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0 pointsJackYoustra1y ago0 comments

Japan does this just fine: they have standardized zoning across all municipalities, decided at the national level.

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bumby1y ago· 2 in thread

What percent of Japanese household net worth is in their primary residence and how much has this been impacted by their largely stagnant stock market for the last 40 years?

I'm skeptical that national zoning is feasible if for no other reason than the diversity of land and land uses.

JackYoustraOP1y ago

Are you arguing for affordability? You can't have both affordability and high price (= huge % of net worth).

It's a very bad thing for people to invest in a fundamentally depreciating asset and expect a return, there's literally no other way to get a return then besides inflation.

And sure, returns have been low, but that's because the real interest rate in Japan for the last 30 years has been negative! You can't get a return if the fundamental balance of loanable funds leads to a negative real interest rate, you need stimulus instead, which they've been trying for over thirty years! And shocker, now that we're seeing Japanese interest rates rise, Japanese stocks are shooting up!

bumby1y ago

I'm trying to get clarity on this statement:

>Japan does this just fine

You seem to be implying Japan's scenario adequately mirrors the U.S. In other words, they have a high proportion of their net worth tied up in real estate, which is what I am pointing to as a driver of NIMBY-ism. If that analogy doesn't hold, then I would argue it's not an apt analogy and probably doesn't offer much in terms of policy insight.

Also, in the US, I don't think you can argue that real estate in general is a "fundamentally depreciating" asset. I don't think the recent history is illustrative, but over the long term real estate tends to be positive.

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