Could you denote the source of the quotes going forward? It’s hard to tell what they are and whether they are in fact conversations with each other. They were linked to tweets here, other times they appeared to imply a podcast or something?
Not trying to be rude or annoying, just a legitimate point of confusion from a relatively newer reader I guess (since earlier this year).
the most important factor in housing, and wealth building for the middle class, is PERMIT REFORM.
1. make permits automatic upon filing
2. make inspections via video call when required
3. drop fees to zero or near zero
We need to Make America Function Again. It takes too many years to do ANYTHING and it's so wrong. It's like a taking of our wealth.
I live in an area decimated by hurricanes in 2024, and almost a year later, almost nothing is rebuilt. The city posts Stop Notices to anyone doing anything. It's so totally wrong and unfair.
This is THE issue of the next few years. Who's in favor of permit reform?
I've seen a lot of worries about the effects of the BBB removing tax incentives to build green energy. I wonder how much of that blue states could counteract for free just by removing permitting costs.
I'm not sure in what world having to bribe the mayor to get something built is better than a world where you have to follow written requirements (even these bad ones). Not perfect but the hysteria is over the top
You don't "have to bribe the mayor". He once accepted airline tickets to give an embassy a variance (which it was reasonable to give them anyway but which the city wasn't going to). It's the most weaksauce scandal imaginable.
Adams has mostly been an okay mayor, especially compared to the cities that have elected socialist mayors like Chicago.
Interesting because the article you are replying to is complaining (rightly so) about how terrible it is to build in New York but is entirely silent on who the current mayor is. Notable!
Eric Adams is facing five separate criminal counts, including "conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery, and to receive campaign contributions by foreign nationals", wire fraud, two counts of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national and bribery.
And that's not counting all the people around him in his administration or the myriad of other corruption investigations related to Adams. But sure pretend it was just one thing.
No I was making a general point that exclusionary zoning is used by corrupt politicians as a way to extract money and leverage power. So it isn't surprising that a cop mayor used his power that way.
Its just words for now but this excerpt from the Derek Thompson interview gives me great hope for Zohran:
Mamdani: I think one of the most important things is that we actually set a goal for what each unit should cost and work backwards from that, as opposed to ending up with a figure after having made all of the different criteria that we would like to fulfill. If we cannot construct it at cost that is scalable, that is the greatest failure.
From a Marxist perspective, one can see these rent-stabilization cases as an earlier phase of class struggle, between the bourgeoisie (Manhattan real estate investors) and the nobility (people with special status tied to where they live that has been passed down through bloodlines for 4 generations). The thing for a good Marxist to do would be to support the class whose material interests will accelerate the dialectical process of history.
> Overall, though, it’s hard not to be hopeful right now. Even when we see bad policies, they are couched increasingly in the rhetoric of good goals and policies. In the long term, that leads to wins.
That wins an entry in my quotes.txt file.
Too many people focus on narrow policy without paying attention to the surrounding cultural/social justifications.
Or the slew of businesses that private equity has stripped and broken on their way to damaging the economy as a whole and doing things that harm patients in private equity owned hospitals.
I’m really suspicious of the housing affordability by county map
Because of the much larger counties in the west - it looks to me like larger counties have higher unaffordability
I can easily imagine that the tiny counties in the east might be such outliers that if you drew the counties bigger there then they would drag up the averages and make the east look like the West
I don't think we can have an intelligent conversation about NYC broker fees without understanding why there are brokers involved at all. I have rented in four different cities in my life, not counting college dorms. NYC is the only one where there were agents of any kind involved. I've never even heard of a second city where there are agents involved in a rental process. It is usually a direct transaction between landlord and tenant, without a middle man. What are the economic or cultural forces driving the involvement of middle men in the NYC rental market? I don't feel like I have a good grasp of this, but this I think is the fundamental question, and we can't address the rules around the fess for the middle men at all without understanding their unique role in this particular rental market.
I think it’s kind of like real estate agents. You don’t need to hire them, but a lot of people do because it’s a huge transaction and they want it done right and in many cases they are physically absent from the property.
Apartments in expensive cities are expensive enough that the broker is essentially like a cheaper real estate agent.
I'm usually skeptical of government interventions in markets, but it does seem like the rental broker market is pretty broken. The amount of work a listing agent is doing is no where close to being worth 15% of the annual rent. New York's 15% broker fee is high even compared to other expensive cities. In SF and Boston, I've never been asked for more than 1 months rent (8%) and often would see apartments listed with "half fee" (i.e. half of one months rent = ~4%).
Wait, we have phone booths in SF? I can't remember the last time I saw one of those...or even public phones in general, working or not.
Things are definitely better on net than during covid, although some of that is basically a distribution effect...shoving some of the "disorder" away from downtown. Win for #equity! Joking aside, it's still an improvement, since concentrated hellholes produce far worse outcomes than a bit of chaos shared among formerly-quiescent neighborhoods. (The effects on tourism and investment are particularly important - tax revenues are good for every district, but not every district contributes equally...) It does suck on a personal level, though, since I didn't used to have to worry about any of that grittiness outside downtown until 2020, and it's a big part of the reason I've stuck around in my shitty code-violating apartment for so long. But if there'd been multiple homeless RVs hanging around here when I was initially deciding to move...eh.
I wish people would stop bitching about "luxury" housing near transit stops. That's exactly where you want it most! Not just for the reasons you state, but because un-stratifying mass transit makes it a lot more appealing to everyone. Doesn't even require too many wealthies actually riding the bus, just living nearby is helpful. A transit stop that sees no use because people are too afraid to congregate there is pointless. Same for stops stripped of amenities like seats, trashcans, heat lamps, and windbreaks due to misuse.
I seem to recall one of Scott's linkposts having a Big If True that the general community consensus on Ban The Box Backfiring...isn't true? didn't replicate? Something to that effect, and calling on us to update accordingly, while remaining confused why this obvious incentives result didn't hold. Never came up again for discussion and everyone's gone back to making the same old assumption, so I notice that I remain confused as to the actual empirical state here. Especially for higher stakes like landlording...it's one thing when it's just the company's money on the line, quite another when it's your home!
> Cremieux: It's almost unbelievable that California requires you to file for permits galore to rebuild the exact same home that was there before on a burned down plot.
"Cremieux"? This is the gutter racist who just got an anonymous quote smuggled into the NYT, right? The guy whose primary thing is convincing people to believe discredited scientific racism? Why are you quoting him?
Instead of Housing Roundup #12, you should call it “Why Democracy Doesn’t Work #12”
It’s insane that we allow people to vote to change the rules on what you can do with your own property, down to the nitty gritty of how many stairways, what kind of sinks and appliances, etc. You're telling me that economically illiterate people are making rules and voting about an admittedly quite economically-complex problem like urban housing supply? I doubt the average voter can do basic math in many of these metro areas.
And we wonder why everything is so screwed up when the government can legislate what ply of TP I can wipe my *** with?
Could you denote the source of the quotes going forward? It’s hard to tell what they are and whether they are in fact conversations with each other. They were linked to tweets here, other times they appeared to imply a podcast or something?
Not trying to be rude or annoying, just a legitimate point of confusion from a relatively newer reader I guess (since earlier this year).
the most important factor in housing, and wealth building for the middle class, is PERMIT REFORM.
1. make permits automatic upon filing
2. make inspections via video call when required
3. drop fees to zero or near zero
We need to Make America Function Again. It takes too many years to do ANYTHING and it's so wrong. It's like a taking of our wealth.
I live in an area decimated by hurricanes in 2024, and almost a year later, almost nothing is rebuilt. The city posts Stop Notices to anyone doing anything. It's so totally wrong and unfair.
This is THE issue of the next few years. Who's in favor of permit reform?
I've seen a lot of worries about the effects of the BBB removing tax incentives to build green energy. I wonder how much of that blue states could counteract for free just by removing permitting costs.
A tacit endorsement of Adams/Cuomo shows either bad judgment or bad morality. I'm hoping it's just the former
I'm not sure in what world having to bribe the mayor to get something built is better than a world where you have to follow written requirements (even these bad ones). Not perfect but the hysteria is over the top
You don't "have to bribe the mayor". He once accepted airline tickets to give an embassy a variance (which it was reasonable to give them anyway but which the city wasn't going to). It's the most weaksauce scandal imaginable.
Adams has mostly been an okay mayor, especially compared to the cities that have elected socialist mayors like Chicago.
Interesting because the article you are replying to is complaining (rightly so) about how terrible it is to build in New York but is entirely silent on who the current mayor is. Notable!
Also had no idea about the embassy thing but lol not surprised a crooked cop is crooked
So wait, you didn't even know about his one corruption charge, you just completely made up your reasons to be against him?
He wasn't only up on one corruption charge.
Eric Adams is facing five separate criminal counts, including "conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery, and to receive campaign contributions by foreign nationals", wire fraud, two counts of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national and bribery.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly3gz35dgro
And that's not counting all the people around him in his administration or the myriad of other corruption investigations related to Adams. But sure pretend it was just one thing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigations_into_the_Eric_Adams_administration
No I was making a general point that exclusionary zoning is used by corrupt politicians as a way to extract money and leverage power. So it isn't surprising that a cop mayor used his power that way.
Podcast episode for this post:
https://open.substack.com/pub/dwatvpodcast/p/housing-roundup-12?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Its just words for now but this excerpt from the Derek Thompson interview gives me great hope for Zohran:
Mamdani: I think one of the most important things is that we actually set a goal for what each unit should cost and work backwards from that, as opposed to ending up with a figure after having made all of the different criteria that we would like to fulfill. If we cannot construct it at cost that is scalable, that is the greatest failure.
From a Marxist perspective, one can see these rent-stabilization cases as an earlier phase of class struggle, between the bourgeoisie (Manhattan real estate investors) and the nobility (people with special status tied to where they live that has been passed down through bloodlines for 4 generations). The thing for a good Marxist to do would be to support the class whose material interests will accelerate the dialectical process of history.
> Overall, though, it’s hard not to be hopeful right now. Even when we see bad policies, they are couched increasingly in the rhetoric of good goals and policies. In the long term, that leads to wins.
That wins an entry in my quotes.txt file.
Too many people focus on narrow policy without paying attention to the surrounding cultural/social justifications.
That "David Mamandi" bit under Abundance Debate is confusing.
"David Mamandi: According to Mamadani, ...
...Mamendani: That means ... "
I thought the politician's name was Mamdani? And the linked tweet is from someone called David Bernstein?
> Why is it that the term ‘private equity’ makes people lose their minds?
It's just a reasoning bug:
Public : good
Private : bad
Equity : good
Private Equity : bad
Or the slew of businesses that private equity has stripped and broken on their way to damaging the economy as a whole and doing things that harm patients in private equity owned hospitals.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/private-equity-publicly-traded-companies/675788/
https://hms.harvard.edu/news/what-happens-when-private-equity-takes-over-hospital
I’m really suspicious of the housing affordability by county map
Because of the much larger counties in the west - it looks to me like larger counties have higher unaffordability
I can easily imagine that the tiny counties in the east might be such outliers that if you drew the counties bigger there then they would drag up the averages and make the east look like the West
Remember it is housing costs as a percentage of median income. I suspect the income is the major factor in the expensive large western counties.
I don't think we can have an intelligent conversation about NYC broker fees without understanding why there are brokers involved at all. I have rented in four different cities in my life, not counting college dorms. NYC is the only one where there were agents of any kind involved. I've never even heard of a second city where there are agents involved in a rental process. It is usually a direct transaction between landlord and tenant, without a middle man. What are the economic or cultural forces driving the involvement of middle men in the NYC rental market? I don't feel like I have a good grasp of this, but this I think is the fundamental question, and we can't address the rules around the fess for the middle men at all without understanding their unique role in this particular rental market.
There are brokers in Boston and the greater Boston area as well. Also would love information about how the situation came to be.
it's not common but i encountered agents for rentals in the SF bay area as well
I think it’s kind of like real estate agents. You don’t need to hire them, but a lot of people do because it’s a huge transaction and they want it done right and in many cases they are physically absent from the property.
Apartments in expensive cities are expensive enough that the broker is essentially like a cheaper real estate agent.
I'm usually skeptical of government interventions in markets, but it does seem like the rental broker market is pretty broken. The amount of work a listing agent is doing is no where close to being worth 15% of the annual rent. New York's 15% broker fee is high even compared to other expensive cities. In SF and Boston, I've never been asked for more than 1 months rent (8%) and often would see apartments listed with "half fee" (i.e. half of one months rent = ~4%).
Wait, we have phone booths in SF? I can't remember the last time I saw one of those...or even public phones in general, working or not.
Things are definitely better on net than during covid, although some of that is basically a distribution effect...shoving some of the "disorder" away from downtown. Win for #equity! Joking aside, it's still an improvement, since concentrated hellholes produce far worse outcomes than a bit of chaos shared among formerly-quiescent neighborhoods. (The effects on tourism and investment are particularly important - tax revenues are good for every district, but not every district contributes equally...) It does suck on a personal level, though, since I didn't used to have to worry about any of that grittiness outside downtown until 2020, and it's a big part of the reason I've stuck around in my shitty code-violating apartment for so long. But if there'd been multiple homeless RVs hanging around here when I was initially deciding to move...eh.
I wish people would stop bitching about "luxury" housing near transit stops. That's exactly where you want it most! Not just for the reasons you state, but because un-stratifying mass transit makes it a lot more appealing to everyone. Doesn't even require too many wealthies actually riding the bus, just living nearby is helpful. A transit stop that sees no use because people are too afraid to congregate there is pointless. Same for stops stripped of amenities like seats, trashcans, heat lamps, and windbreaks due to misuse.
I seem to recall one of Scott's linkposts having a Big If True that the general community consensus on Ban The Box Backfiring...isn't true? didn't replicate? Something to that effect, and calling on us to update accordingly, while remaining confused why this obvious incentives result didn't hold. Never came up again for discussion and everyone's gone back to making the same old assumption, so I notice that I remain confused as to the actual empirical state here. Especially for higher stakes like landlording...it's one thing when it's just the company's money on the line, quite another when it's your home!
> with the average rental in the Big Apple jumping from $4,750 to $5,500
> also requires that all fees a tenant owes be included in rental agreements and real estate listings
How much of this is just a measurement effect? i.e. maybe the 4750 doesn't include "hidden fees" and the 5500 does?
Edit: wtf the "average" rental is about 5k usd per month, what is wrong with you people.
> wtf the "average" rental is about 5k usd per month, what is wrong with you people.
This is the average "market" rental, but AFAIR only the minority of NYC renters pay the "market" rent.
> Cremieux: It's almost unbelievable that California requires you to file for permits galore to rebuild the exact same home that was there before on a burned down plot.
"Cremieux"? This is the gutter racist who just got an anonymous quote smuggled into the NYT, right? The guy whose primary thing is convincing people to believe discredited scientific racism? Why are you quoting him?
Instead of Housing Roundup #12, you should call it “Why Democracy Doesn’t Work #12”
It’s insane that we allow people to vote to change the rules on what you can do with your own property, down to the nitty gritty of how many stairways, what kind of sinks and appliances, etc. You're telling me that economically illiterate people are making rules and voting about an admittedly quite economically-complex problem like urban housing supply? I doubt the average voter can do basic math in many of these metro areas.
And we wonder why everything is so screwed up when the government can legislate what ply of TP I can wipe my *** with?