Tomato
4d ago
If that’s a priority for you there are tons of places in the country where demand is low enough to allow that. It’s totally crazy for us as a society to empower someone to prevent his neighbor from doing what he wants to do with his own land in the most productive, in demand location on the planet.
Tomato
4d ago
House prices are high because of policies that people like your parents voted for. Hispanics, Asians, and Indians aren’t voting for zoning restrictions and fighting tooth and nail for Prop 13 and similar policies. At least guys like Newsom are wielding power at the state level to force lazy freeloaders (65 year old whites) to make California livable for normal hardworking people (30 year old Hispanics).
Tomato
4d ago
No one has an obligation to sell you their home just because it would improve your commute and they're not commuting any more.
They have made it illegal for their neighbors to use their land how they want to use it (e.g., build higher density apartment buildings). Nobody is forcing granny to sell her home; granny is preventing other people from doing things with their own land. That's a real economic harm.
Tomato
3d ago
I just don’t think you should be able to tell your neighbor what he can do on his land.
Tomato
4d ago
The entire sunset district could look like Manhattan. It’s not like we don’t know how to build buildings that are taller than two stories. It’s a completely self-inflicted space constraint.
Tomato
4d ago
California’s housing problem and people’s political views on it is completely orthogonal to national party differences. It’s caused by local zoning restrictions which is basically older incumbent homeowners versus younger new entrant renters. Through demographics it’s probably accidentally related to national party affiliation but that’s likely weak and completely incidental. Whether the locals like Trump or not has nothing to do with whether they’re in favor of multi family apartment building construction. The state (Democrat) has implemented pro-building policies that short-circuit local power to restrict it but again you should think of this as largely orthogonal to D vs R. Viewing this as a Trump-related culture war issue totally misses the mark IMO. (I’m responding to your comment but this goes for everyone in this thread).
Tomato
4d ago
Most of the US has gotten much richer and has also gained population. Prices are particularly so much higher in the Bay Area because it’s impossible to build new housing in the Bay Area. In other words, demand has increased everywhere but supply has been flat (or even negative given depreciation of the existing stock) particularly in California, due to incumbent local NIMBYs.
I'm sure that the wealthy home-owning Indians and Asians are voting for policies that keep their home prices high. But most wealthy homeowners in the areas you're thinking about are old white people. Indians and Asians are mostly renters. If you have some data on what they're voting for I'd be very interested.
Idle Hispanics and Blacks are not living in the Bay Area and are certainly not the reason that your parents' old home sold for $3m. That's such a ridiculous thing to say to be honest, I'm sort of shocked that you connect these two things. Hispanic immigrants, particularly those in the Bay Area, tend to work really hard and be model citizens compared to the natives.
Bay Area prices are high because incumbent (mostly) white people don't allow new construction.
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