Comment by waldohatesyou | Hacker News Reader

Comment by waldohatesyou | Hacker News Reader

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I don’t agree with this take, we’re overly simplifying the nature of housing here. It depends on the housing mix as well. If the vast majority of the pro-housing prices crowd is heavily invested in single family residential then they should favour widespread upzoning and deregulation of apartments because that would increase the value of their SFHs through two mechanisms: 1) presumably single family homes will be destroyed so any remaining single family homes become more valuable and 2) every single family home is now a potential townhouse or high density building which increases the value a developer would pay for it.

Are there any serious objections to that line of reasoning?

No, what you said is mostly correct; but I'm mostly talking about not having home prices go down, which is different but related.

There are different kinds of homeowners. There are those who are flipping houses and directly betting that the values go up, which is the crowd that you're describing. But at least in my area of the world, the majority of the anti-housing crowd is just old and is more anti-change than anything else. Even if the value of their home skyrockets even more, they won't sell and move. Their complaints are more about noise, traffic, and "quality of life" than home values.

I think the value of their main residence is a bigger driver than opportunities through zoning changes. It's easier to sit in your house year after year as it increases in value than it is to go through a redevelopment process, and have to move or end up with a less impressive residence. I'd guess that many would look for opportunities in denser suburbs elsewhere than agitate to change zoning closer to home.

There are strong factors around character of a neighbourhood: I think people in valuable SFHs tend to resent people in units as one example. Housing prices have typically risen without the assistance of zoning changes.

But assuming that the upzoning and deregulation doesn't happen, isn't their calculation correct?

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