Great news for the workers in Asheville. They were getting priced out 10 to 15 years ago. Hope those working in downtown can actually afford to live there now.
Rents are still pretty high there, the article cites a few measures and for the most part a one bedroom is ~$1,500 or more, which is not great for a town that really doesn't have much industry outside of tourism and art for the wealthy retirees to buy.
In aggregate it looks like rents in Asheville are down maybe ~5% depending on which measure you're using, definitely a good thing, however nationwide rents are just barely up on average which means rents are down in a number of places. With the labor market flattening it's to be expected that you see softening here as well, the author really doesn't do much to establish causality.
Of course, you've got to wade through the author vomiting out the most low effort conservative propaganda possible to get to these figures. You can tell nobody reads these articles, this thing is gonna hit the front page and is full of "leftists this" and "democrats that" jabs that you'd only expect on the lowest common denominator of right wing "news" sites...
I work downtown and live 30 minutes outside of avl, It's still pretty expensive to live in the city and I don't want to be house poor so I make the commute. My girlfriend and I have a great spot though
Submission statement: Asheville, North Carolina, is experiencing a housing surplus, leading to landlords offering incentives and price cuts to attract tenants. This shift in power dynamics, favoring renters, is a direct result of increased housing supply, not policy interventions like rent caps. Asheville’s experience, similar to Austin, Texas, demonstrates the effectiveness of building more housing units to address affordability issues.
The companies who build housing aren’t going to keep doing so if they can’t rent them out. That’s an oversimplification of the all the parties involved, but it’s essentially that. Supply and demand is a thing.
The price per unit is going down a little, but not as much as your exaggerated hypothetical example. They can make more money on increased volume even if the price per unit goes down.
Were talking housing not Twinkies on a production line, costs are by and large (materials,labor) similar nationwide. So you can pretty much make more money by focusing on locations that enable better rent pricing.
Which supply costs are fixed? If builders slow down or stop building, won’t the suppliers of supplies be incentivized to lower their prices to attract builder customers?
Lumber, appliances, concrete, structural hardware, etc are all fixed. These costs are also all rising rapidly due to fuel increases from idiotic wars, and new homes are incredibly difficult to construct in an affordable manner unless you're making a huge complex and have scale on your side.
If no one is buying your lumber, or whatever product you’re selling, because it doesn’t make sense financially to purchase it at the price you’re charging, unless you plan to stop selling lumber, you will have to drop your price. That doesn’t sound like it’s truly fixed.
It’s interesting how you say these items have fixed costs, but then also say the costs are rapidly rising.
Not necessarily, there's a functional limit to the volume discount even a large commercial builder can obtain.
As building continues the land will go up in price due to demand and dwindling supply which means your starting cost of construction will go up. Your labor will inevitably go up because again the high demand to construct vs the dwindling supply of labor to construct.
So, the marginal profit between renting out 2,200 vs 2,500 can effectively be negligible as other factors impact your costs.
Because the property where the expected rental income is $1500 a unit is also more expensive for you to buy. Because you might want to operate in a market where you live, or near a market you live. Because there are probably regulatory limits on how much new housing you can build in the expensive market, which is one reason it’s expensive.
The better question is why is there places where rent is 1500 and not getting more density? It’s because the US system blocks housing, mainly through zoning and NIMBYs, and the problem can be solved be kneecapping NIMBYs and reforming zoning. Letting local city councils have final approval on housing was a mistake. They should have a process that’s not onerous and that’s it
Because land is expensive to acquire, materials are very expensive, and labor is expensive and in low supply?
We can't just make the zoning argument & NIMBY argument in a place like NYC, LA, or Chicago...those cities have high costs because they have extremely high demand and the base level costs of construction are too high.
Housing is systematically blocked in all those places, even Chicago. I mean LA has an entire rail transit line in West Hollywood surrounded by literal single family homes. Housing is only just now getting built there because the state passed a law that says you can’t block housing near transit.
Chicago builds the most and guess what? It’s relatively the cheapest of the three. NIMBYs are not as powerful there.
New York builds but not nearly enough as evidenced by rent, and yes there are a lot of NIMBYs.
It’s expensive to build but housing has been blocked for decades and money was cheap for a long time, yet nothing got built. It really is local control issues - high construction costs are partially because of the high rent. In fact most everything about high cost of living places can be traced back to the cost of housing. The zoning (and local control by NIMBYs) is a huge part of this problem
Chicago does not build the most lol it's cheaper because of population loss and lower salaries. High property taxes reduce land value a lot and maybe help with rent. But NIMBYs having less power is hilariously out of touch.
Chicago has the most supply relative to population. So yes it’s built the most in that sense. NIMBYs block supply - less supply means less housing. That’s the top issue is supply, so tell me why has supply been so constrained?
Every single one of your replies seems to place fault on NIMBYs. I looked it up. I guess I am also to blame. Do i want certain developments in my back yard? Definitely not. I have invested my money in my housing and would adamantly protect against that which would devalue it.
You must absolutely expect the same from any real investor who might consider an apartment complex in a location also. Without protectionism at the levels you criticize, there would be 0 new construction. No one is going to drop a sum of money creating a 100 unit complex if the city the next day can deploy hud housing and a mini-mall of payday loaners and vape shops next door.
If a 100 unit residential complex went up in your backyard, your home would increase in value. That would bring demand. The land would appreciate - there’s now a single home on a plot that could be more than one home, so there’s more demand for the land. So I’d think you’d support increased density around you, if money was your main focus
Why rent 10 units for $1000 when you can rent 8 units for $1500, that’s $2000 more per month. Scale doesn’t always win, especially in a very unequal economy.
Because the economy is so unequal right now that you won't get that ratio. The number of people who can afford 1500 is not 4/5ths of those that can afford 1000.
Maybe in a service industry/ tourist economy the difference in the rent dictates rather or not you have people to work in the service industry/ tourism support industry?
Hard to have a restaurant that is a tourist destination if people can’t afford to live near them to work in them.
Can you build where it’s $1500 though? Often the reason it’s more expensive is because there’s barriers, legal or economic, which stop more housing from being built.
A surplus means there are more spaces than tenants. The very definition of a surplus means that there will be units that sit empty because there aren’t enough renters.
Only if the prices remain high enough to not attract renters! You can rent every unit at a specific price point it'll just lose money than gain it. At least a person gets a cheap place to live rather than a business gets profit.
Surplus housing creates an unsustainable market. Cities need property tax revenue to pay for the water treatment to those units, roads, pipes, electrical, etc. and if landlords can't cover taxes, the city pocket book becomes strained. It then becomes a tax payer issue and it's one that many people don't see coming. If there's a surplus of housing now, it could take years to fill units. A multi-year gap in tax revenue is an issue. Property can become blight when unfilled, lowering property value further. It's a slippery slope. All I've learned through this housing crisis is the average citizen doesn't know enough about housing and blindly supports things. Missouri removed all sustainability going back to 2009 standards via developers lobbying saying it'll create cheaper housing. What it did was increase profit margins and make sustainable stormwater and wetland protection illegal. But voters believed it would help housing costs, so their representatives supported it. There's a lot of nuance and it goes to show why regulation is critical, because the free market is pretty poor at regulating itself in a healthy, sustainable, and fair way.
I don’t know. In my mind if a landlord has to rent at price where they would lose money. Then, there is no longer an incentive to rent it out meaning there is a floor for pricing. Which means if there are no renters at that floor units will sit empty.
What’s happening in Asheville is nowhere close to “Landlords losing money” and is essentially “incumbent landlords making slightly lower margins than they were accustomed to and complaining about it”
Meanwhile, occupancy is still above 94% meaning it’s not hard to find tenants.
Also the floor you’re describing for incumbent landlords is Rent = Cost to Maintain and Administer an apartment, which is way way way lower than the floor for new construction (Rent = Cost to build the marginal unit, plus maintain and administer).
You would see a slowdown in construction well before you’d see landlords losing money from renting.
It's a way to gain an asset that is long term inflation resistant with minimal negative cash flow impact out of pocket.
In a lot of places around the world people take the loss knowing they will end up with the asset in the end, having paid a fraction of its value out of pocket due to rent partially compensating for it. Granted, from what I've come to understand this was probably rare in the US but it used to be much more common here in Europe over decades until this post-covid madness made the housing market into what it is today.
It sounds like policies that would lead to people not building units. The article even states that the current surplus of units is in part due to very lax regulations
There is no reason to do anything with out a profit. That profit might not be money but it could be food for their family, or clothes or some other things. If you want to build housing at a loss do it. Start a company. See how far you get with employees and materials if you can’t make some form of profit. If you expect government subsidies then try to convince people that government spending and the subsequent inflation is good.
Not really, most businesses stay where their owners live. If you've created a small construction business, say, in NC, you're not moving yourself and all your employees to another state. You could move, but everybody ain't coming with you.
big players don't play like that. they just go wherever the business is best and hire the cheapest sub contractors. local builders that's a different story.
they are the big gold digging parasites because they have very strong lobbyists and can build for the cheapest. there's a reason they are big and popular. they suck most of the time just because the subcontractors they hire or bottom barrel but it is what it is you can't really just get rid of a company because you don't like it.
Okay and Walmart CAN sell everything for $0.01, their business is selling goods.
It's just enormously stupid and financially ludicrous to sell things below cost on a large scale without some other form of bringing in revenue or cash.
It's stupid and ludicrous people are homeless or cost burdened just having to pay to live to support a legal fiction's ability to make money. You've got reality backwards, if the economics don't work for the majority, NOT a minority of businesses, then we need to break or change the economic systems we use to make things. People first, then business profit.
>It's stupid and ludicrous people are homeless or cost burdened just having to pay to live to support a legal fiction's ability to make money.
I mean not really, things costs money.
Do you not think the electrician should get paid for wiring the apartment complex? What about the plumber? Should the SheetRock factory worker or the delivery guy not get paid?
>You've got reality backwards, if the economics don't work for the majority,
No, you don't understand reality because you seem to think functional costs to construct and operate are made-up.
>we need to break or change the economic systems
You don't even understand how and economic system works now let alone how to break one & create a new one. Lol
>People first, then business profit.
Cool, but here's the thing big guy - you can't force these businesses to build here or operate here. If being here means they're going to take a loss then they're just not going to be there. This isn't an issue of excessive profit or gouging it's just a basic fact of existence - if there's no chance of ROI then why expend the energy?
Want proof of that fundamental truth? Ask yourself why a full-grown lion ignores a mouse and instead chases an Antelope.
Sometimes they literally can't lower rates. Financing an apartment complex is not so simple that you can just lower rent to attract more people. When you finance one, you generally have an expected income stream per unit threshold at a certain percentage of occupancy that is used to secure the loan. Dropping below that rate would mean the company is in violation of the loan covenant which would lead to a technical default even if the mortgage is paid on time.
There’s still marginal profit as long as the rent level is above the marginal cost of construction, which it still is even if incumbent landlords are complaining
You have literally zero information in which to draw that definitive conclusion that marginal profit to operate is still above marginal cost of construction. You're basing this solely on your own bias and conjecture.
Exactly the issue. It works in renters’ favor because it was a screwup. This is a developer/landlord’s worst nightmare and the last thing they’re going to intentionally try to do.
The developers and landlords are not necessarily aligned interests though. Landlords need to rent out continuously, developers just need to profit from the development process. Whether that means holding onto the land afterwards or not. Often just building and then selling after is what they do.
In fact sometimes landlords and developers interests are completely different because of the different ways they make profit. Landlords want as little construction as possible if it means high rent. But little to no construction doesn’t make a lot of money for the developers.
How about stop using housing as an investment vehicle? Who does it benefit to drive up the price of housing year after year? It degrades the quality of our life when basic necessities become speculative assets. We should actively be looking for ways to drive down the cost of housing across the board….from efficiencies in production to cutting government red tape
Land basically backs all investments of all kinds. At the root of nearly everything is someone's land deal. It is the best collateral which exists, because there isn't more of it being made.
That land is taxed by the community which grants license to people to utilize it. If they stop paying their land tax then that land no longer belongs to them. No man created the earth or the land under their feet….they do not own it….they rent that land from the rest of us. Everyone from Thomas Paine to Abraham Lincoln understood this concept. The notion that any man can ‘own’ land is absurd.
“The land, the earth God gave to man for his home... should never be the possession of any man, corporation, (or) society... any more than the air or water." - Abraham Lincoln
American minds have been poisoned and corrupted by some absolutely insane propaganda.
I don’t think I’ve seen a single serious person suggest that increasing supply by loosening regulations or mortgages and mortgage-backed securities would be a good idea. I don’t think people have forgotten 2008
That’s the problem, this situation will discourage housing construction. Best thing to do is tax home sales and rents that are above median price per square foot and then use the funds generated to subsidize construction of below median price housing. This grows supply and incentivizes landlords to lower prices.
First, why would you think readers would think it had anything to do with rent control? Second, zoning is a policy. If that policy does not discourage building or allow NIMBY obstruction, it absolutely encourages building relative to other areas.
Well, they'll probably scale-back on maintenance thus making the current tenant live in potentially bad condition. Or the owner could sell to a much larger company with huge pockets like Blackstone who can afford to let the properties sit vacant until the market rebounds their way and jack up rents when demand exceeds supply again.
You also need the government to keep the worst parts of capitalism in check, though. It's a balance. Unregulated free market capitalism can turn into some toxic shit; we've seen it before.
And too much/inappropriate regulation can mess up the mechanisms that make capitalism work in a useful way.
Rent control policies are necessary to build the political coalition to maintain zoning and permitting policies that restrict housing. If you have a city of renters (which San Francisco has been) you have a huge number of voters who'll be happy to approve a bunch of new construction whenever rents spike. Rent control brings them over to the side of the owners, so they benefit from restrictions and skyrocketing market rents. After all, would you rather have an apartment that costs you $800 in a region where the average rent is $800, or would you rather have an apartment that costs you $800 in an area where they typically go for $4000?
You are spot on that rent control policies basically transfer surplus from landlords to renters.
The shenanigans that take place as a result of this are hilarious in places like NYC and SF, where Master Tenants try to get away with renting their units on the black market (or Air BnBing them) above the rent control price (sometimes to friends or relatives).
The landlords in turn hire detectives to prove the Master Tenant is not actually living there so they can get them evicted to reset the rent at the market price with a new tenant.
Black markets flourish in presence of price controls. Nothing new there.
Surplus housing doesn’t even work in many areas. We need new housing, better city infrastructure for public transportation, and better controls on rent. This will always need to be a multi-pronged approach that endless investment will not be able to solve on its own.
It really should be. Places with stringent rent control (looking at you NYC and SF) in place for decades have very limited new construction and upgrades to existing housing stock.
This is an economics sub, so you should be well aware that the overwhelming bulk of economists agree with a statement like "rent-control policies reduce both the quantity and quality of housing in the long run".
What does work in lowering prices in the long run is having supply outstrip demand. I don't know why some folks are so insistent this basic mechanism doesn't work in the housing sector.
Oh well, I guess I can always count on government policy to subsidize demand while restricting supply, then being shocked when the price shoots through the roof.
Weird that its framed as a conservative vs. liberal article. The author seem to think that liberals are against adding housing despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. Otherwise, it just seems like an article about economics 101: increase supply and demand falls, lowering prices.
The author sounds like she’s been reading some Ezra Klein. I think her point is blue cities get in their own way of meeting needs by implementing overly stringent regulations related to zoning and building. It is true to an extent. Even the best intentions sometimes cause unnecessary roadblocks.
Maybe I missed this in the article, but I’m interested in how exactly Asheville was able to achieve all this new building. What kind of incentives were extended to builders?
The article was light on those details. I agree with you questioning funding. Most building has stalled over the past few years due to high costs. In my city, it costs about $500k to build an ADU now.
They also had massive damage from the hurricane not long ago, with large parts of the city flooded and needing to be rebuilt. The article claims it's not a supply drop, but offers really nothing convincing to support that.
The author of the article seemed to miss that point. A large number of deaths in the "lower regulation NC and TX" came from river floods. 136 people died in the July 2025 central TX flooding. Then the 2024 Hurricane Helene where 108 people died in NC. Were not talking about beach ocean surge flooding. We are talking about inland easy to predict flooding.
She apparently hasn't heard of Minneapolis and our approach to getting shit built. The city changed regulations quite a few years ago to make it easier to get multi family housing built. The results can be seen over the city. It's been a crazy boom. We're deep blue.
And St. Paul did the opposite and is having a housing crunch. The point is that places like Minneapolis and Austin are the exception rather than the rule; a lot of blue cities make it too difficult to build and instead try solutions that have been repeatedly proven not to work.
LA has some of the most strict regulations in the country and they still build massive apartments right next to freeways. I'd rather live next to the slaughterhouse, quite frankly. It's much better for my health.
I suspect you're not engaging in good faith, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
Generally when I am trying to understand a given topic, if someone says something unfamiliar to me or that I am skeptical of, then I will make an effort to plop it into a search engine and see if there is any validity to or additional information about their claim. If I am unable to find anything, THEN I will say," I haven't read anything like this; do you have a source I can read?"
I've learned a lot of stuff this way and have corrected my own positions on many topics by actively learning about things and avoiding being defensive. The reasons I made such broad claims is because I've actually done the reading and looked at the data; the same data that is available to you.
Perhaps you should ask yourself why it is that you're skeptical of a well-documented and easy to search claim and whether or not that approach is "weird":
This isn't the only research into this topic, btw; it's just one of the most thorough and succinct and delves into all of the issues.
>Houston has loose regulations but my God. Who wants to live in a brand new apartment next to the slaughterhouse.
Well if the price is right, then they might? That's kind of the whole point of free market mechanics in housing. If you don't want to live by a slaughterhouse, then that's totally fine, but do you support a system that prevents other people from doing it because you wouldn't want to?
Even if that's her point about blue cities, it's still not a very good one considering her example is Asheville, which is arguably the most liberal city in North Carolina.
I didn't mean that I thought that was the point of the article. I just think she was making a point about regulations and how many blue cities are criticized for having too many regulations when it comes to building. Asheville most definitely is blue and I'd have been more interested to read about how they accomplished all this additional building.
Thought provoking with some good ideas although I don't always agree with Klein. Abundance is a good read for people who are as interested in solutions, as they are with how we got here.
Liberals are against adding housing supply if it “ruins the character of the neighborhood” or if it’s branded as gentrification. Really common in my city.
For most Americans (Red, Blue, or Purple), the purchase of a home is the largest investment they’ll make in their lifetime. It makes sense that they would want to protect that investment.
lol this is 100% not a liberal stance and it has nothing to do with political orientation. People often oppose construction for very non-political reasons like adding congestion to an already busy area, not wanting to hear/see construction, etc etc
Or if it threatens the watershed, stresses surrounding resources, pushes out agriculture, etc. I know its easier to just focus on the NIMBY crowd, which does get in the way of a lot of things, but you’re not actually helping if you ignore debatable reasons too.
So you think liberals want to tear down single family home neighborhoods and replace them with multifamily 'units'? Are there examples of this?
I've have yet to witness a neighborhood of single family homes be torn down and replaced with duplexes or apartments. Maybe we just have an abundance of housing supply here.
No the opposite, liberals want to prevent tearing down single family home neighborhoods to add more efficient utilization of the space in areas where it would be desperately needed.
How do you add housing to an already established farmland? Start digging, I guess? Regardless of the land's original intended use, things are bound to change eventually. Location is highly valuable, and there is a market here.
Yes, the farmland was originally someone's home, too. Whether it is farmland, single-family homes, or high-rises, when the time comes for change, it should change. There is no difference.
Specific locations have specific density requirements to balance the advantages the location offers. For instance, as a city center expands, nearby townhouses are demolished to make way for high-rises. I see no difference between farmland transforming into outer suburbs and inner suburbs transforming into high-rises.
A property tax that rises alongside property values acts as a penalty on those unwilling to relocate. Eventually, the cost of keeping the existing structure in place will outweigh the benefits.
I am explaining how the real estate market works, not what policy interventions it should use. The problem facing the vast majority of U.S. cities right now is precisely that extensive zoning laws have made the holding costs for buildings that arguably shouldn't exist in certain locations unnaturally low.
So displacing 100 farmers for 1000 homes is fine, but displacing 100 non-farmers for the same 1000 homes is suddenly unacceptable? Pick a principle and stick to it. Otherwise you’re just making up a distinction.
Not in my city. I live in Minneapolis and it's been an absolute boom after regulations were changed . And I don't believe for a minute conservatives are ok with a 20 floor apartment building going up in their back yard.
Austin, Texas, a liberal city, has added the most new rental units per capita in the country. It’s foolish to frame everything in the black-and-white political party team sport nonsense. Everyone opposes annexing their homes, land, or destroying their historic neighborhoods. Nobody should be cheering on your neighbors being priced out of their homes.
Report: Austin lands near No. 1 among fastest growing US cities https://www.mysanantonio.com/realestate/article/texas-rental-housin-market-22276552.php
Entirely predictable. Asheville is a recreational destination and rich enclave. If you have low demand and high supply prices go down. Only if the builders knew that a building war leads to total losses on their end as well.
A. The builders need landlords to stay in business, so your assertion that builders will do just fine is facetious.
B. Healthy competition is the ideal, competition simply to minimize losses is not good for community as that will lead to the units falling into disrepair and the folks living in the units suffering.
I'm not sure how you don't understand those two items, but it's clear you don't.
Supply and demand means the market price is lower - what are you saying? Builders should strategically stop building so supply is lower so rents go up so they can build more? Seriously don’t know what you’re implying here. Out with it
>Supply and demand means the market price is lower - what are you saying?
Yes, and since businesses don't just operate on a daily planning basis they'll adjust their future investments accordingly.
Meaning landlords will seek LESS building in the future meaning builders will have LESS overall business.
>Builders should strategically stop building so supply is lower so rents go up so they can build more?
If they build it, own it, and operate it - no.
But that's typically not how commercial building works, they're contracted by the project owner (landlord) and complete the project to get paid. So, if the landlords struggle they'll naturally seek to build less and thus naturally the builders will build less.
Basic cause & effect.
>Seriously don’t know what you’re implying here.
It's uh...it's pretty straightforward lol
If bakeries are struggling to sell highly sugary cakes, they'll switch to selling something different, but the bakery is also going to stop buying as much sugar.
It's called downstream effects - it's a basic concept in economics.
> B. Healthy competition is the ideal, competition simply to minimize losses is not good for community as that will lead to the units falling into disrepair and the folks living in the units suffering.
In the absense of land-value taxes, the thing that suffers first is the land value, because the rent that land can deliver on is lower. So you're not quite correct, though disrepair problems can happen. The main disrepair situations I am aware of (NYC 70's) happened due to high taxes and regulations - the land values didn't drop below their operational costs, so the landlords got eaten by operational costs and many stripped the buildings and walked away, leaving the city with worthless properties. (Population was also falling).
If the regulations and tax wedge isn't so large, it's very easy for the landlord to maintain their buildings to match their land value; medium size landlords lose out before the others because they can't scale well or cover it over with their own labor. But mostly, land values lose when you have oversupply, which means no one actually gets hurt (except people who have their wealth primarily in their RE).
If there's a LVT in place, none of this needs to happen because the LVT is consuming the lands' rents.
Stop looking at this "article" as something valid. Helene tore Asheville up, and it's now rebuilding. They weathered the storm, kind of. And when it's rebuilt (about now), they will have less demand than they did before Helene, because some businesses and several thousand people simply left.
So they could have the same number of housing units they had in 2023, and this surplus would still exist in 2026.
Because they know that you are incorrect. Eventually the building stops and prices go back up. Actually prices go back up even before that, the prime locations go up, as they build further out because they’ve attracted more residents.
The American brain is so short sighted. You just need to look at cities with longer histories to see the pattern. Eventually you end up with some urban nightmare like NYC or London.
Nobody grows old and says “I want to move to the city. All the crime, and bums and piss smelling dirty streets is really the good life.”
Also, as soon as COVID remote work hit, everyone left the cities. Many never returned.
The only reason people tolerate all that I listed is for the money. As soon as that’s taken care of, people leave. That should tell you everything you need to know.
This is absolutely false. Lots of people move to NYC when they’re old because you don’t need to drive and you can get anywhere on sidewalks, with elevators, taxis, etc. There’s also an endless variety of entertainment and activities that are all accessible. The issue is that it’s very expensive so the people who retire to NYC or SF or whatever are not numerous in the grand scale.
Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean tens of millions of other people don’t like it.
You sound like a person who has never been to the Upper East Side. Even in the 1980s there wasn’t so much in the way of bums and bad smells, and nowadays crime is essentially non-existent.
Crime rates are higher in rural areas than in Manhattan (or London).
And a lot of those people who left due to COVID moved because the city was too expensive, not because they didn’t like it.
I really don’t understand why people who enjoy living in suburbs or rural areas feel the need to pretend that only their way of life is enjoyable. City people generally don’t think that those other options are inherently bad, just that they don’t prefer them.
> Lots of people move to NYC when they’re old because you don’t need to drive and you can get anywhere on sidewalks, with elevators, taxis, etc.
No. This is completely false. Not to say that no one does this, but almost no one does this.
They don't do it because people who can't drive anymore also often have ambulatory difficulties - it's hard for them to take stairs, to walk on crowded sidewalks, to step over or avoid obstacles.
>Crime rates are higher in rural areas than in Manhattan
Depends on the rural area.
But people like you are always pretending that the choices are Manhattan or Mayberry. Most people live in suburbs and want to live in suburbs. Which also tend to have very low crime rates.
And I don't understand why people who live in cities have so little idea what it's like to live outside a city.
>in suburbs or rural areas
Suburbs are urban areas. They are where most people live. Don't lump it in with rural areas.
And NYC (and Manhattan in particular) is unique; most cities aren't like NYC. LA isn't very much like NYC at all.
Rental rates are largely coupled to employment not housing. Using Asheville as an example:
Asheville metro jobs
2022 183,900 +3.9%
2023 188,400 +2.4%
2024 187,400 −0.5%
2025 185,300 −1.1%
It's unusual for rent change to not directly track employment in a metro area, regardless of how much housing is built. "Build baby build" is just as surface of an argument as "drill baby drill", and just as disconnected.
Are we all just ignoring that this article is just taking a pretty basic thing everyone is in favor of and pretending like it's a partisan issue so they can vomit out low effort conservative slop?
> However, there is a scene playing out in Asheville, North Carolina that every Democratic mayor should watch.
Asheville, a super super blue city inside of a fairly purple state. Def the poster child of conservative policies.
>This the part that some leftists keep missing. If you treat housing as a scarce commodity, the landlord holds all the power. Deal with the absurd prices, because chances are, especially in high demand cities, someone is right behind you to offer more than asking price.
Housing is a scarce commodity, that's not a leftist or conservative stance. It's a basic fact. The solution is increasing supply, again not really a partisan stance here, but I'm sure this guy convinced plenty of dumb people it was.
>The same case continues to be made in every YIMBY’s favorite city, Austin, Texas! A city that added 120,000 units to its housing stock from 2015-2024, more than three times the growth rate in the U.S., rings similar to the story unfolding in Asheville. Both of these cities are liberal ponds in red-leaning states.
North Carolina went for Trump, but has had a blue governor and votes generally more blue than not in almost every statewide election that wasn't the presidency across the last like decade or more. They're not red leaning.
Regardless, this whole article is just gaslighting idiots in to believing that for some reason wanting to build more housing supply is an exclusively conservative policy stance lmao.
Investing in businesses instead of buying investment houses is so much better for everyone. Houses are for living in. Businesses are for making money. The primary way to make money in housing is to deny housing for everyone else
Won't more out of state folks with more money just move to Asheville? That is what I don't understand about supply/demand arguments. People will eventually move in which will increase rents again. I suspect hurricane Helene had more to do with this local drop in demand.
Is that a bad thing? I don’t think it is. More people means more tax revenue that can be used for improvements.
There is already demand from the outside that is finite in nature. People from other parts of the state will mean their origin area demand falls, which can result in others moving out of the city. And or suburbs expand. There are lots of mechanisms that work in concert.
Sorry, what? The article itself is saying that housing prices are down. That’s a core cost of living. And more rental revenue means better distributed tax burden, both cost for homeowners.
What cost is demonstrably going up? Is it more than offsetting other costs that are steadily moving down?
Trying to understand whose position you’re taking the vantage point of.
Yeah, but if you look at housing costs over the past 10 years rent has doubled. This was due to increased demand from people moving to Asheville. It's nice they are increasing units but the damage has already been done.
I mean, that’s how it works. You can’t remove demand unless you enshittify something or raise the price further. Your options are to increase supply (and slowly see prices either fall or stop growing) or throw up your hands and accept further squeezes.
I live in Chattanooga which is very similar to Asheville. We have seen lots of growth over the past two decades spurred by marketing and what used to be lower costs of living. While growth is better than decline, I've seen to many Chattanoogans priced out of their own town. There are other more sustainable ways to lower housing costs.
Like what? I’m struggling to understand your solution here. And how exactly does one get priced out of their home in this instance? By taxes? Taxes go up when prices go up. Wages should in turn go up as the local economy grows.
Higher property taxes and the inability to move from renting to owning a home. Developer friendly city councils are part of the problem. All new developments could have requirements to assure that 50% of new units meet up to 80% AMI. You could also create programs that help working families meet down payments for new home owners for existing residents. Also, outlaw large investment firms from buying up homes.
Lots of these are good things to do, though not a single one of them has to do with supply. Asheville should do BOTH.
One nit though - more housing does not increase property tax. If built in sufficient capacity, it would decrease residential property tax. Property taxes are complex. You’re not just paying city tax. Usually your county calculates tax and collects on behalf of city, state, county, school levies, etc.
I would encourage you to reach out to your county tax department if that’s a core driver. You might be surprised at the underlying reasons for it.
People have to live somewhere and there’s a demand for dense walkable areas, housing prices are already soaring everywhere and people will try to move into these areas anyway, driving up costs.
If you don’t build housing in desirable areas, then where do you expect people to move?
Those folks would just buy the housing that locals are already using instead. It's better for new housing to be built so out of staters don't displace the locals. Theres a limit to how many ppl can and want to move to Ashville or Austin, despite some ppl saying otherwise. Building more houses has kept housing costs lower, as the headline mentions.
I was scrolling to find this comment. I knew a few people that wanted to move to Asheville that won’t now after Helene. I’m sure it will level out again as people forget. Reminds me of the guy that said she travels to countries after terrorist attacks because the flights are so cheap lol.
What people don't realize is that due to the topography of Asheville a lot of these new developments are built in dangerously steep and floodprone areas. There isn't much flat land to develop in Asheville.
How much of a house's total cost is attributed to land and how much to actual construction? I am assuming the construction part - labour + materials - will have a real price limit below which it cannot fall (even with economies of scale). The land cost is something that can be altered, especially if it has been leased / bought from the government and the said government wants to increase housing supply (could be some policy-level initiative where certain pockets are sold dirt cheap to developers with a hard capping on selling costs).
Multifamily units have to make sense on a per unit cost. Most places that are built around the Southeast United States are going from 170K-185K per unit to build. That doesn't include soft costs like land acquisition, engineering and design, among other expenses. Construction costs have dramatically increased due to a number of factors. The biggest factor is material costs and materials required for code compliant buildings. Buildings are far safer today than they were at the beginning on the century.
Deals need to make sense to make the construction worth it. Amenities could go to decrease costs but they don't have that dramatic of an affect, they're actually built more as an incentive as it isn't a revenue generating part of construction.
The government should expand its housing program to handle utilities upgrades/infrastructure for developments to help reduce the costs and allow more deals to pencil. The new construction can still command its rental rates while forcing older properties to upgrade or reduce rents to attract buyers as we are seeing here
The rent has just stayed the same for a year following a devastating hurricane and drop in population.
Developers and investors aren’t going to increase supply any further, and are actively incentivized to undo this situation by taking rental homes off the market.
> Developers and investors aren’t going to increase supply any further, and are actively incentivized to undo this situation by taking rental homes off the market.
Nonsense, unless they have some direct use for it. The properties are depreciating constantly, pay property taxes, and have maintenance costs even un-rented. They are not in the business of losing money.
Generally unless the property taxes are very low this is going to be slower than the depreciation. Rent is the only thing that makes this a net positive.
> especially if they tighten up supply consistency to keep prices rising on track again.
This requires basically market collusion, which is extremely rare in the landlord business. Basically outside of the Realpage situation, there's hundreds of landlords competing in most areas.
If this really were happening, a Land Value Tax would be the answer.
The same thing is happening where I live. What they do is they'll offer a free month or two, some other temporary incentive, while not actually changing the rent. So once you move in they just raise the rent a year later and you get to gamble on whether the next apartment over is still offering incentives at that time.
These animals would rather a place sit at 50% occupancy than lower the actual rent amount by $100
Ashville fucking sucks. Might be one of the worst places I have ever visited and I live in North Carolina. literally just a bunch of yuppies pretending to be hippies some of the most bizarre people I have ever met
I’m curious to see how many landlords use algorithms to price. In my area it ended up being not much more expensive to buy a much bigger house nearby than to rent. But, I was renting from a company that used the algorithms and intentionally left units empty rather had charge less
How does an overabundance of apartments directly improve the availability and pricing of houses for first time homebuyers?
Well, if rent is low enough, over time, in theory, young people might be able to better save for ownership of a hard asset like a house. But how does it help with making more houses available or making houses more affordable?
As apartments become relatively cheaper and cheaper, more people will substitute leasing apartments for purchasing a single-family home. This puts downwards pressure on pricing for single family housing, by reducing demand.
If this is the strategy, and it seems to be… apartments are going up everywhere, how inexpensive can apartments get? Building owners can’t go any lower than maintenance, taxes and some profit for themselves. In my region I’ve seen single bedroom apartments at $3100, 2BR at $3800, 3BR at $4800 a month.
Apartments aren’t an asset, just an expense. There’s no equity built or appreciation in value. Rent has to be pretty cheap to give people wiggle room to invest in something with a return comparable to owning a home. Am I wrong in this line of thought?
If there are more houses available to buy, then there is more competition on the supply side. If you refuse to sell to me, I have an abundance of other people to buy a house from, and odds are someone else will be willing to accept a lower price. So either you sell for less, or you don’t sell at all
Tampa_Bay_Cuckaneers | 15 hours ago
Great news for the workers in Asheville. They were getting priced out 10 to 15 years ago. Hope those working in downtown can actually afford to live there now.
VegetableTour6790 | 14 hours ago
I just went and looked out the housing prices. Not so good for labor workers.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 13 hours ago
Rents are still pretty high there, the article cites a few measures and for the most part a one bedroom is ~$1,500 or more, which is not great for a town that really doesn't have much industry outside of tourism and art for the wealthy retirees to buy.
In aggregate it looks like rents in Asheville are down maybe ~5% depending on which measure you're using, definitely a good thing, however nationwide rents are just barely up on average which means rents are down in a number of places. With the labor market flattening it's to be expected that you see softening here as well, the author really doesn't do much to establish causality.
Of course, you've got to wade through the author vomiting out the most low effort conservative propaganda possible to get to these figures. You can tell nobody reads these articles, this thing is gonna hit the front page and is full of "leftists this" and "democrats that" jabs that you'd only expect on the lowest common denominator of right wing "news" sites...
toasty_tuna | 11 hours ago
I work downtown and live 30 minutes outside of avl, It's still pretty expensive to live in the city and I don't want to be house poor so I make the commute. My girlfriend and I have a great spot though
FarmAcceptable4649 | 10 hours ago
This right here, congrats!
waltdidneyworlp | 12 hours ago
Haha, silly! Excess supply doesn't mean reasonable prices when it comes to housing!
VegetableTour6790 | 12 hours ago
Apparently it doesn't. Go look at rental and housing prices and come back here to discuss.
Electrical-Drama-755 | 12 hours ago
Dang, I wish this had happened before I had to move. Couldn't afford the rent.
VegetableTour6790 | 12 hours ago
Don't worry, you still can't. This is a puff piece. Houses are nearly double other markets. And the only jobs are tourism.
Electrical-Drama-755 | 12 hours ago
RIP
[OP] UnscheduledCalendar | 16 hours ago
Submission statement: Asheville, North Carolina, is experiencing a housing surplus, leading to landlords offering incentives and price cuts to attract tenants. This shift in power dynamics, favoring renters, is a direct result of increased housing supply, not policy interventions like rent caps. Asheville’s experience, similar to Austin, Texas, demonstrates the effectiveness of building more housing units to address affordability issues.
Individual_Bear_3190 | 15 hours ago
sounds rad. Hope they keep building more housing!
mutandi | 15 hours ago
The companies who build housing aren’t going to keep doing so if they can’t rent them out. That’s an oversimplification of the all the parties involved, but it’s essentially that. Supply and demand is a thing.
Unhelpfulperson | 15 hours ago
If you look at the article, Asheville still has 94% unit occupancy. It’s definitely not the case that they can’t rent them out.
Zapp_Rowsdower_ | 13 hours ago
‘Can’t rent them out?’ Why can’t they?
Wingerism014 | 15 hours ago
They CAN rent them out, in what universe can't they? It's literally their business.
YendysWV | 15 hours ago
Why build a 50 unit complex where rent is $500 when you can build where its $1500?
scdisrupt | 15 hours ago
The price per unit is going down a little, but not as much as your exaggerated hypothetical example. They can make more money on increased volume even if the price per unit goes down.
SGC-UNIT-555 | 12 hours ago
Were talking housing not Twinkies on a production line, costs are by and large (materials,labor) similar nationwide. So you can pretty much make more money by focusing on locations that enable better rent pricing.
User-NetOfInter | 15 hours ago
Fixed supply costs exist and are the largest factor with new construction
Surly_Cynic | 12 hours ago
Which supply costs are fixed? If builders slow down or stop building, won’t the suppliers of supplies be incentivized to lower their prices to attract builder customers?
Think_Positively | 12 hours ago
Lumber, appliances, concrete, structural hardware, etc are all fixed. These costs are also all rising rapidly due to fuel increases from idiotic wars, and new homes are incredibly difficult to construct in an affordable manner unless you're making a huge complex and have scale on your side.
Surly_Cynic | 11 hours ago
If no one is buying your lumber, or whatever product you’re selling, because it doesn’t make sense financially to purchase it at the price you’re charging, unless you plan to stop selling lumber, you will have to drop your price. That doesn’t sound like it’s truly fixed.
It’s interesting how you say these items have fixed costs, but then also say the costs are rapidly rising.
klingma | 15 hours ago
Not necessarily, there's a functional limit to the volume discount even a large commercial builder can obtain.
As building continues the land will go up in price due to demand and dwindling supply which means your starting cost of construction will go up. Your labor will inevitably go up because again the high demand to construct vs the dwindling supply of labor to construct.
So, the marginal profit between renting out 2,200 vs 2,500 can effectively be negligible as other factors impact your costs.
cocoagiant | 15 hours ago
Because your business is in the $500 market.
Local-Echo-5613 | 15 hours ago
Because the property where the expected rental income is $1500 a unit is also more expensive for you to buy. Because you might want to operate in a market where you live, or near a market you live. Because there are probably regulatory limits on how much new housing you can build in the expensive market, which is one reason it’s expensive.
WellHung67 | 15 hours ago
The better question is why is there places where rent is 1500 and not getting more density? It’s because the US system blocks housing, mainly through zoning and NIMBYs, and the problem can be solved be kneecapping NIMBYs and reforming zoning. Letting local city councils have final approval on housing was a mistake. They should have a process that’s not onerous and that’s it
klingma | 15 hours ago
Because land is expensive to acquire, materials are very expensive, and labor is expensive and in low supply?
We can't just make the zoning argument & NIMBY argument in a place like NYC, LA, or Chicago...those cities have high costs because they have extremely high demand and the base level costs of construction are too high.
WellHung67 | 15 hours ago
Housing is systematically blocked in all those places, even Chicago. I mean LA has an entire rail transit line in West Hollywood surrounded by literal single family homes. Housing is only just now getting built there because the state passed a law that says you can’t block housing near transit.
Chicago builds the most and guess what? It’s relatively the cheapest of the three. NIMBYs are not as powerful there.
New York builds but not nearly enough as evidenced by rent, and yes there are a lot of NIMBYs.
It’s expensive to build but housing has been blocked for decades and money was cheap for a long time, yet nothing got built. It really is local control issues - high construction costs are partially because of the high rent. In fact most everything about high cost of living places can be traced back to the cost of housing. The zoning (and local control by NIMBYs) is a huge part of this problem
Kelsig | 15 hours ago
Chicago does not build the most lol it's cheaper because of population loss and lower salaries. High property taxes reduce land value a lot and maybe help with rent. But NIMBYs having less power is hilariously out of touch.
WellHung67 | 15 hours ago
Chicago has the most supply relative to population. So yes it’s built the most in that sense. NIMBYs block supply - less supply means less housing. That’s the top issue is supply, so tell me why has supply been so constrained?
YendysWV | 14 hours ago
Every single one of your replies seems to place fault on NIMBYs. I looked it up. I guess I am also to blame. Do i want certain developments in my back yard? Definitely not. I have invested my money in my housing and would adamantly protect against that which would devalue it.
You must absolutely expect the same from any real investor who might consider an apartment complex in a location also. Without protectionism at the levels you criticize, there would be 0 new construction. No one is going to drop a sum of money creating a 100 unit complex if the city the next day can deploy hud housing and a mini-mall of payday loaners and vape shops next door.
WellHung67 | 12 hours ago
If a 100 unit residential complex went up in your backyard, your home would increase in value. That would bring demand. The land would appreciate - there’s now a single home on a plot that could be more than one home, so there’s more demand for the land. So I’d think you’d support increased density around you, if money was your main focus
Willyfisterbut | 15 hours ago
Why rent one apartment at 1500 when you can rent 10 units at 1000?
Creative_Cow_1771 | 15 hours ago
Why rent 10 units for $1000 when you can rent 8 units for $1500, that’s $2000 more per month. Scale doesn’t always win, especially in a very unequal economy.
Willyfisterbut | 15 hours ago
Because the economy is so unequal right now that you won't get that ratio. The number of people who can afford 1500 is not 4/5ths of those that can afford 1000.
AntonChigurhWasHere | 14 hours ago
Maybe in a service industry/ tourist economy the difference in the rent dictates rather or not you have people to work in the service industry/ tourism support industry?
Hard to have a restaurant that is a tourist destination if people can’t afford to live near them to work in them.
Greatest-Comrade | 14 hours ago
Can you build where it’s $1500 though? Often the reason it’s more expensive is because there’s barriers, legal or economic, which stop more housing from being built.
lolyeahsure | 13 hours ago
Do you have to justify greed?
thewimsey | 13 hours ago
Explanation =! justification.
If I explain why wishing for a pony will not lead to a pony magically appearing, I am not saying that you don't deserve a pony.
I'm sure you do.
Plus, this is just dumb.
If you have a job that pays $100k, and I offer you a job doing the same thing for $150k, which one are you going to take, you greedy bastard?
Or is it only greed when other people do it?
lolyeahsure | 12 hours ago
You know it’s not the same lol
nickilous | 15 hours ago
A surplus means there are more spaces than tenants. The very definition of a surplus means that there will be units that sit empty because there aren’t enough renters.
Wingerism014 | 15 hours ago
Only if the prices remain high enough to not attract renters! You can rent every unit at a specific price point it'll just lose money than gain it. At least a person gets a cheap place to live rather than a business gets profit.
PocketPanache | 14 hours ago
Surplus housing creates an unsustainable market. Cities need property tax revenue to pay for the water treatment to those units, roads, pipes, electrical, etc. and if landlords can't cover taxes, the city pocket book becomes strained. It then becomes a tax payer issue and it's one that many people don't see coming. If there's a surplus of housing now, it could take years to fill units. A multi-year gap in tax revenue is an issue. Property can become blight when unfilled, lowering property value further. It's a slippery slope. All I've learned through this housing crisis is the average citizen doesn't know enough about housing and blindly supports things. Missouri removed all sustainability going back to 2009 standards via developers lobbying saying it'll create cheaper housing. What it did was increase profit margins and make sustainable stormwater and wetland protection illegal. But voters believed it would help housing costs, so their representatives supported it. There's a lot of nuance and it goes to show why regulation is critical, because the free market is pretty poor at regulating itself in a healthy, sustainable, and fair way.
nickilous | 15 hours ago
I don’t know. In my mind if a landlord has to rent at price where they would lose money. Then, there is no longer an incentive to rent it out meaning there is a floor for pricing. Which means if there are no renters at that floor units will sit empty.
Unhelpfulperson | 15 hours ago
What’s happening in Asheville is nowhere close to “Landlords losing money” and is essentially “incumbent landlords making slightly lower margins than they were accustomed to and complaining about it”
Meanwhile, occupancy is still above 94% meaning it’s not hard to find tenants.
Also the floor you’re describing for incumbent landlords is Rent = Cost to Maintain and Administer an apartment, which is way way way lower than the floor for new construction (Rent = Cost to build the marginal unit, plus maintain and administer).
You would see a slowdown in construction well before you’d see landlords losing money from renting.
WeirdKittens | 14 hours ago
It's a way to gain an asset that is long term inflation resistant with minimal negative cash flow impact out of pocket.
In a lot of places around the world people take the loss knowing they will end up with the asset in the end, having paid a fraction of its value out of pocket due to rent partially compensating for it. Granted, from what I've come to understand this was probably rare in the US but it used to be much more common here in Europe over decades until this post-covid madness made the housing market into what it is today.
Wingerism014 | 15 hours ago
So then sell. We should tax empty apartments or properties at full value to incentivize that. Charge the owners rent to sit on empty spaces.
nickilous | 15 hours ago
It sounds like policies that would lead to people not building units. The article even states that the current surplus of units is in part due to very lax regulations
Wingerism014 | 15 hours ago
Not privately built units, no.
nickilous | 15 hours ago
Nobody will buy if they can’t rent them out at at least some profit.
ripsandtrips | 15 hours ago
Other than people that want to own their own home instead of rent right?
Wingerism014 | 15 hours ago
Exactly: market economics don't work. Only in theory.
thewimsey | 13 hours ago
Why are people like you so good at coming up with ways to make people build fewer units when we want them to build more?
You are putting the perverse in "perverse incentives".
klingma | 15 hours ago
Okay, but why would a business do that?
That's stupid, why would company come in to build 300 apartments knowing they'll likely only be able to collect the equivalent of 225 in full rent?
Wingerism014 | 15 hours ago
So 300 people can live there. Stop thinking everything needs to extract profit, that's where the evil starts.
klingma | 15 hours ago
And again, why would a company do that?
You know, the thing that literally only exists to generate profit for the owners?
Wingerism014 | 15 hours ago
Imagine that company gone then if they can't do that. Don't be stuck in the cage of free market capitalism.
nickilous | 15 hours ago
There is no reason to do anything with out a profit. That profit might not be money but it could be food for their family, or clothes or some other things. If you want to build housing at a loss do it. Start a company. See how far you get with employees and materials if you can’t make some form of profit. If you expect government subsidies then try to convince people that government spending and the subsequent inflation is good.
kloakndaggers | 15 hours ago
they will take that business elsewhere is usually what they do
Wingerism014 | 15 hours ago
Not really, most businesses stay where their owners live. If you've created a small construction business, say, in NC, you're not moving yourself and all your employees to another state. You could move, but everybody ain't coming with you.
kloakndaggers | 15 hours ago
big players don't play like that. they just go wherever the business is best and hire the cheapest sub contractors. local builders that's a different story.
Wingerism014 | 15 hours ago
And we should get rid of those big gold-digging parasites, then and just use local.
kloakndaggers | 15 hours ago
they are the big gold digging parasites because they have very strong lobbyists and can build for the cheapest. there's a reason they are big and popular. they suck most of the time just because the subcontractors they hire or bottom barrel but it is what it is you can't really just get rid of a company because you don't like it.
klingma | 15 hours ago
Okay and Walmart CAN sell everything for $0.01, their business is selling goods.
It's just enormously stupid and financially ludicrous to sell things below cost on a large scale without some other form of bringing in revenue or cash.
Are you new to this universe or something?
Wingerism014 | 15 hours ago
It's stupid and ludicrous people are homeless or cost burdened just having to pay to live to support a legal fiction's ability to make money. You've got reality backwards, if the economics don't work for the majority, NOT a minority of businesses, then we need to break or change the economic systems we use to make things. People first, then business profit.
thewimsey | 13 hours ago
Economics works for almost everyone, though.
klingma | 15 hours ago
>It's stupid and ludicrous people are homeless or cost burdened just having to pay to live to support a legal fiction's ability to make money.
I mean not really, things costs money.
Do you not think the electrician should get paid for wiring the apartment complex? What about the plumber? Should the SheetRock factory worker or the delivery guy not get paid?
>You've got reality backwards, if the economics don't work for the majority,
No, you don't understand reality because you seem to think functional costs to construct and operate are made-up.
>we need to break or change the economic systems
You don't even understand how and economic system works now let alone how to break one & create a new one. Lol
>People first, then business profit.
Cool, but here's the thing big guy - you can't force these businesses to build here or operate here. If being here means they're going to take a loss then they're just not going to be there. This isn't an issue of excessive profit or gouging it's just a basic fact of existence - if there's no chance of ROI then why expend the energy?
Want proof of that fundamental truth? Ask yourself why a full-grown lion ignores a mouse and instead chases an Antelope.
firephoxx | 14 hours ago
You mean Mr. Potter isn’t gonna build any more houses?
xIllustrious_Passion | 15 hours ago
Sure they can rent them out, they just need to charge less for rent.
Longshot726 | 12 hours ago
Sometimes they literally can't lower rates. Financing an apartment complex is not so simple that you can just lower rent to attract more people. When you finance one, you generally have an expected income stream per unit threshold at a certain percentage of occupancy that is used to secure the loan. Dropping below that rate would mean the company is in violation of the loan covenant which would lead to a technical default even if the mortgage is paid on time.
Zixarr | 12 hours ago
Maybe we shouldn't be using essential human needs as investment vehicles.
VegetableTour6790 | 12 hours ago
Go look at rental and purchase pricing in Asheville, look at their occupancy rate, and come back to delete this comment.
MeijiHao | 15 hours ago
This is why the federal government should be building the housing. These landlords demand a profit where the government can do it at cost and at scale
thewimsey | 13 hours ago
> where the government can do it at cost and at scale
Lol.
The government is terrible at building.
MeijiHao | 13 hours ago
And capitalism is terrible at providing affordable housing
StopICE2026 | 15 hours ago
Why would they keep building if there’s no marginal profit
inferno521 | 15 hours ago
There's a huge time lag between when financing is obtained to start construction and when advertising for tenants
Unhelpfulperson | 15 hours ago
There’s still marginal profit as long as the rent level is above the marginal cost of construction, which it still is even if incumbent landlords are complaining
klingma | 15 hours ago
You can't make that conclusion? Lol
You have literally zero information in which to draw that definitive conclusion that marginal profit to operate is still above marginal cost of construction. You're basing this solely on your own bias and conjecture.
StopICE2026 | 14 hours ago
What no materialism does to a mf
cwchow | 15 hours ago
But then why would they keep building more housing if people arent buying?
scdisrupt | 15 hours ago
People are buying, just at a slightly lower price. They still make more on increased volume.
tMoneyMoney | 15 hours ago
Exactly the issue. It works in renters’ favor because it was a screwup. This is a developer/landlord’s worst nightmare and the last thing they’re going to intentionally try to do.
Greatest-Comrade | 14 hours ago
The developers and landlords are not necessarily aligned interests though. Landlords need to rent out continuously, developers just need to profit from the development process. Whether that means holding onto the land afterwards or not. Often just building and then selling after is what they do.
In fact sometimes landlords and developers interests are completely different because of the different ways they make profit. Landlords want as little construction as possible if it means high rent. But little to no construction doesn’t make a lot of money for the developers.
Hacking_the_Gibson | 15 hours ago
The supply above all people have completely forgotten 2008.
A real estate crash like that again is going to be a fucking nightmare.
Zestyclose_Nature_13 | 15 hours ago
How about stop using housing as an investment vehicle? Who does it benefit to drive up the price of housing year after year? It degrades the quality of our life when basic necessities become speculative assets. We should actively be looking for ways to drive down the cost of housing across the board….from efficiencies in production to cutting government red tape
Hacking_the_Gibson | 14 hours ago
Land basically backs all investments of all kinds. At the root of nearly everything is someone's land deal. It is the best collateral which exists, because there isn't more of it being made.
Zestyclose_Nature_13 | 14 hours ago
That land is taxed by the community which grants license to people to utilize it. If they stop paying their land tax then that land no longer belongs to them. No man created the earth or the land under their feet….they do not own it….they rent that land from the rest of us. Everyone from Thomas Paine to Abraham Lincoln understood this concept. The notion that any man can ‘own’ land is absurd.
“The land, the earth God gave to man for his home... should never be the possession of any man, corporation, (or) society... any more than the air or water." - Abraham Lincoln
American minds have been poisoned and corrupted by some absolutely insane propaganda.
Unhelpfulperson | 11 hours ago
I don’t think I’ve seen a single serious person suggest that increasing supply by loosening regulations or mortgages and mortgage-backed securities would be a good idea. I don’t think people have forgotten 2008
havasnack21 | 15 hours ago
Or think of all the people praying for a crash so they dont have to rent for life and can finally afford a home.
havasnack21 | 15 hours ago
Think of the poor developers
ObieKaybee | 15 hours ago
To drive down prices and attract people to move there to stimulate the local economy.
User-NetOfInter | 15 hours ago
Why would a developer give a shit about that
You’re in the wrong sub bud
ObieKaybee | 15 hours ago
The city/county/state would, which might induce them to subsidize the development of said zones. Like a more direct version of TIF.
User-NetOfInter | 15 hours ago
And how is that relevant at all to this thread?
The couple hundred housing units that are locally subsidized versus a population of 100k?
What are you even going on about dude
wholesale-chloride | 11 hours ago
Developers can still profit in environments even when landlords are struggling.
cybercuzco | 13 hours ago
That’s the problem, this situation will discourage housing construction. Best thing to do is tax home sales and rents that are above median price per square foot and then use the funds generated to subsidize construction of below median price housing. This grows supply and incentivizes landlords to lower prices.
aldsar | 15 hours ago
Building more housing is a policy decision too. Just saying
OddlyFactual1512 | 15 hours ago
>not policy interventions like rent caps
First, why would you think readers would think it had anything to do with rent control? Second, zoning is a policy. If that policy does not discourage building or allow NIMBY obstruction, it absolutely encourages building relative to other areas.
d-cent | 15 hours ago
What did they actually do though?? The substack doesn't actually say what Asheville did to increase housing so much.
anti-torque | 15 hours ago
>This shift in power dynamics, favoring renters, is a direct result of increased housing supply, not policy interventions like rent caps.
Are we simply ignoring Helene and its aftereffects?
[OP] UnscheduledCalendar | 14 hours ago
Article addressed this as the trend occurring pre-storm
anti-torque | 13 hours ago
Yet Asheville is now three thousand people less in population.
stephcurrysmom | 14 hours ago
I love the completely random mention of rent control.
MikeyTheGuy | 13 hours ago
It's not really random when it's constantly brought up as a solution to higher rent and then never works.
anti-torque | 13 hours ago
It works perfectly fine for high rents. This is a discussion about housing supply, in which rent control has no place.
stephcurrysmom | 12 hours ago
Thank you for responding cogently on my behalf.
LetNeither6377 | 14 hours ago
Dang we had to move away because of the hurricane that took our house away and couldn't find anything immediately. Glad to hear the news though
SuspiciousStory122 | 14 hours ago
This is the only way.
yousonofabench | 15 hours ago
Oh no those poor landlords! How will they function having to pay their own mortgages 😭😭😭
klingma | 15 hours ago
Well, they'll probably scale-back on maintenance thus making the current tenant live in potentially bad condition. Or the owner could sell to a much larger company with huge pockets like Blackstone who can afford to let the properties sit vacant until the market rebounds their way and jack up rents when demand exceeds supply again.
You're pretty short-sighted on this issue.
Warm_Regrets157 | 12 hours ago
The article (and your submission statement) is full of right wing slop that does little to nothing to make any data driven case against rent control.
It barely manages to support the assertion that
A) Asheville had a surplus of building
And
B) Asheville now has a cheaper rent
IlikeDrivingMyTruck | 13 hours ago
Happening in Denver too, 3 months of free rent to sign a 12 month lease. The hottest markets got overbuilt and low interest rates exacerbated it.
Justthetip74 | 14 hours ago
Capitalist works for everyone when the governemnt doesnt fuck it up
MikeyTheGuy | 13 hours ago
You also need the government to keep the worst parts of capitalism in check, though. It's a balance. Unregulated free market capitalism can turn into some toxic shit; we've seen it before.
And too much/inappropriate regulation can mess up the mechanisms that make capitalism work in a useful way.
EchoRex | 15 hours ago
Building more housing IS a policy the same way rent control is.
Rent control policies are necessary until zoning and permitting policies allows a housing surplus to happen.
baklazhan | 14 hours ago
Rent control policies are necessary to build the political coalition to maintain zoning and permitting policies that restrict housing. If you have a city of renters (which San Francisco has been) you have a huge number of voters who'll be happy to approve a bunch of new construction whenever rents spike. Rent control brings them over to the side of the owners, so they benefit from restrictions and skyrocketing market rents. After all, would you rather have an apartment that costs you $800 in a region where the average rent is $800, or would you rather have an apartment that costs you $800 in an area where they typically go for $4000?
mariner_mayhem | 13 hours ago
You are spot on that rent control policies basically transfer surplus from landlords to renters.
The shenanigans that take place as a result of this are hilarious in places like NYC and SF, where Master Tenants try to get away with renting their units on the black market (or Air BnBing them) above the rent control price (sometimes to friends or relatives).
The landlords in turn hire detectives to prove the Master Tenant is not actually living there so they can get them evicted to reset the rent at the market price with a new tenant.
Black markets flourish in presence of price controls. Nothing new there.
MsNatCat | 15 hours ago
Don’t use this as an anti-rent cap platform.
Surplus housing doesn’t even work in many areas. We need new housing, better city infrastructure for public transportation, and better controls on rent. This will always need to be a multi-pronged approach that endless investment will not be able to solve on its own.
It requires planning and intentional governance.
mariner_mayhem | 13 hours ago
> Don’t use this as an anti-rent cap platform.
It really should be. Places with stringent rent control (looking at you NYC and SF) in place for decades have very limited new construction and upgrades to existing housing stock.
This is an economics sub, so you should be well aware that the overwhelming bulk of economists agree with a statement like "rent-control policies reduce both the quantity and quality of housing in the long run".
What does work in lowering prices in the long run is having supply outstrip demand. I don't know why some folks are so insistent this basic mechanism doesn't work in the housing sector.
Oh well, I guess I can always count on government policy to subsidize demand while restricting supply, then being shocked when the price shoots through the roof.
MsNatCat | 13 hours ago
I’m well aware it’s an economics sub. I got my degree in it.
You’re purposefully ignoring what you want and grasping onto bad myths. This is bad faith debate. Do better.
Check_Me_Out-Boss | 14 hours ago
That's literally supply-side economics, which is trickledown economics.
findingmike | 15 hours ago
Weird that its framed as a conservative vs. liberal article. The author seem to think that liberals are against adding housing despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. Otherwise, it just seems like an article about economics 101: increase supply and demand falls, lowering prices.
Here4theupdates | 14 hours ago
The author sounds like she’s been reading some Ezra Klein. I think her point is blue cities get in their own way of meeting needs by implementing overly stringent regulations related to zoning and building. It is true to an extent. Even the best intentions sometimes cause unnecessary roadblocks.
Maybe I missed this in the article, but I’m interested in how exactly Asheville was able to achieve all this new building. What kind of incentives were extended to builders?
findingmike | 14 hours ago
The article was light on those details. I agree with you questioning funding. Most building has stalled over the past few years due to high costs. In my city, it costs about $500k to build an ADU now.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 12 hours ago
They also had massive damage from the hurricane not long ago, with large parts of the city flooded and needing to be rebuilt. The article claims it's not a supply drop, but offers really nothing convincing to support that.
Meme_Burner | 11 hours ago
The author of the article seemed to miss that point. A large number of deaths in the "lower regulation NC and TX" came from river floods. 136 people died in the July 2025 central TX flooding. Then the 2024 Hurricane Helene where 108 people died in NC. Were not talking about beach ocean surge flooding. We are talking about inland easy to predict flooding.
Iwentforalongwalk | 14 hours ago
She apparently hasn't heard of Minneapolis and our approach to getting shit built. The city changed regulations quite a few years ago to make it easier to get multi family housing built. The results can be seen over the city. It's been a crazy boom. We're deep blue.
MikeyTheGuy | 13 hours ago
And St. Paul did the opposite and is having a housing crunch. The point is that places like Minneapolis and Austin are the exception rather than the rule; a lot of blue cities make it too difficult to build and instead try solutions that have been repeatedly proven not to work.
Iwentforalongwalk | 13 hours ago
It's a pretty broad statement you're making here and I'm very skeptical of your claims.
Houston has loose regulations but my God. Who wants to live in a brand new apartment next to the slaughterhouse.
And, most cities are blue if you look at voting patterns. Your statement is just weird.
PossiblySustained | 12 hours ago
LA has some of the most strict regulations in the country and they still build massive apartments right next to freeways. I'd rather live next to the slaughterhouse, quite frankly. It's much better for my health.
MikeyTheGuy | 13 hours ago
Can you elaborate why it is weird?
I suspect you're not engaging in good faith, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
Generally when I am trying to understand a given topic, if someone says something unfamiliar to me or that I am skeptical of, then I will make an effort to plop it into a search engine and see if there is any validity to or additional information about their claim. If I am unable to find anything, THEN I will say," I haven't read anything like this; do you have a source I can read?"
I've learned a lot of stuff this way and have corrected my own positions on many topics by actively learning about things and avoiding being defensive. The reasons I made such broad claims is because I've actually done the reading and looked at the data; the same data that is available to you.
Perhaps you should ask yourself why it is that you're skeptical of a well-documented and easy to search claim and whether or not that approach is "weird":
https://besi.berkeley.edu/publication/what-drives-high-costs-in-blue-states/
This isn't the only research into this topic, btw; it's just one of the most thorough and succinct and delves into all of the issues.
>Houston has loose regulations but my God. Who wants to live in a brand new apartment next to the slaughterhouse.
Well if the price is right, then they might? That's kind of the whole point of free market mechanics in housing. If you don't want to live by a slaughterhouse, then that's totally fine, but do you support a system that prevents other people from doing it because you wouldn't want to?
ISitTooMuch1 | 13 hours ago
If the housing next to the slaughterhouse is cheap enough, then there probably would be people who want to live there.
If people don't want to live there, then there's no need for regulations to say not to build housing there.
hybridck | 13 hours ago
Even if that's her point about blue cities, it's still not a very good one considering her example is Asheville, which is arguably the most liberal city in North Carolina.
Here4theupdates | 13 hours ago
I didn't mean that I thought that was the point of the article. I just think she was making a point about regulations and how many blue cities are criticized for having too many regulations when it comes to building. Asheville most definitely is blue and I'd have been more interested to read about how they accomplished all this additional building.
weaponx111 | 14 hours ago
I wish everyone would read more Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
Fit_Yak523 | 10 hours ago
It’s just hard to ignore the fact that Ezra Klein was part of the Peter Theil secret society. It frames his opinions so different to me.
weaponx111 | 10 hours ago
Excuse me? Source?
Here4theupdates | 13 hours ago
Thought provoking with some good ideas although I don't always agree with Klein. Abundance is a good read for people who are as interested in solutions, as they are with how we got here.
Atomic-Avocado | 15 hours ago
Liberals are against adding housing supply if it “ruins the character of the neighborhood” or if it’s branded as gentrification. Really common in my city.
Alaus_oculatus | 14 hours ago
NIMBYs come in all political varieties, in my experience
Here4theupdates | 14 hours ago
For most Americans (Red, Blue, or Purple), the purchase of a home is the largest investment they’ll make in their lifetime. It makes sense that they would want to protect that investment.
Atomic-Avocado | 13 hours ago
Protect == sealing their area in a time capsule and making sure no one else can ever move in.
I wonder why there is a housing crisis?
thirstyman12 | 13 hours ago
lol this is 100% not a liberal stance and it has nothing to do with political orientation. People often oppose construction for very non-political reasons like adding congestion to an already busy area, not wanting to hear/see construction, etc etc
No-Personality1840 | 13 hours ago
Funny, it’s the conservatives in my neighborhood that are NIMBYs. Gee, it’s almost as though housing isn’t a liberal or conservative issue.
LaVidaYokel | 13 hours ago
Or if it threatens the watershed, stresses surrounding resources, pushes out agriculture, etc. I know its easier to just focus on the NIMBY crowd, which does get in the way of a lot of things, but you’re not actually helping if you ignore debatable reasons too.
Ok_Slide4905 | 10 hours ago
Yep. Once the G-word is spoken, it gets voted down.
SirTiffAlot | 14 hours ago
How do you add housing to an already established neighborhood?
blackmajic13 | 14 hours ago
Replace single family units with multifamily units.
SirTiffAlot | 14 hours ago
So you think liberals want to tear down single family home neighborhoods and replace them with multifamily 'units'? Are there examples of this?
I've have yet to witness a neighborhood of single family homes be torn down and replaced with duplexes or apartments. Maybe we just have an abundance of housing supply here.
blackmajic13 | 14 hours ago
You just asked "how do you add housing to an already established neighborhood?" and I answered that question. I said nothing of what I believe.
SirTiffAlot | 13 hours ago
>Liberals are against adding housing supply
TrumpDesWillens | 14 hours ago
Liberals run SF and here we are infamous for NIMBYs.
meelar | 13 hours ago
Conservatives run Long Island and there are plenty of NIMBYs here as well
SirTiffAlot | 13 hours ago
It has nothing to do with them being liberal is my point
3_Thumbs_Up | 13 hours ago
No the opposite, liberals want to prevent tearing down single family home neighborhoods to add more efficient utilization of the space in areas where it would be desperately needed.
SouthNo2807 | 14 hours ago
How do you add housing to an already established farmland? Start digging, I guess? Regardless of the land's original intended use, things are bound to change eventually. Location is highly valuable, and there is a market here.
Yes, the farmland was originally someone's home, too. Whether it is farmland, single-family homes, or high-rises, when the time comes for change, it should change. There is no difference.
SirTiffAlot | 14 hours ago
You are the only one talking about farmland.
SouthNo2807 | 14 hours ago
Specific locations have specific density requirements to balance the advantages the location offers. For instance, as a city center expands, nearby townhouses are demolished to make way for high-rises. I see no difference between farmland transforming into outer suburbs and inner suburbs transforming into high-rises.
Old-Republic2532 | 14 hours ago
Unless you believe you are entitled to someone's property what are you going to do when people don't want to use their land how you want them to?
SouthNo2807 | 14 hours ago
A property tax that rises alongside property values acts as a penalty on those unwilling to relocate. Eventually, the cost of keeping the existing structure in place will outweigh the benefits.
Old-Republic2532 | 14 hours ago
If you're advocating for removing zoning restrictions because it would properly incentive people to sell land, I completely agree.
Initially I took your comments as being in favor of government stealing land from people to repurpose it.
SouthNo2807 | 14 hours ago
I am explaining how the real estate market works, not what policy interventions it should use. The problem facing the vast majority of U.S. cities right now is precisely that extensive zoning laws have made the holding costs for buildings that arguably shouldn't exist in certain locations unnaturally low.
SirTiffAlot | 13 hours ago
You are the only one talking about farmland. There is definitely a difference
SouthNo2807 | 13 hours ago
So displacing 100 farmers for 1000 homes is fine, but displacing 100 non-farmers for the same 1000 homes is suddenly unacceptable? Pick a principle and stick to it. Otherwise you’re just making up a distinction.
Iwentforalongwalk | 14 hours ago
Not in my city. I live in Minneapolis and it's been an absolute boom after regulations were changed . And I don't believe for a minute conservatives are ok with a 20 floor apartment building going up in their back yard.
chitoatx | 14 hours ago
Austin, Texas, a liberal city, has added the most new rental units per capita in the country. It’s foolish to frame everything in the black-and-white political party team sport nonsense. Everyone opposes annexing their homes, land, or destroying their historic neighborhoods. Nobody should be cheering on your neighbors being priced out of their homes.
Report: Austin lands near No. 1 among fastest growing US cities https://www.mysanantonio.com/realestate/article/texas-rental-housin-market-22276552.php
Ok_Slide4905 | 10 hours ago
The DSA is anti-market development and only supports rent control and stabilization.
SweatyAd8914 | 15 hours ago
Entirely predictable. Asheville is a recreational destination and rich enclave. If you have low demand and high supply prices go down. Only if the builders knew that a building war leads to total losses on their end as well.
WellHung67 | 15 hours ago
The builders don’t give a fuck they sold the unit. The landlords are eating any losses, as they should. You want landlords competing on rent
SweatyAd8914 | 15 hours ago
Wild username btw lmao
GentlemenHODL | 15 hours ago
Yeah unfortunately WellHung66 and WellHung68 were taken
thewimsey | 13 hours ago
WellHung69 was taken 1 minute and 9 seconds after Reddit went live.
klingma | 15 hours ago
A. The builders need landlords to stay in business, so your assertion that builders will do just fine is facetious.
B. Healthy competition is the ideal, competition simply to minimize losses is not good for community as that will lead to the units falling into disrepair and the folks living in the units suffering.
I'm not sure how you don't understand those two items, but it's clear you don't.
WellHung67 | 15 hours ago
Supply and demand means the market price is lower - what are you saying? Builders should strategically stop building so supply is lower so rents go up so they can build more? Seriously don’t know what you’re implying here. Out with it
klingma | 14 hours ago
>Supply and demand means the market price is lower - what are you saying?
Yes, and since businesses don't just operate on a daily planning basis they'll adjust their future investments accordingly.
Meaning landlords will seek LESS building in the future meaning builders will have LESS overall business.
>Builders should strategically stop building so supply is lower so rents go up so they can build more?
If they build it, own it, and operate it - no.
But that's typically not how commercial building works, they're contracted by the project owner (landlord) and complete the project to get paid. So, if the landlords struggle they'll naturally seek to build less and thus naturally the builders will build less.
Basic cause & effect.
>Seriously don’t know what you’re implying here.
It's uh...it's pretty straightforward lol
If bakeries are struggling to sell highly sugary cakes, they'll switch to selling something different, but the bakery is also going to stop buying as much sugar.
It's called downstream effects - it's a basic concept in economics.
WellHung67 | 14 hours ago
Okay then what did you mean by this statement:
> Only if the builders knew that a building war leads to total losses on their end as well.
Builders obviously know all the things you said. So what should builders have done, had they “known that”?
klingma | 14 hours ago
I never once said those words...?
EconEchoes5678 | 13 hours ago
> B. Healthy competition is the ideal, competition simply to minimize losses is not good for community as that will lead to the units falling into disrepair and the folks living in the units suffering.
In the absense of land-value taxes, the thing that suffers first is the land value, because the rent that land can deliver on is lower. So you're not quite correct, though disrepair problems can happen. The main disrepair situations I am aware of (NYC 70's) happened due to high taxes and regulations - the land values didn't drop below their operational costs, so the landlords got eaten by operational costs and many stripped the buildings and walked away, leaving the city with worthless properties. (Population was also falling).
If the regulations and tax wedge isn't so large, it's very easy for the landlord to maintain their buildings to match their land value; medium size landlords lose out before the others because they can't scale well or cover it over with their own labor. But mostly, land values lose when you have oversupply, which means no one actually gets hurt (except people who have their wealth primarily in their RE).
If there's a LVT in place, none of this needs to happen because the LVT is consuming the lands' rents.
Sweaty_Assignment_90 | 15 hours ago
I think they will be fine if they can weather the storm. When rebuilt, demand will raise and air.bnb increasing etc will cause demand.
anti-torque | 14 hours ago
So close, yet so far away.
Stop looking at this "article" as something valid. Helene tore Asheville up, and it's now rebuilding. They weathered the storm, kind of. And when it's rebuilt (about now), they will have less demand than they did before Helene, because some businesses and several thousand people simply left.
So they could have the same number of housing units they had in 2023, and this surplus would still exist in 2026.
onenitemareatatime | 14 hours ago
Because they know that you are incorrect. Eventually the building stops and prices go back up. Actually prices go back up even before that, the prime locations go up, as they build further out because they’ve attracted more residents.
The American brain is so short sighted. You just need to look at cities with longer histories to see the pattern. Eventually you end up with some urban nightmare like NYC or London.
CormoranNeoTropical | 13 hours ago
“Urban nightmare” to you is “the only kind of place I want to live” to tens of millions of people.
(I do live in a very small city now but only because I can’t afford to live in a big city.)
onenitemareatatime | 13 hours ago
Nobody grows old and says “I want to move to the city. All the crime, and bums and piss smelling dirty streets is really the good life.”
Also, as soon as COVID remote work hit, everyone left the cities. Many never returned.
The only reason people tolerate all that I listed is for the money. As soon as that’s taken care of, people leave. That should tell you everything you need to know.
CormoranNeoTropical | 13 hours ago
This is absolutely false. Lots of people move to NYC when they’re old because you don’t need to drive and you can get anywhere on sidewalks, with elevators, taxis, etc. There’s also an endless variety of entertainment and activities that are all accessible. The issue is that it’s very expensive so the people who retire to NYC or SF or whatever are not numerous in the grand scale.
Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean tens of millions of other people don’t like it.
You sound like a person who has never been to the Upper East Side. Even in the 1980s there wasn’t so much in the way of bums and bad smells, and nowadays crime is essentially non-existent.
Crime rates are higher in rural areas than in Manhattan (or London).
And a lot of those people who left due to COVID moved because the city was too expensive, not because they didn’t like it.
I really don’t understand why people who enjoy living in suburbs or rural areas feel the need to pretend that only their way of life is enjoyable. City people generally don’t think that those other options are inherently bad, just that they don’t prefer them.
thewimsey | 12 hours ago
> Lots of people move to NYC when they’re old because you don’t need to drive and you can get anywhere on sidewalks, with elevators, taxis, etc.
No. This is completely false. Not to say that no one does this, but almost no one does this.
They don't do it because people who can't drive anymore also often have ambulatory difficulties - it's hard for them to take stairs, to walk on crowded sidewalks, to step over or avoid obstacles.
>Crime rates are higher in rural areas than in Manhattan
Depends on the rural area.
But people like you are always pretending that the choices are Manhattan or Mayberry. Most people live in suburbs and want to live in suburbs. Which also tend to have very low crime rates.
And I don't understand why people who live in cities have so little idea what it's like to live outside a city.
>in suburbs or rural areas
Suburbs are urban areas. They are where most people live. Don't lump it in with rural areas.
And NYC (and Manhattan in particular) is unique; most cities aren't like NYC. LA isn't very much like NYC at all.
CormoranNeoTropical | 10 hours ago
So basically you agree with me, different people like different things.
PhysicalConsistency | 13 hours ago
Rental rates are largely coupled to employment not housing. Using Asheville as an example:
Asheville metro jobs
2022 183,900 +3.9%
2023 188,400 +2.4%
2024 187,400 −0.5%
2025 185,300 −1.1%
It's unusual for rent change to not directly track employment in a metro area, regardless of how much housing is built. "Build baby build" is just as surface of an argument as "drill baby drill", and just as disconnected.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 13 hours ago
Are we all just ignoring that this article is just taking a pretty basic thing everyone is in favor of and pretending like it's a partisan issue so they can vomit out low effort conservative slop?
> However, there is a scene playing out in Asheville, North Carolina that every Democratic mayor should watch.
Asheville, a super super blue city inside of a fairly purple state. Def the poster child of conservative policies.
>This the part that some leftists keep missing. If you treat housing as a scarce commodity, the landlord holds all the power. Deal with the absurd prices, because chances are, especially in high demand cities, someone is right behind you to offer more than asking price.
Housing is a scarce commodity, that's not a leftist or conservative stance. It's a basic fact. The solution is increasing supply, again not really a partisan stance here, but I'm sure this guy convinced plenty of dumb people it was.
>The same case continues to be made in every YIMBY’s favorite city, Austin, Texas! A city that added 120,000 units to its housing stock from 2015-2024, more than three times the growth rate in the U.S., rings similar to the story unfolding in Asheville. Both of these cities are liberal ponds in red-leaning states.
North Carolina went for Trump, but has had a blue governor and votes generally more blue than not in almost every statewide election that wasn't the presidency across the last like decade or more. They're not red leaning.
Regardless, this whole article is just gaslighting idiots in to believing that for some reason wanting to build more housing supply is an exclusively conservative policy stance lmao.
NomadicFantastic | 14 hours ago
Investing in businesses instead of buying investment houses is so much better for everyone. Houses are for living in. Businesses are for making money. The primary way to make money in housing is to deny housing for everyone else
mrpoopybutthole423 | 15 hours ago
Won't more out of state folks with more money just move to Asheville? That is what I don't understand about supply/demand arguments. People will eventually move in which will increase rents again. I suspect hurricane Helene had more to do with this local drop in demand.
Kelsig | 15 hours ago
If so, you have unlocked an infinite money glitch for the people of Asheville and they will rule the world as kings
bfeils | 15 hours ago
Two things.
Is that a bad thing? I don’t think it is. More people means more tax revenue that can be used for improvements.
There is already demand from the outside that is finite in nature. People from other parts of the state will mean their origin area demand falls, which can result in others moving out of the city. And or suburbs expand. There are lots of mechanisms that work in concert.
mrpoopybutthole423 | 14 hours ago
It's bad for locals who are already having a tough time with higher costs of living.
bfeils | 13 hours ago
Sorry, what? The article itself is saying that housing prices are down. That’s a core cost of living. And more rental revenue means better distributed tax burden, both cost for homeowners.
What cost is demonstrably going up? Is it more than offsetting other costs that are steadily moving down?
Trying to understand whose position you’re taking the vantage point of.
mrpoopybutthole423 | 12 hours ago
Yeah, but if you look at housing costs over the past 10 years rent has doubled. This was due to increased demand from people moving to Asheville. It's nice they are increasing units but the damage has already been done.
bfeils | 12 hours ago
I mean, that’s how it works. You can’t remove demand unless you enshittify something or raise the price further. Your options are to increase supply (and slowly see prices either fall or stop growing) or throw up your hands and accept further squeezes.
mrpoopybutthole423 | 12 hours ago
I live in Chattanooga which is very similar to Asheville. We have seen lots of growth over the past two decades spurred by marketing and what used to be lower costs of living. While growth is better than decline, I've seen to many Chattanoogans priced out of their own town. There are other more sustainable ways to lower housing costs.
bfeils | 12 hours ago
Like what? I’m struggling to understand your solution here. And how exactly does one get priced out of their home in this instance? By taxes? Taxes go up when prices go up. Wages should in turn go up as the local economy grows.
mrpoopybutthole423 | 12 hours ago
Higher property taxes and the inability to move from renting to owning a home. Developer friendly city councils are part of the problem. All new developments could have requirements to assure that 50% of new units meet up to 80% AMI. You could also create programs that help working families meet down payments for new home owners for existing residents. Also, outlaw large investment firms from buying up homes.
bfeils | 12 hours ago
Lots of these are good things to do, though not a single one of them has to do with supply. Asheville should do BOTH.
One nit though - more housing does not increase property tax. If built in sufficient capacity, it would decrease residential property tax. Property taxes are complex. You’re not just paying city tax. Usually your county calculates tax and collects on behalf of city, state, county, school levies, etc.
I would encourage you to reach out to your county tax department if that’s a core driver. You might be surprised at the underlying reasons for it.
Atomic-Avocado | 15 hours ago
People have to live somewhere and there’s a demand for dense walkable areas, housing prices are already soaring everywhere and people will try to move into these areas anyway, driving up costs.
If you don’t build housing in desirable areas, then where do you expect people to move?
NomadicFantastic | 14 hours ago
Those folks would just buy the housing that locals are already using instead. It's better for new housing to be built so out of staters don't displace the locals. Theres a limit to how many ppl can and want to move to Ashville or Austin, despite some ppl saying otherwise. Building more houses has kept housing costs lower, as the headline mentions.
teacher_59 | 11 hours ago
After the federal government abandoned that area, of course people are wary about moving there.
VivianneCrowley | 15 hours ago
I was scrolling to find this comment. I knew a few people that wanted to move to Asheville that won’t now after Helene. I’m sure it will level out again as people forget. Reminds me of the guy that said she travels to countries after terrorist attacks because the flights are so cheap lol.
mrpoopybutthole423 | 15 hours ago
What people don't realize is that due to the topography of Asheville a lot of these new developments are built in dangerously steep and floodprone areas. There isn't much flat land to develop in Asheville.
Narrow_Summer_9332 | 14 hours ago
The area was recently flattened by a hurricane so a lot of people are wary of that as well.
Seriously, go look at the pictures of before and after and you'll see there used to be houses and the floods straight up left nothing but gravel...
King-Meister | 15 hours ago
How much of a house's total cost is attributed to land and how much to actual construction? I am assuming the construction part - labour + materials - will have a real price limit below which it cannot fall (even with economies of scale). The land cost is something that can be altered, especially if it has been leased / bought from the government and the said government wants to increase housing supply (could be some policy-level initiative where certain pockets are sold dirt cheap to developers with a hard capping on selling costs).
Sariscos | 15 hours ago
Multifamily units have to make sense on a per unit cost. Most places that are built around the Southeast United States are going from 170K-185K per unit to build. That doesn't include soft costs like land acquisition, engineering and design, among other expenses. Construction costs have dramatically increased due to a number of factors. The biggest factor is material costs and materials required for code compliant buildings. Buildings are far safer today than they were at the beginning on the century.
Deals need to make sense to make the construction worth it. Amenities could go to decrease costs but they don't have that dramatic of an affect, they're actually built more as an incentive as it isn't a revenue generating part of construction.
The government should expand its housing program to handle utilities upgrades/infrastructure for developments to help reduce the costs and allow more deals to pencil. The new construction can still command its rental rates while forcing older properties to upgrade or reduce rents to attract buyers as we are seeing here
mtnviewguy | 10 hours ago
Good God, TL;DR in Spades! What's you Cliff Notes version?
If you can't get your point across in a single, sucient paragraph, don't bother because the vast majority of your audience won't read it. I didn't!
Kronzypantz | 15 hours ago
This is a pretty empty claim.
The rent has just stayed the same for a year following a devastating hurricane and drop in population.
Developers and investors aren’t going to increase supply any further, and are actively incentivized to undo this situation by taking rental homes off the market.
EconEchoes5678 | 13 hours ago
> Developers and investors aren’t going to increase supply any further, and are actively incentivized to undo this situation by taking rental homes off the market.
Nonsense, unless they have some direct use for it. The properties are depreciating constantly, pay property taxes, and have maintenance costs even un-rented. They are not in the business of losing money.
Kronzypantz | 13 hours ago
Properties build equity value, especially if they tighten up supply consistency to keep prices rising on track again.
EconEchoes5678 | 13 hours ago
> Properties build equity value,
Generally unless the property taxes are very low this is going to be slower than the depreciation. Rent is the only thing that makes this a net positive.
> especially if they tighten up supply consistency to keep prices rising on track again.
This requires basically market collusion, which is extremely rare in the landlord business. Basically outside of the Realpage situation, there's hundreds of landlords competing in most areas.
If this really were happening, a Land Value Tax would be the answer.
BrainLow6059 | 13 hours ago
The same thing is happening where I live. What they do is they'll offer a free month or two, some other temporary incentive, while not actually changing the rent. So once you move in they just raise the rent a year later and you get to gamble on whether the next apartment over is still offering incentives at that time.
These animals would rather a place sit at 50% occupancy than lower the actual rent amount by $100
Scrapdog06 | 12 hours ago
Ashville fucking sucks. Might be one of the worst places I have ever visited and I live in North Carolina. literally just a bunch of yuppies pretending to be hippies some of the most bizarre people I have ever met
LaOnionLaUnion | 12 hours ago
I’m curious to see how many landlords use algorithms to price. In my area it ended up being not much more expensive to buy a much bigger house nearby than to rent. But, I was renting from a company that used the algorithms and intentionally left units empty rather had charge less
128-NotePolyVA | 14 hours ago
How does an overabundance of apartments directly improve the availability and pricing of houses for first time homebuyers?
Well, if rent is low enough, over time, in theory, young people might be able to better save for ownership of a hard asset like a house. But how does it help with making more houses available or making houses more affordable?
BigRed0ne | 14 hours ago
As apartments become relatively cheaper and cheaper, more people will substitute leasing apartments for purchasing a single-family home. This puts downwards pressure on pricing for single family housing, by reducing demand.
128-NotePolyVA | 13 hours ago
If this is the strategy, and it seems to be… apartments are going up everywhere, how inexpensive can apartments get? Building owners can’t go any lower than maintenance, taxes and some profit for themselves. In my region I’ve seen single bedroom apartments at $3100, 2BR at $3800, 3BR at $4800 a month.
Apartments aren’t an asset, just an expense. There’s no equity built or appreciation in value. Rent has to be pretty cheap to give people wiggle room to invest in something with a return comparable to owning a home. Am I wrong in this line of thought?
RashmaDu | 13 hours ago
If there are more houses available to buy, then there is more competition on the supply side. If you refuse to sell to me, I have an abundance of other people to buy a house from, and odds are someone else will be willing to accept a lower price. So either you sell for less, or you don’t sell at all