Kevin Erdmann offers a helpful corrective to the "YIMBY triumphalism" of claiming that large relative rent declines in Austin and Minneapolis are results of YIMBY policies. He's mostly correct, especially about the rhetoric: arguing about housing supply from short term fluctuations is like arguing … [Read more...]
“The traditional model”
On Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen linked to a new paper in Real Estate Economics by Anthony W. Orlando and Christian L. Redfearn. It's a simple, empirical paper using data from 8 metro areas in California and Texas. It finds that net new housing creating appears to become more expensive and more … [Read more...]
No Solutions, Just Tradeoffs
File under "sad", not under "surprising": We provide evidence of intensified discriminatory behavior by landlords in the rental housing market during the eviction moratoria instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data collected from an experiment that involved more than 25,000 inquiries of … [Read more...]
The urban economics of sprawl
Should YIMBYs support or oppose greenfield growth? Two basic values animate most YIMBYs: housing affordability and urbanism. Sprawl puts those values into tension. Let's take as a given that sprawl is "bad" urbanism, mediocre at best. Realistically, it's rarely going to be transit-oriented, … [Read more...]
And the Oscar for best paper goes to…
A friend asked what are the best papers supporting land use liberalization. That's a broad question, but here are some of my answers. Affordability The basic case for zoning reform, across the political spectrum, is that the rent is too damn high. Michael Manville, Michael Lens, and Paavo … [Read more...]
Rent regulation in MoCo
In my home county, Montgomery County, Maryland, rent control is on the agenda after County Executive Marc Elrich and a county council majority each released competing proposals to cap annual rent increases. Adam Pagnucco responded with a series of posts at Montgomery Perspective about the … [Read more...]
Xiaodi Li, Misunderstood
Max Holleran's book, Richard Schragger's law review article, and randos on Twitter all find pessimistic views on housing supply from a paper by Xiaodi Li. But the paper is asking a narrow question and yielding an optimistic answer. This post tries to provide some context. EDITED 3/3: I've edited … [Read more...]
The Homeownership Society Can Be Fixed
Jerusalem Demsas is an eloquent and forceful voice on housing policy. In a recent article, she asked this question: "How do we ensure that housing is both appreciating in value for homeowners but cheap enough for all would-be homeowners to buy in?" She answered her own question "We can’t." I … [Read more...]
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