing buildings suddenly became less profitable. Next, ask what happened after rents dropped. Deliveries slowed. This happens everywhere, including here. Finally, ask what happened to rentals at the low end of the market.  Prices must have dropped there too because of filtering, right? Wrong. Rents at the low end of the market increased, even faster than inflation. So much for filtering and the trickle-down economics that GGW loves to push.

It's possible for developers to reach similar conclusions without conspiring. They all have similar profit motives and funding constraints, so it's not surprising that they make similar decisions. This isn't a volume business, and the local housing market is not functioning well because it's dominated by a small number of large suppliers who already have a lot of units in the market.

Some companies are vertically integrated and conceive projects, raise money for them, and operate them. Some even have their own construction companies. If by building you mean pouring concrete and placing beams, yes, construction companies are most often separate firms hired at arms length to build. But construction companies don't decide how many units are delivered and when. The developer makes those calls. I point this out only because your glib "what are you smoking" question makes me wonder whether you actually understand any of this with any degree of sophistication, champ.

If you don't believe that developers are limiting supply, then start reading planning and zoning applications. You'll see requests to delay projects (almost always granted) and requests to reduce units just before delivery because developers are concerned about absorption (always granted). That means they're concerned there won't be enough high-income households to rent their apartments. Developers have a completely different read of this market than you do.

Developers aren't working hard math problems, and the institutional investors backing their projects have a lot of people who are good at math. Developers are clearly targeting 100 to 120 percent AMI with their new projects. Estimate how much that population will grow, survey existing inventory, and decide whether there's an opportunity to build. The business model is to extract as much of residents' monthly income as they're willing to pay.

My complaint is that developers are not building enough given existing approvals and zoning, so I'm not sure how that makes me a NIMBY.  I think developers should build every property to the limit and that the limits should be high. I want more walkable communities with many services nearby, which is impossible without denser development.  I think we should be making development easier and making more land available for dense development. But I also recognize that's not sufficient, and unless we simultaneously address developers' increasing tendency to constrain supply and to maintain high rents, the benefits of upzoning will all accrue to developers in the form of profit instead of to communities in the form of more livable spaces. [/quote]

Wow, you wrote a lot of stuff, that is all wrong! Only skimmed it, but it's the typical anti-GGW NIMBY nonsense. Waste of time, not sure why you wrote it lol. Please do some basic research here. There is a reason why rents went down during covid. Hmmm, supply and demand, perhaps?[/quote]

Pandemic: Demand fell. Supply stayed constant. So much for your GGW supply-side economics driving prices. Not a single part of that is wrong, champ. Again, please explain how it’s good for a developer with thousands of units already in the market to drive prices down. You can’t. Please explain why rents at the low end of the Seattle market increased while falling at the high end of the market if your theory of affordable housing works. You can’t. Your theory of housing is fatally flawed unless the only goal is maximizing profit. [/quote]

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