It's not only restrictions though. Of the people I know who own property, many, if not the majority, own more than one property, some of them empty. I also know many remote Chinese that own a property in L.A. It's super frustrating.
As a resident of the Pacific Northwest, the same property squeeze is happening here on a similarly massive scale, also driven by foreign "investment". In my experience, advocating for strong countermeasures is a great way to get one's self labeled as a Trump-er or anti-immigrant.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1...
Uh, I'm not sure why Democrats would be against this, especially considering Prop 13 was passed by Reagan.
Hey, they're not all remote. Some of them are outgoing, a few even garrulous!
Can you afford rent, though?
Isn't a bit extreme to expect to be able to own property -- like some sort of medieval lord -- in a major city?
I own a condo that I rent and live renting in other part of my city. The rents cancel each other. It works very nice for me.
I definitely wish more people own their homes. I also love highrises.
For one thing, houses are cash sinks. It doesn't make sense for highly paid professionals to spend enormous amounts of time or money reshingling roofs, painting, mowing lawns, treating weeds, trimming hedges, repairing plumbing, etc. The deep specialisation and constant attention that the professional economy asks are orthogonal to all those things. It's prudent to upload those demands to the cloud (aka your landlord, at scale) so to speak.
I know far more urban professionals that were hindered by the ballast of owning real estate than those empowered by this "most basic form of security". Here in the sprawling metro Atlanta area, taking another job will very likely take you to a wholly different part of this vast agglomeration and doom you to a punishing commute unless you sell your house and relocate. The uncertainty, transaction costs and other friction kept a number of people I know in dead-end jobs until they were finally laid off.
As a personal anecdote, I bought a condo in May 2007. I was drinking the very same Kool-Aid about basic form of security and whatnot. I finally let my home go to foreclosure in summer 2015. I financed at $160K, and in summer 2015 it appraised at $85K. I still owed $140K. One of the lenders sued me for a $29K deficiency and got a judgment, and I'll be paying them $250/mo for the next six years. Some security. I grant that my effort at partaking of the most basic form of security a human needs was exceptionally disastrous, but I think the housing crash educated a lot of people about just how much security it really offers. A senseless push to ownership for ownership's sake threatens to discard those valuable lessons.
The real argument for owning vs. renting is the mortgage interest deduction, and that's an artifice of government tax policy that hugely distorts the market and the incentives.
I agree that owning a house is not right for everyone, but if you're planning on staying in a location for awhile it can make a lot of sense (although ATL is its own special hell). If I had not bought a house in 2011, I actually could not afford to live in the area I currently live in. Sure, taxes, insurance, and maintenance will always be ongoing cost, but for the most part my housing costs are fixed way below what rent would be now.
I also do not know what's wrong with professionals doing things like cutting the grass and trimming hedges. Every hour of my day does not need to be spent in some highly productive fashion. An hour/week in the summer, outside doing the yard while listening to music is a great way to relax and unwind.
So we pay HOA fees for high-rise condos.
Rents in SF grew $2000 over 5 years. I would be ecstatic if my worst-case housing market outcome were a measly $250/mo. My standard of living is going to fall every year at lease renewal time until I can't take it anymore, and then I'll go live out my days in a soul-crushing Midwestern cost center IT department, if any haven't been outsourced or automated by then.
Housing costs that can't increase are looking really good right about now.
Median rent in Midtown Atlanta, where I last lived, is pushing north of $2000, which for Atlanta is a _princely_ sum considering it's ... well, it's Atlanta. It's not Brooklyn or Chicago. If I'm going to pay that much, I want Brooklyn or Chicago.
The cost of maintaining a house in the smallish 50 stories highrises in Shanghai per unit is a lot lower than for one level detached house.
Density gives ability for a lot of savings in everything.
I would agree that condos tend to be more volatile than single family homes. More of them can be built quickly and when real estate prices start to drop it often starts with the condos.
I think owning property would be much more expensive than renting in the case where the value is based on future appreciation, vs actual value that it provides as a living area. I admit I'm not an expert on real estate, so please explain to me whether this makes sense or not.
Point being, its not unreasonable at all to expect to be able to afford a home.
I don't have any hard numbers, but I suspect LA simply having become more urban and desirable is a big part of it. It's certainly still possible to buy houses in suburban flyover country very cheaply.