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Comment by Zach_the_Lizard | Hacker News Reader

> Do you not want a large, detached house? :) I think part of it has to do with the fact that that is what people want

If people truly wanted this, we wouldn't need a large zoning law apparatus to legally enforce it, now would we?

Historically these laws came about due to White Flight and wanting to keep the "other" people out.

My hypothesis is these laws persist due to effectively creating legally enforced housing cartel, pushing up house prices. Throw in some rent control to turn some poor folks against new housing, and you've got a recipe for ever increasing house prices, falling fertility rates, and the squeezing of the middle class.

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Is white flight really the cause of zoning laws? We have very similar laws in Canada, but they happened at a time when downtowns were almost entirely white.

My suspicion is that car based planning is the cause.

At least in my corner of the US, a huge majority of prospective home owners would consider a non detached house to be markedly less desirable.

People absolutely want large detached houses, but housing developers want to build densely packed multi-family housing because they're more profitable.

Here's the problem:

- Start with a nice, quiet, picturesque suburban neighborhood.

- Naturally people want to move into this neighborhood because it's so nice and want it to be affordable so, absent zoning, developers build apartments and condos to fill the need.

- Then all the people move in and the neighborhood slowly learns that the reason it was actually nice and picturesque was the low density and high buy-in.

- Property values start going down, along with tax revenue, the schools decline, $/student plummets, and all the people with the means move somewhere else.

Without at least some laws it's incredibly difficult to break this cycle.

You have it backwards, increased density results in higher prices.

However, there are multiple cycles going on. If you build a development you end up with a lot of people of similar means all buying homes. But, over time things change as people get fired / retire / inherent homes etc you revert to the mean over time. On top of that as homes age and become less desirable you get massive downward pressure on property values over time.

In the other direction you have artificial scarcity and sometimes increasing population propping up home values.

PS: To thous who disagree, I will point out Manhattan as a classic case of high density and high cost. Feel free to pick some real counter examples.

It's expensive in Manhattan but it's affordable nearby. It's still possible to buy an apartment in Jackson Heights for $200k and take the F train to work.

In the Bay Area it's expensive near job centers but it's still expensive 40 miles away. The sprawling mess is too low density to sensibly cover with trains so poor people end up with insane highway commutes.

That's still expensive.

Anacostia DC has apartments for 90k despite people paying 4+x as much to commute into DC from the suburbs. However, those prices are very much on the rise.

SV prices are limited largely by geography and local parks. Having less land area available for development relative to commute distances drives up prices on top of other issues.

I don't understand your point here.

It sounds like you are saying that Anacostia is cheap, dense, and close to jobs and that there's also a demand for luxury housing farther away. That all sounds reasonable to me.

In SV we don't have cheap housing close to jobs. I argue this is because we don't have dense housing.

My point was markets are complex and 200k is not cheap.

Anacostia is an example of less expensive, but also not cheap. You can get a 'cheap' condo in much of the US for 35k. However, Anacostia is not staying that way prices are very much on the rise, became larger forces are at work.

SV does not have cheap housing close to jobs largely due to geographic issues. It has a tiny strip of land that can be developed so all of it is going to be expensive. On a block by block basis low density is driving prices down, while on a regional basis lack of housing anywhere drives prices up.

I'm still not following you here. Sure, housing is cheap in and around Detroit or wherever but you explicitly requested we discuss Manhattan.

Now, in Manhattan the city center is expensive. However, very near the city center, housing can be affordable while still having a reasonable commute. This is because of density.

> SV does not have cheap housing close to jobs largely due to geographic issues. It has a tiny strip of land that can be developed so all of it is going to be expensive.

You are totally wrong here. The housing is expensive due to undersupply which is brought about by restrictions on zoning. There is a huge amount of land to build on but zoning laws require that most of the land here be used for detached single family homes.

> The housing is expensive due to undersupply

I agree that it's a massive factor, but it's just one factor among many. Look at a satellite map of the area, in the middle you have the bay which not only takes up space but also chokes traffic. West you have the ocean, and north is again limited by the bay. South and east you have mountains and parks which limit where you could build transit or housing.

For comparison look at D.C. it's zoned to be low to mid density, and has terrible roads. But becase people can commute from a huge area to the hart of the city it's prices are not insane. Further, many office buildings clump up in various areas around the city. That can't really happen to SV which props up land value.

> It's still possible to buy an apartment in Jackson Heights for $200k and take the F train to work

It's possible to find a listing for an old studio apartment in Jackson Heights, possibly with an existing tenant you'll have to evict, and possibly with a long walk to the train. Throw in the condo fee ($300+ per month maybe?) and you've got yourself a deal.

At ~$400 / square foot that's relatively pricey. I think typical construction costs are like $125 - $150 / square foot, so this could be a $80k or less free standing house in a truly cheap region.

Here's a 2 bedroom for $199k ($240 per square ft):

https://www.redfin.com/NY/Unknown/112-50-Northern-Blvd-11368...

Try getting anything like that near public transportation that gets you to work in Silicon Valley.

But my point isn't that it's cheap, it's that it's relatively cheap compared to Manhattan while still being close to the city.

Manhattan is high density and high cost but that's because the desire to live there is nigh-infinite. The prices aren't high because it's dense, they're high despite.

You're essentially arguing that housing is a Giffin Good and exists outside the normal laws of supply and demand. Don't get me wrong, after a point there is a tipping point where more people start pushing prices up in general because they exhaust the supply of things you can't just produce more of. But building more housing still decreases the price of housing.

Housing is not interchangeable like a true commodity. Sure, over the next six months prices may drop but consider longer term.

Take an island city of say 1 million people living in single family homes. Now, over 50 years replace 1/2 of those with 5 million high density apartments. Assuming steady growth the apartments are going to fill with workers, but the number of single family homes dropped. Further, the total number of highly paid professionals like Doctors and Middle Management increases which increases demand for those single family homes.

Now, block growth for 30 years and you reduce the number of people that can actually make enough money to drive up prices. Net result people move elsewhere and even if the market is tight and people pay a higher percentage of their income they simply make less money on average.

PS: And to be pedantic while more housing is being build to total supply drops because nobody is living in the demolished buildings.

Manhattan also has one of the world's largest concentrations of jobs and various cultural things to attract people. You will not see the same effect at work if you are comparing suburban apartment complexes to suburban single-family homes.

> People absolutely want large detached houses, but housing developers want to build densely packed multi-family housing because they're more profitable.

They also cost less per unit, which is a thing people (i.e. new homeowners) like even more.

> - Property values start going down, along with tax revenue, the schools decline, $/student plummets, and all the people with the means move somewhere else.

This can be solved by adjusting the mil rate to generate the original amount of property tax revenue per unit against the lower housing prices.

I also don't see how the cycle is not self-defeating. If there are a hundred low density units and someone builds a hundred high density units near them so the original inhabitants leave and build a hundred new low density units somewhere else, now there are three hundred housing units available. The higher supply reduces the profit in building new condos anywhere in the region. If the cycle repeats then even more housing is constructed. At some point the profit in building new condos falls below the construction cost, because people don't want to live in a condo in the otherwise low density area more than they want to have a much smaller mortgage payment.

In this scenario a lot of people probably still have to commute to the city or nearby so moving to further and further rings out has real disadvantages

> In this scenario a lot of people probably still have to commute to the city or nearby so moving to further and further rings out has real disadvantages

This is obviously an argument in favor of high density zoning. Even if you want to live in a detached single family home, you want as many other people as possible to be able to live in high density housing to minimize the amount of land you have to drive through between your home and the city.

Perhaps, but you can see how this is not necessarily a situation where what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

"Screw all of you, I've got mine" seems like it shouldn't be a winning policy argument.

People absolutely want large detached houses, but housing developers want to build densely packed multi-family housing because they're more profitable.

To me it has always seemed that presented a big empty plot of land, large detached houses are more profitable for the builder- I figure single houses are probably easier to slap together. Then, as an area grows and land is suddenly constrained in supply, then the developer wants to build dense.

You're right, single family houses are very nice for the builder. Simple, relatively cheap, build-sell-and-move-on.

Multi-family houses are more profitable for the owner. You pay some maintenance costs but you also collect a profit on recurring condo fees, services you provide, and deals you might make with other companies (like internet providers).

> Then all the people move in

> Property values start going down

So you're saying that because it's so desirable, property values go down?

Two ways to answer this:

* Yes, the existence of less expensive high-density housing in a neighborhood puts downward pressure on the price of single-family homes.

* Yes, because the value of an affluent, quiet, low-density neighborhood is just that -- exclusivity.

Are there any instances of this happening, ever?

> Yes, the existence of less expensive high-density housing in a neighborhood puts downward pressure on the price of single-family homes.

That's false. If land can be redeveloped into high density housing, developers will pay top dollar for it. An 80-story tower going up next to your bungalow may seem annoying to you, but some developer is going to pay you a mountain of money for that bungalow - way more than you could get for it from a regular purchaser - knock it down, and build their own 90-story tower.

Interestingly, metro areas with high to very high density, like Seattle or Austin or New York, are pretty popular recently, in many regards because of the density and walkability.

But likely they attract a different kind of people than those who want quiet and picturesque low-density suburbia.

Yeah, I don't think you're going to find a lot of people who are considering both options.

FWIW, I have three kids and we very much appreciate having a detached house and large yard.

I'm glad you enjoy your detached house and large yard. I truly do.

So long as you don't try to use zoning laws to make that the only game in town, I think we'll get along quite well.

The zoning laws are not there because people need to be forced into detached single family homes. On the contrary, I think you would be hard pressed to find many families with 2+ children who don't want to live in detached single family homes.

Zoning laws exist because people don't just live in houses, they also live in neighborhoods. And when they buy into a neighborhood, they want the neighborhood to generally maintain it's character (since that's part of what attracted them to the neighborhood in the first place). In fact, neighborhood character is so valuable to many people that they will opt into restrictions (CC&Rs) above and beyond what is required by law in order to achieve an even more uniform character in their neighborhood.

I tend to have a more libertarian bent, personally, when it comes to people building what they want on their land, but zoning laws are not about oppression of private property owners. You see them as a bug, but many people see them as a feature.

> If people truly wanted this, we wouldn't need a large zoning law apparatus to legally enforce it, now would we?

No. You are confusing residents with all people. Left to their own economic devices, a company will get what it wants before a person in most cases. How many companies want large, detached houses? If they truly did then yes, we wouldn't need zoning laws.

Also, with no zoning at all, you can end up with all kinds of scenarios like your neighbor selling to someone who wants to open a nightclub or something, even if nobody else in the neighborhood would want that.

Are you referring to housing demand in and around high population areas? Well, I'm not making a claim people don't want to live close to these areas, but as someone who isn't buying a million dollar house, I don't even consider it as an option.

It's all over. Memphis to Miami, New York to Nevada, San Francisco to Syracuse.

The historical ratio of house price to income that was considered affordable was about 2.6. If you earn $100k, you should spend $260k at most on your house under this rule.

Nowadays very few metros have median house prices at a level where the median household income would qualify, using that 2.6 ratio. Almost all of the cities with cost levels at that ratio or better are Rust Belt cities, and even many of them are right at the threshold.

Check out the full list: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/where-the-house-price...

Obviously interest rates, tax policy, etc. can change the monthly expense equation, so what may have been too expensive in the past might be more affordable now with lower interest rates.

However, even with a reduced cost to finance, there are still hefty down payments that need to be saved up for which are cost prohibitive. And higher property values need to pay higher property taxes. Maybe even "mansion" taxes in a few places.

That doesn't make a lot of sense. If everyone hated the laws so much they could presumably advocate against them

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