Hey friend! If you found any of the ideas here interesting, you''ll definitely enjoy our BRAND NEW book release where Daniel and Chuck cover all of this in much more detail. Learn more here: www.housingtrap.org/

Back in the day, when I purchased my first home to live-in; that was Miami in the early 1990s, first mortgages with rates of 7% to 9% were typical. People will have to accept the possibility that we won't ever return to 5%. If sellers must sell, home prices will have to decline, and lower evaluations will follow. Pretty sure I'm not alone in my chain of thoughts.

There's no middle class housing. It's not just low income, it's middle income housing that is gone. People are looking for half a million dollars for houses and condos. IN the cities it's even worse. You're looking at half a million dollars for a studio or one bedroom condo. Who the hell needs a half million dollar one bedroom? What are you supposed to do with that? We've allowed our housing to become a stock market.

“Luxury” is not a legal term. It is almost always used to sell lemons. After 10 years, the cheap construction begins to show cracks, but the people who built the units are long gone, leaving the problem to the people who fell for the trap. Luxury is code for cheap but unit are sold at extravagant prices

My grandparents can't even downsize. They need a smaller home without stairs separating the living spaces. Short of moving into a retirement home or retirement condo there are no options for them. They've even looked at buying a plot of land so they can build what they need from scratch! I find this especially troubling because all this equity everyone is so hyped to build is getting harder to tap into. You cannot downsize if your housing options are all the same or similarly expensive.

I’ve been working, saving and contributing towards financial freedom and early retirement, but the economy so far since the pandemic has eaten away most of my portfolio, what I want to know is this: Should I keep contributing to my portfolio in these unstable markets or do I look into alternative sectors.

You forgot to say the quiet part out loud - Housing should be a commodity not an instrument for wealth. It needs to stop being a faux investment for the middle class, most people just get bigger and bigger mortgages.. always in debt. Do we need another real estate bubble and crash before we start regulating the housing market?

I love Philadelphia because they’ve built the mid-rise housing that’s illegal to build almost everywhere today. However, this video raises the great point that merely fixing zoning nationwide isn’t sufficient to restart the now-lost housing dynamism that we so desperately need.

My wife from Peru grew up in a 3 story house with 20 rooms, lots of families, many generations. It started out as a single story detached home with a backyard. Over the course of 40 years, they built 2 more floors, built into the backyard, bought the house next door and combined them. Now, half of it is a boarding house for other people, the other half for the remaining family members. There is no backyard but there is a 3rd floor rooftop deck with amazing views, a nice gathering place. The city has grown so much around it that the rents in the area are quite high relative to local incomes. This asset is providing at least $10,000 per month in housing for all its ~20 tenants (the alternative they would cumulatively pay in rent). Its a source of savings and income for the family. Its cheap accommodations for college students, and new people coming to city. The US has shot itself in the foot by not allowing this type of simple, gradual, incremental growth. So much wealth aborted for about 80 years.

Great video as always. I do want to echo what another commenter said. Middle class housing is gone near me. All houses are so inflated that its beyond ridiculous. A house that sold in 2019 for $240k just went back up for sale in my town for $1.2 million. No significant work done. My town is full of renters that all work at the engineering firms around us, all these workers you would traditionally think of as well paid. We can't afford houses and there just arent enough houses for sale. When new developments are actually built I havent seen one listed for less than $700k. Thats a 2 bed 2 bath. Its crazy.

The summary here is on point. A static city, locked into place by NIMBYs and zoning laws, is never going to provide what an ever changing and growing society needs. And the difference between what housing we can provide and what housing is needed is spreading wider and wider with every passing day.

I’m from the U.S. but live elsewhere now. The house I own is considered quite large here but would be quite small in the U.S. - less than 2000 square feet. It’s the perfect size for a family of 4. It has a small lawn, just big enough for a couple dogs to play in. If I reach out the window, I can almost touch my neighbor’s fence, and he could do the same. I don’t want a larger house. I don’t want a larger yard. I don’t need more isolation. It’s hard enough to maintain my property at the size it is, and I couldn’t afford anything larger. I like knowing my neighbors. I love having groceries and other businesses within walking or biking distance. I was able purchase land, build the house, and pay it all off in 10 years. There is no way I could do that in the U.S. with comparable income. Personally, I think car dependency, unaffordable housing, and the lack of public health care are fueling a lot of the problems America is facing. It’s why in a booming economy with low unemployment, people don’t feel prosperous. Scarcity, fear, and isolation fuel gun violence and political polarization. I hope these issues can be fixed, but that would take political skill and courage, which are also sadly in short supply right now. The one thing that is encouraging is that more people are starting to recognize the problems.

Post WWII there were a lot of small (900-1200sq. ft.) 2 & 3 bedroom houses built in the Midwest city I grew up in. No one will finance or build these types of houses anymore because there's hardly any profit margin in them. The ones that are being built are done as cheaply as possible and it shows. This means that the housing stock in the city continues to get older and poorer. New houses in the outer suburbs start at $400K and up, effectively excluding the upcoming younger generation from being able to afford quality housing.

When we created the tools for the expectation that the cost of housing would rise, we created the expectation that the cost of housing would ALWAYS rise. At first, this just incentivized anyone who owns a home to oppose any new housing anywhere near them to protect their asset, but ever since 2008, housing has straight up become a stock market. Something like 30-40% of homes that are bought aren't bought by people who want to use them as a product, but by people who already own property who want an appreciating asset. we need to somehow get back to a point where housing isn't an investment, but the thing is, that is going to piss off a lot of people. There's no political will for it.

Yes, I've been saying this for years. When you treat a house as an investment you are willing to pay the cost it takes to buy that investment, not the lower price that is it's value as a home. We expect investments to appreciate faster than inflation and so we are willing to pay higher and higher prices because it's an investment. And then comes the day when people realize they can't afford a house.

I had to stay in an older neighborhood in Philly for work for a while. I was staying in a regular old house. Nearby were old rowhouses. And also nearby were little delis, private little take out food restaurants, a mini mart, private little grill bars, etc. Even though the particular area was old and kind of run down, it felt wonderful. It felt like way more of a neighborhood than where I live in suburbia. My newer, more modern, development feels like the dark ages. My five year old daughter is obsessed with the idea of going on a bike ride for ice cream. It is literally impossible to do here.

one thing that immediatly stood out to me is when talking about nimbys and development was that development apparently means "more of the same"... but an area with basically exclusively residences doesnt need more housing... it needs more shops, schools, small offices, services like doctors, dentists and public services... that collection of houses needs to become a town... and it needs to be less empty space and the places where these services already exist, need more housing, to turn a business enclave into a town

There's so much wrong with the housing situation. The prices for single family homes, the car dependency of the suburbs due to bad zoning, the lack of consequences for bad neighbor behavior that make people not want to live in denser housing. Makes it difficult to impossible for 95% of people. But above all....banks and companies should NOT own homes. Families and basic people should own homes.

Man, if I could get a loan to build an ADU in my backyard, I would 100% do it.

Zoning has locked US cities out of so many useful housing and neighborhood types. It's not just apartments, but also more "gentle" density -- single family homes on smaller lots. Other regulations make it more expensive, too. It's a tremendous irony that Cali has so many rules demanding develops include "affordable housing units," but because of all the regulations and paperwork, the cheapest housing is still $1k+ per square foot to build. It's insane. Get rid of the regulations. Let people build smaller, denser, more affordable housing.

These systems are not broken. I really dislike this narrative. These systems are working exactly as designed. They're just designed to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer, and more numerous. More desperate.

Keep in mind that during the 80’s people were encouraged to save due to the interest rates. Right now there’s very little incentive to save because those who are saving are watching those who are reckless taking it in. I’ve been trying to save for a home and it’s been discouraging to watch prices continue to not budge because there’s people willing to get into a mortgage where they’re paying 40% of their income. It’s insane.

A few thoughts...backdrop is in these parts in Nebraska, there's massive pressure for 'property tax relief' as the talking point is that 'property taxes are too high'. In addition to a housing crisis. 1) R1 zoning, from its very creation, was always intended to be expensive and exclusionary. It was always intended to make it impossible for poor people to live in a place. That is literally the entire point, and why Duncan McDuffy invented it ~1920: to stop a black dance hall from being built, by buying the land and subdividing it into large and expensive single family detached lots that only rich (read white) people could afford. Of course R1 housing is expensive. That is literally the entire point of it. It was illegal to racially bias home ownership in government finally in 1910, so instead the strategy was to just ban poor people (read minorities) with R1 exclusionary zoning. The issue though...is R1 zoning spread across the USA to every town/city like a bad TikTok video and is no the dominant form of housing--if there's even anything else allowed. 2) Here, our property taxes do cost people a good chunk of money...because of abysmal land use from R1 and suburbanization which leads to artificial scarcity of land and housing, which drives up prices. Exactly as intended in (1). The entire point of R1 is to be expensive. This isn't a 'bug', this was always the intended 'feature'. 3) We need some systematic zoning reform from the State. Local action is needed for certain....here in Nebraska our legislature has a 'that should be a city level solution' to housing.... Except even in this rural backwater of a state there are 583 different incorporated towns/burgs and cities each with its own distinct version of restrictive R1 zoning in addition to 93 counties which may have some kind of zoning (even if the city doesn't) too. You call an architect to design a house or ADU; if you decide to change the target-city for the build; that house design will need restarted from scratch. Some systematizing is needed and desirable.

I'm moving to a new city and the housing choices i've been able to find exemplify the root of the "luxury vs affordable" problem. I have an income high enough to afford the "luxury" apartments, but beacuse there is so much demand from people with my income and *higher* and such a constrained supply, I am having an incredibly difficult time actually getting into units that have waitlists a hundred people long. Meanwhile, the old stock of homes from the 50's that have been split into duplexes go for half the price, but beacuse a constrained and unfree market cannot provide me with the housing product i truly want (a really nice place), I may have no choice but to displace a low income person from low price housing stock. This is bad; bad for developers, bad for me, and bad for low income people.

Correction: We need affordable housing *to buy* , not to rent. Houses don't need to be 2000+ sqft. Make them 1000sqft, or even 700 sqft, like they were originally. Mark these as starter homes, and set fixed pricing with inflation stipulations so investors can't gobble them up, sit on them, and wait to resell them later. And you make anything under the regulatory square footage in specified allocated housing is "interest free", thus denoting that the sale of the property isn't subject to interest, and providing the "starter" consumer who purchases said home to experience generation wealth without the bank making large quantities of money. And if this consumer never leaves? No big deal, regulation around upkeep and maintenance or hefty fines will exist, etc. The problem with the housing market is the basic lack of regulation around selling costs, the outrageous length of loan with pair interest rates (30-year should be illegal, anything over 15 shouldn't exist), and LLCs owning "investment property" who are registered in entirely separate areas. Creating a final regulation: Rental property owners must live within a set distance of property, be it short or long term, and subject to after tenant inspections to confirm it's up to code before a new tenant can stay. That should be federal. I still believe we need a non-profit housing market to enforce healthy competition against the private housing market, thus keeping capitalism in check...

I live in a Boston suburb (or exurb, if you want) and I'm thrilled to see four (FOUR!) mixed-use developments under construction as I write this. Retail on the ground level with apartments above within the walkshed of our heavy rail line that runs into the city. One developer even fought to have less parking! It's like a dream come true... Or at least it's a beginning.

You can have all the supply in the world, but if you allow that supply to be hoarded by investors, you will still have affordability problems. You can't get out of the housing trap without effectively addressing the inflation investors bring about. On another note. If our banking system was a public utility as opposed to another profit-driven tool for investors, we could easily fund our housing needs.

Not just housing... For my entire life, the anwer to every economic problem has been to make fiance/investing more profitable. We're in another guilded age now, and despite the name, that is a very bad thing.

Something I see with a lot of this type of work, which doesn't invalidate the message but that I think needs to be considered more carefully: One of the speakers, early on, talks about "people not being able to live where or how they WANT to live, people who can't move where they WANT to be." And I don't want to single the gentleman out, because it's something I hear constantly from commentators and economists and politicians. It feels like a conscious choice, to soften the tenor of the conversation. But, make no mistake: in many cases, if not most, we're not talking about desires, but necessity. People who MUST live some place, or lose their job, or childcare, or be put in a dangerous position due to disability or identity or circumstance. We need to stop talking about wants. We need to acknowledge in our language that we're talking about things where the other side of "functional" is "destitution" or "imminent danger" or "death". Stop saying "want." Say "need."

It kills me because in America if you think housing is bad, you need to look north. To me the Idea of making housing an investment vehicle is a huge issue. In my area housing grows at a rate faster than even markets. It means anyone with housing already is actually gobbling up more housing as investments. Then using the rent system to just make the payments till they can refinance and do it again. I don't want people to lose their homes but the market can't correct without correcting. You see this even in China where there is enough housing but it's still expensive because it's a investment. Make renting affordable and long term safety and you will fix housing.

I really like this video. I really like the previous "Ned Flanders Drops". The "boots on the street" videos are great for getting the feeling and experiences to come across in video. This style of video really helps plainly lay out the problem, give some of the data, and go through solutions in a way that doesn't feel like an academic lecture - even if the topic is deserving of one. I could go on about how much I liked this video, but I'll stop there. We have got to unlock our cities and communities!

All new developments in my area are branded as “luxury housing”. A few years ago they built “luxury” SFRs (which had a lot less land than homes built in the 60’s-80’s). Then came “Luxury Townhomes”. Then came “Luxury Condos”. And now a nation of renters are offered expensive “Luxury Apartments”. Not sure how “Luxury” and “Apartment” can be in the same sentence. The QOL for middle-class America has gone down so much. With the interest on our national debt about to exceed tax revenue, I know there are even harder times ahead.

One of the last large plots of land (almost a full block in size) in my suburban city became available. Developer built a handful of super expensive townhouses. Land could have easily held over 100 apartments, but its 20 luxury townhouses.

Yup, i waa trying to buy an entry level home and i wasnt able to because of the demand for homes. I kept losing them, being outbid. These homes I was looking at would be illegal to build today, they are all "too small" to br able to rebuild new.

It will be painful, but it sounds like what we need is for the housing bubble to completely burst again, but this time let the big banks fail for leading us into this mess, and instead prop up the individual homeowners like we should have done in 2008. Then come back in with these new products to get more people into homes at an affordable rate.

A solution to this is something that Vancouver has implemented. A vacancy tax. Something like high vacancy taxes could work, where real estate companies and real estate owners who have homes that they don't live in and don't rent out would have to pay heavy vacancy taxes, thus heavily incentivizing them to bring those houses to the market to rent instead of keeping it out of the market so it could build up value as an investment over time. This would especially force massive real estate megacorps who have thousands of units or luxury apartments to have to put those up in much lower rental prices just so they don't have to deal with with the vacancy tax. Try speaking with your neighbors and people around your area, bring up this vacancy tax idea, stoke that anti-corpo hate, and try to get the vacancy tax onto a local referendum or at least use that as an actionable and popular policy to pressure your councilpersons and local representatives to implement. A reason why something like this, which a local town can use effectively on even massive real estate megacorporations, is the fact that real estate is not liquid; if the real estate megacorps don't want to bring their properties up to rent at prices that people are will to afford, they can't just pick up their houses and move it somewhere else. Their houses and real estate properties are stuck there. Does this help, friend?

"how do we get back to a bubble?" Hit the nail on the fin head. never before has this situation been clearer. time for the pitchforks..

The banking system is broken as well. I was in my jome in 2009, i asked for a modification. I was told by the bank after submitting my income and expenses that i needed to EAT LESS. YES you heard me right, the bank said i was spending too much on food. I did eat out, i shopped at low budget stores and cooked all my meals in bulk, but yet i am told we eat too much. I paid $180,000 for my home, i lived in it for 9 years, i foreclosed, they sold it to someone else for $125,000, how is that fair? If a bank is willing to take more than a $40,000 hit why couldn't they have le ME stay there for that amount or higher.

Several issues here. We started to build more suburbs and single family dwellings but forget the diversification of homes (including condos) for those who don't need or want a single family home. We started to build homes larger and larger to justify increased cost. The land itself should appreciate in value while the home decreases in value to off set the difference, why on earth does a home that becomes older (and typically) needs more upkeep increase in value?

I feel for NIMBYs when they say high rise development kills the charm of neighborhoods. I just wish we developed similarly to Montreal, Chicago, Philadelphia. The 3 story rowhomes are beautiful and done on a large enough could provide us all with adequate housing without cramming us into condos. That said I still think condo towers have a place, next to transit corridors for example. Having commercial/residential mixed zoning would also help a lot.

My main problem thus far to be honest is, how? Right now at least, I know one councilperson (not MY councilperson, but someone who heard me and was sympathetic if not encouraging of Strong Town ideas) who is on board in my suburb. It is awfully easy to lose hope, given how little the rest care given how long I've spoken at council meetings thus far. I don't know what to even start doing after this, as I'm kind of alone for the moment. I don't have, pretty much any deep connection with my neighbors aside from passing by, so I'm not sure how I can turn the current situation around until next election cycle in 2026. My councilperson is kind of openly hostile (politically speaking) to any changes to the codes, and we know how bad local election turnout tends to be. Has anyone at Strong Towns have experience starting from such few people and finding ways to actually change anything within such a system?

7:10 this is exactly what is happening to me- the ADU in the back yard that I could downsize and move into next year is tied up in red tape- the city wants more ADUs but they have giant fees. Meanwhile, little sister across the country, recently lost her husband only 7 years after moving into their (giant) dream home. So she is in there all alone. And it's Florida: if localities start to do something popular, one can almost bet their governor will sign a law saying that no municipality can alter their zoning to be different than the rest of the state...

New housing being built is most often over sized, 2 story homes...usually in hoa neighborhoods. Why not build reasonable ranch style homes? New homes are overpriced in part because they aren't modest. This means that a modest, 20 or 30 year old home inflates in value, because even at $250k, it's still a lot cheaper than the new $400k homes...even though the old home was only $80k when new.

I would like to have economists look at the impact of private land ownership on the housing crisis. I'd like us to revisit what Henry George said about the subject. If society is the one to capture the value increase in the land only that is inherent in cities, then that money can be used for the public good. As it is, these housing bubbles have arisen because that value gets captured privately and I suspect that value is being concentrated up the wealth ladder. I think this feeds into the video's notion of citizens of communities having a vested interest in the wealth generated by the constant change happening in the community.

A lot of the problem is that the lower rungs were cut out of the ladder. There's nowhere to go but on the street if you need to downsize: - Building affordable homes is no longer profitable because of the fees and regulations. - Manufactured housing is often not allowed. New mobile home parks are not allowed, and the existing ones are destroyed. - Having more than two people per bedroom is prohibited in rental property. - Living in campers is often prohibited, even if you own the land. - Single-room rental buildings were shut down and demolished. The solution can't and won't come from the government--they created the problem. Oh, you say, you don't want trailer parks, you don't want residential hotels, you don't want large families in small apartments. Fine. You get homeless living on the street instead. Are you happy now?

North Idaho where I live has seen a massive boom in housing but every place is unaffordable. Studio apartments are no less than a thousand a month and houses that were built for around 70,000 in the 90s are over 400,000 now. And there are no jobs around here that pay enough to live alone.

we did NOT trap ourselves, they trapped us.

Question to Chuck and Strong Towns: Can we build Vienna style public housing, cutting out Wall Street and the landlord profits?

The American car dependent culture resulted in low density housing - urban sprawl. When there are not enough housing to meet demand, prices go up. Many workplaces have parking lots that are +3x that of the building itself. Local governments should provide sticks and carrots to convert 20-40% of workplaces with +200 to dense, affordable housing. Employees of those places can skip the commute and $12k/year cost of owning a car.

They need to streamline permitting, reduce gotchas and help fund housing development. Even looking at being a real estate developer it’s just seems like a land mine of rules, regulations, gotchas like contaminated properties, zoning and then don’t get started with funding. It’s all money up front with the hope of selling at profit after a million people get their cut. We need to go back to prefab homes like what sears used to sell. You order and all is shipped to you at a decent price and then you build. I’m absolutely certain 100 years ago zoning, laws, financing and soil contamination was much much less of a concern.

I'm an older millennial and we had a family young, so we bought our house just as things were starting to heat up in 2015. We paid $160k for it then (and that was a stretch financially at the time). Based on what similar homes are selling for around us today it would probably sell for closer to $350k. In less than a decade! We've fixed it up here and there but for the most part it's just become older in that time 😂. It's nothing fancy either, 1600sq ft with 4 small bedrooms and 3 small bathrooms. We probably couldn't afford it comfortably if we purchased the same house today. Just crazy!

Where I live roughly 1-in-5 of the new McMansions and condo apartment units have owners but are vacant. They have been purchased by off-shore interests to hide money from their home country government's clutches, or as a relatively safe store of value not correlated to stock markets, or (some say) to launder ill-gotten gains. Unfortunately, this has added more "juice" to the upward price spiral that is making homes unaffordable for many people here. Not good. Cheers.

I'm going back to school in my mid-40s and after a couple terms of exploration I'm most likely going to go for a masters in urban planning. Stuff like this is fascinating because it indicates we are on the cusp of a huge opportunity to do a great amount of good through policy changes and more thoughtful application of existing statutes. I will be following your work closely

Cities that "relax" regs need to ensure that doesn't encourage speculaters and businesses to drive up prices.

It is difficult to make exact projections for the housing market as it is still unclear how quickly or to what degree the Federal Reserve will reduce inflation and borrowing costs without having a substantial negative impact on demand from consumers for anything from houses to cars.

All of this is true, and the bottom line is simply that if zoning allowed more public transportation accessible, affordable, housing then prices would drop. This isn't a question of lowering construction costs. Municipalities make it next to impossible to build anything that isn't luxurious and super pricey.

asserting that when people say "we don't want luxury housing, we want affordable housing" really means they want subsidized housing is insanity

The problem in my view is the following. Stop allowing corporations from buying houses. (Less demand and more supply should lower house prices) Allow more zoning and construction of new developments Subsidize builders to reduce cost of building homes. Offer bigger tax incentives and discounts to first time home buyers. Lastly for the renters remove the software that syncs different agencies pricing structures that price gouge renters. Create legislation that creates fair rent allocation for units.

All anyone really wants or needs is peace and quiet and that can be found almost nowhere and rarely if ever is it affordable. So to hell with this world.

my town is 1000 people, 45 minutes away from the nearest town. The house built 25 years ago that is across the street just went up for sale for $289k. My house was built in 1883 I just bought 2 years ago. It's value went up 80% from 22 to 23. This seems like a good thing in the abstract. But that also means my taxes also went up in proportion. Property taxes are expensive no matter where you live. Owning a home is NOT an investment unless you intend to flip it, or rent it. The total cost of home ownership over 30 years is about 100% of it's value. You will have replaced everything by then. roof, siding, windows, furnace, AC, flooring, appliances.

Just to add to the record, there's also runaway material costs, a skilled labor shortage, and the fact that currency is being debased (money printer go brrr), inflating asset prices - including, and especially, real estate (which shouldn't even be an asset class, but that's a whole other topic/debate).

Things haven't become bad enough yet for us to do something. The water needs to be at a rapid boil before we even notice.

Love to see practical ways trying to break this problem down.

Missing from this video: private equity buying up starter homes and preventing families from entering the market as owners. The fed needs to step in to regulate this class of "investment" in favor of individuals, not corporations.

I’ll save 19 minutes of your day: there’s no solution to the housing crisis.

To summarize "Let people build what they want"....I built a very comfortable home all my self with zero previous experience for 45 grand not to "code" which has worked perfectly and hasn't fallen down. We have over regulated everyone into an inefficient and expensive corner with nowhere to go at a time where there has never been more knowledge freely available to do it yourself, its mental. Im not a rebel but Im sure as fark not going to be told I can't build myself shelter and then not be offered a reasonable alternative from them at the same time.

Great info here. I'm in a limited equity housing cooperative in Chicago. We desperately need share loans, but banks don't want to offer them.

So, the inevitable question after this is, how do we get everyday people enough funding to be able to make their own projects, and how do we make sure that larger real estate investors don't try to stop them. So much of our housing is used like a stock market. I would love people doing things like this in my community. I don't even want a large suburban house. But we have huge investors making large suburban housing projects, not to mention silicon valley outside our door selling us snake oil solutions of "future" cities. These people have an investment in making sure housing stays expensive. There would have to be a legislation side to this to make sure that there is no backlash. I wouldn't be surprised if the people trying to do small scale things in my area are being shut down in one way or another already. How do we stop that from happening?

My old family home is now over $500,000 bucks. It was bought new in the 1970's for like $80,000's. It's in a Cheap HOA, and right off a Main Street. It has no pool, single level home, 4 bedrooms and 2 baths. I've seen the pictures of what it looks like after the flip, looks lovely. But at the same time, the cost is vial.

Zoning is a huge issue, and so is building codes that have been overblown due to lobbyists, making it unnecessarily expensive to build.

The biggest myth of homeownership is that you NEVER own your home. The focus of banks being heartless and foreclosing if payments become difficult because the only mortgage offered was a variable pales in comparison with what your local government does if you miss a property tax payment. You may pay off your mortgage in 30yrs but you’re NEVER done paying property taxes. And THAT is increasingly becoming more difficult to manage.

This video nails it. As a small time property owner I can attest to Zoning being a major preventer of building more affordable housing. I have tried to build these units and been stopped.

I liked that first guy. Really spelled things out and presented ideas clearly and articulately. The second guy really talked in circles. I know that planners hate Nimbys, but they are not in any way a problem. People move to places they like and set up lives their. It's unreasonable to expect them to be welcoming to outside institutions trying to move in with a bunch of projects that fundamentally redefine their neighborhood. At the end of the day it is their neighborhood and it is up to outside forces to work with them. Now I want to be clear that I am talking about the people active in their local governments and not institutional or corporate lobbying. The latter is something I can get on board with being problematic and not serving peoples interests.

tax breaks to corporations that create jobs paying 50% of livable wage because we have a great network of donors is not a local answer...we can do better.

As a result of rent controls were removed in an attempt to encourage the building of rentals units you now have large corporate landlords owning hundreds of single-family homes charging maximum rent to achieve a 25 to 50% profit and they are also paid ot keep the units empty as well. Thus, we also have unaffordable rent in a very limited number of rental buildings

EXCELLENT! Thank you! I appreciate & live the way you broke all of that down & explained it in such a clear, concise way!

The higher end areas complain that they don't have workers at the regular service jobs, but there aren't any homes or apartments for the workers 10 to 15 miles close to the town or city

Even is you build new houses, how do you stop investment firms from buying up the supply? They have the capacity to offer much more money than what you would be able to get from a family that needs a house. And then the investment firms will keep the prices high, because to them housing isn't a necessity, but a way to make a lot of money with. To me the end of the video feels a bit like the residential selective garbage collection: pay no attention to the large industrial polluters, only individuals can save the planet!

Basically in housing now is it is everything or nothing with nothing in-between middle-tier housing for the middle-class

I’m so happy I found this video. I’m one of those citizen, real estate developers. I want to make affordable housing for people. I don’t care about money. I just want people to be safe in their homes. I’m definitely subscribing because I want to help. Thank you for the video

The housing problem is also tied, not just to the homeless problem, but also the mental health problem and the drug/opioid problem, and the retail theft problem. These shouldn't be footnotes and absolutely not ignored, nor avoided. Its a game of whack-a-mole.

There are many solutions, but here's my two favorite (realistic) ones to speculate about. 1) Disallow any individual or entity from owning more than two (maybe one) properties at once. If property scalpers (or "investors") can't buy up something in demand without using it, the prices can't skyrocket. Least, not as out-of-control as we see now. 2) Have the government build and maintain flophouses (or some very minimal housing) and only charge the amount to maintain them; including capital cost divided by expected days of operation. No profiting, but no luxuries. If developers only build expensive housing while nobody is forced to buy them, they won't buy them, the lots will rot, and this property gouging business will be financially insolvent.

Infrastructure based Transferable Development Rights (TDR) could be a possible solution for the problem. The idea is to assign a maximum amount of development potential to each land area based on the existing infrastructure. Land owners could then build, buy or sell surplus TDR within their area, as long as they follow the building codes and pay property tax. This would create incentives for efficient land use and resource allocation.

Maybe also worth noting that boarding houses (roughly "efficiency apartments") used to be extremely common.

So appreciative of the hopeful message and actionable suggestions.

It’s so silly that homes are considered an “asset”. They wear and tear and COST money to maintain like a car, like a liability. Like debt. Sure, you can rent it out. But besides that, it’s totally unnatural that its price goes up in price. Unnatural. You won’t have vulture profiteers all over the world investing in homes if homes didn’t appreciate. Houses should depreciate

The lumber industry and building codes are to blame too. There are way cheaper and safer building materials and methods other than stick construction. But codes and the lumber industry won't allow them. Home prices can be cut in half if we wanted. But government is in the pockets of lumber.

Pre-ordered the book. Can’t wait to read it tomorrow!

so how much of this is nebulous cultural change and how much do you have concrete policy ideas for?

And more movement of people means people meeting other sub-cultures reducing the bubble effect. When you neighbour is a nice latino there is less reason to demonise them.

It's so sad that the strong towns movement can't succeed in modern America. The problem isn't the message. The message is fantastic! The problem is that the institutional design of modern America disinscentivezes grassroots participation in the system so much that the barrier at this point is impossible to overcome enmass. The fact is that not only did cities at the time lack zoning, but they also had powerful local democratic systems and incentives to participate. We won't be able to fix most towns and cities until we fix the political structures that keep towns and cities the way they are.

Two minutes in, and I'm already thinking: "It's almost like housing shouldn't be a sold on a market as a commodity."

I live in Canada, so perhaps the discussion is slightly different. In my country, rampant speculation is the root of our problem. And the problem is two-fold: there are many empty homes but they are used only for flipping, and, a downturn will destroy many retirees who are relying on artificially inflated housing.

The problem is all their building are "luxury apartment" complexes, which aren't really 'luxury", with high monthly maintenance fees which are just like rent. So people are paying mortgages and rent and still not really "own" anything. Zoning is there to protect neighborhoods and stop this from happening. Deregulation doesn't help people it hurts people.

I'd be cool with a top down law that makes it illegal for local governments to prevent people from building the size homes they want to live in. Not everyone wants nor needs 800+ sqft. Heck, the tiny house movement appears to be saying not everyone wants 400+ sqft.

I have been studying this housing crisis for a long time now, I can say that you have only scratched the surface of this issue. It is insanely complex thanks to the bureaucratic machine. Did you know that 23% of the cost of a new home is taxation and regulation. The fact that we have to ask the government permission to shelter ourselves is a serious issue. Housing should be an earned right, not a privilege.

I just don't have any hope any more. Can't save up, rent keeps rising. Landlords getting fatter while my hair turns gray at 26. I'm so tired man....

What are we doing here, why are we ignoring the obvious? We need to get PE out of the housing

I live in an area where housing supply has become extremely dire. You can easily become homeless simply because you can't find a place available to move to if you lose your current housing. Even what housing is available is overpriced, usually extremely outdated and cramped. Basic housing is now sold as "luxury". I recently was driving by a nearby town I don't usually drive through and saw lots of apartment buildings under construction. I looked them up and they were basic apartments being sold as "luxury". There was nothing luxury about them, it's just become a luxury to have a decent apartment.

My biggest problem with high density housing (apartments) is HOA. Here in the US they are oppressive and often mismanaged. They operate with impunity and often victimized the its weakest members. There must be government oversight and individual HOA board members to be held accountable for their actions. Then maybe they will perform their duty in the interest of the community instead of their own.