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Entrepreneurs and the Changing Political Economy of Housing
Discussions about land use reform focus on policy – as they should. Overcoming NIMBYism will require deep legal, political, and regulatory reform. That said, entrepreneurs may be helping to short circuit the perverse incentives that give rise to NIMBYism in the first place. New companies may be encouraging homeowners to embrace density and helping to break the tie between homeownership and anti-deveolpment attitudes in the process. Creating Demand for Density Belong is an early stage startup making it easier for homeowners to rent out their single family home. The main use case is that of a homeowner renting (instead of selling) after a move. A lot goes into becoming a landlord and Belong’s elevator pitch is that they simplify the process. The company’s customers access insurance, connect to contractors for repair and renovation, get help with listing, and find anything else they need all in one place. To the extent they’re successful, they’ll be creating a class of small scale landlords with every reason to develop missing middle housing. Transforming the family home from a speculative asset to one producing a monthly stream of revenue makes ADUs and duplexes more attractive. More units mean more tenants and therefore better monthly returns. And once an owner is no longer an owner-occupier, “neighborhood character” concerns become less salient as well. That said, this is admittedly speculative. Whether single property landlords will be as YIMBY as I suspect is an empirical question for the future. More immediate, though, are the incentives another new startup is creating for homeowners across California. Densification as the Path to Homeownership Homestead is a property developer that’s using legislation like California’s SB9 and SB10 to build housing. They work with homeowners interested in the upside of doing a lot split and adding housing like a duplex or an […]
