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0 pointscsallen2y ago0 comments

I copy-pasted this comment to my friend, who's the chief economist at a major real estate company you've heard of. Here's their response, verbatim:

> "Bullshit. It's not population that matters it's household formation. Millennials are the biggest generation and they are at the age now where they are forming their own households and there isn't any housing for them near jobs. Vacancies are all in dying rust belt towns no one wants to live in. California absolutely does not have a vacancy problem. That's just a lie."

This aligns with my (admittedly less-informed) knowledge as well.

Your assertion that "every city" has a vacancy problem is particularly mystifying to me. I live in Seattle, and there does not seem to be a residential vacancy problem of any kind. Some quick Googling shows "a homeowner vacancy rate of 1.0% and a rental vacancy rate of 2.5%." That does not sound like a vacancy problem to me. Quite the opposite. Very, very, very few homes are available for sale, even as the city's population explodes.

I also did a quick and unbiased Google search of "population growth vs housing supply." Here's what came up immediately: "In 2023, the U.S. saw 1.67 million household formations, resulting in 17.2 million household formations between 2012 and 2023. In this time period, 14.7 million housing units were started, and 13.4 million were completed." So again, household formation is outpacing housing supply, which results in more competition and thus higher prices.

Both your comment and the links you included (which I perused) seem less like they're concerned with fixing housing affordability, and more like they have an axe to grind against landlords and the wealthy in general.

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whoknowsidont2y ago· 2 in thread

>Bullshit

Let's see the data then. Other than some "trust me bro" comment. Not sure why you expect me to engage with vague assertions of authority, especially when "he" started out emotionally unstable.

EDIT:

You heavily edited your comment. The stats you are referencing do not say what you think they say, they are not a force for increasing prices. There are already houses that were previously built, they do exist.

Not sure why you would pretend otherwise?

Look at vacancy vs availability rates.

Additionally, you seem to want to ascribe motivations instead of addressing the fact that collusion is most assuredly happening in every major city in America: https://www.vice.com/en/article/ak3vek/landlord-software-is-...

Stick with the facts, not emotional fallacies.

csallenOP2y ago

> Let's see the data then.

You made the vague assertion that "[e]very single city and state in the U.S. has a vacancy problem." You provided zero data to support that statement, or anything remotely close to that statement. I quoted data in my comment that directly refutes that, by showing very low vacancy rates in Seattle.

So you are the one who needs to provide data, otherwise you're spreading misinformation and not helping the problem.

whoknowsidont2y ago

I see you are choosing to be dishonest. You heavily edited your comment. It grew in size by ~85%.

And again, you quoted data but it is not asserting what you think it is. Look at what the data is telling you. It is a delta over a specific time period. It is not making the assertion you think it is.

>So you are the one who needs to provide data.

I provided 3 different links that go over this in pretty good detail.

Respectfully you've demonstrated you are not going to approach this in a constructive manner or in good-faith, so I won't be engaging with you past this comment.

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