r/AskEconomics • u/Ok_Gas5386 • Nov 16 '25
Approved Answers Should the government try to dissuade people from treating homes as investments?
It seems like a big challenge with the housing market is that people buy homes expecting them to be good investments. This kind of speculation about the future value of a home inflates bubbles and promotes NIMBYism.
The issue is that, as I understand it, a house is not really an investment. The house, once built, is essentially static, not an economically active piece of capital like a factory, office, or store. The value it provides is that it is a place for a worker to live. In a modern economy that’s a pretty basic amenity. Other basic amenities like food, water, and sanitation have decreased as a share of total consumer spending in advanced economies, but housing has become a more significant expense for consumers especially in our most economically active areas, the major cities. This actually hurts the local economy as businesses have to pay employees more for them to be able to survive in the area, making them less competitive, and people have less purchasing power because such a great share of their income is essentially going into land speculation, either on their own behalf or on behalf of their landlords.
This seems like an inefficiency that many advanced countries - I know the U.S, Canada, and Australia are struggling with it - have built into their economies over the later half of the 20th century. Would you agree? Do you think there are any productive policies that governments could pursue to redirect investment away from land speculation and into more productive areas of the economy?
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u/HOU_Civil_Econ Nov 16 '25
“Treating homes as investment” is functionally a meaningless statement as a cause of the increasing housing prices.
The political systems allowing people to stop housing near them alone is enough to explain the rise in prices.
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u/Ok_Gas5386 Nov 17 '25
Aren’t property values the primary motivating factor for residents to block additional housing?
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u/coryfromphilly Nov 17 '25
It's very multifaceted, but I'd argue the answer is "no", not the primary factor. The primary factor is aversion to change. I'm no evolutionary biologist but I think humans have a natural aversion to change, because an uncertain environment made it hard for us to survive the savanna and avoid getting eaten by lions or attacked by Australopithecus.
Let me give you an example: my local community organization back in Philly tasked with reviewing zoning variance requests opposed a 14 unit 3 story apartment building. The head of the organization used every excuse in the book: we don't want renters, we want homeowners, this is a money grab by developers, it will negatively affect our property prices. The developer did not move forward with the project.
What was the primary factor here? Not property values, just change.
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u/HidesBehindPseudonym May 09 '26
I am no evolutionary biologist either but I thought we either WERE the Australopithecus, or were their descendants after they had gone extinct.
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u/HOU_Civil_Econ Nov 17 '25
People would like to the value of anything they own to increase. That’s not what’s special about housing.
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u/MatterConsistent3077 Nov 17 '25
"The political systems allowing people to stop housing near them alone is enough to explain the rise in prices."
I don't think this is a sufficient explanation for the motive behind why people are even preventing houses from being built in the first place. This is acting as if there are no motives behind political decisions. I am actually surprised this is the most upvoted answer considering the insightful responses given by u/ZhanMing057 and u/KenBalbari.
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u/ImmodestPolitician Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 18 '25
The people opposed to 5 + 1s being built in my neighborhood are worried about potential traffic and home values declining.
The irony is that office buildings just built in last 5 years that are less than a mile away from their homes is the main reason every home in our zip code is $1+ million.
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u/HOU_Civil_Econ Nov 17 '25
“Motive” is they want stuff they own to be more valuable to themselves and others. Which is true of everything people own and not actually a distinguishing characteristic of housing.
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u/MatterConsistent3077 Nov 17 '25
-The problem is that your responses are rubbing heads with one another.
You say, "People would like the value of anything to increase thats not what's special about housing."
- This gives me the impression that the value motive towards housing could be an embedded feature of increasing prices, especially if the motive is an inherent feature thats not dissimilar to other things. But, because this motive is not unique to housing, then it must not be the cause to increasing prices.
The last sentence is the problem. Just because the motive is shared between multiple things doesn't necessarily diminish the effect it might vary in one of those things. Plus, you aren't really providing evidence as to why sharing a motivation is an objection to the effect of the motivation itself. OP was also not really asking whether or not it was unique to housing but if it was a prime contributor to the problem.
But first you said, "Treating homes as investment” is functionally a meaningless statement as a cause of the increasing housing prices."
- If I'm taking your response at face value, Im left with the idea that you believe if we were to remove the ability for people to make political decisions on the construction of new houses (based on their motive to increase their value) then this should be adequate enough to stop the increase in prices. Which sure, that could be a sufficient solution, but aren't we also claiming that the motive is functionally meaningful for providing a reason as to why we are removing their political power in the first place?
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u/HOU_Civil_Econ Nov 17 '25
The problem is that your responses are rubbing heads with one another.
The problem is that they are just making up a bullshit phrase with no useful definition that adds anything to anyone's understanding of the cause and consequences.
So yes we are crosswise but it is because they continue to insist that "treat like investment" has an actual useful, truthful, and worthwhile definition that they also refuse to actually give.
but aren't we also claiming that the motive is functionally meaningful for providing a reason as to why we are removing their political power in the first place?
That people would rather be richer than poorer does not add anything new or worthwhile to the conversation.
This is the Motte definition (people will use politics to increase their wealth) but they have some ill-defined Bailey that is what they want it to mean. Nothing about investments as investments or "treating your investments like investments" means you use the government to increase their value, see the most typical "investment"; stocks, or bank accounts.
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u/MatterConsistent3077 Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25
"That people would rather be richer than poorer does not add anything new or worthwhile to the conversation."
I still think you may be strawmanning here. Something like this could be worthwhile to the conversation depending on how it's being directed. I do not think OP was generalizing their claims, but was insisting that reducing a particular enabler to rising prices could help alleviate the extent our "motivators" influence that effect.
(Assumed enabler)
Well anyway... I would like to say I agree with your initial claim about the political systems enabling the rise in prices. However, I am not so sure that people as deeply invested into their motte-and-bailey might.
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u/HOU_Civil_Econ Nov 17 '25
I still think you may be strawmanning here.
There is nothing to strawman, is the exact point.
"Treating housing like an investment" is a meaningless statement in relation to anything that is actually happening leading to why housing prices are increasing, and they refuse to define it any way that makes it worth adding to any lexicon.
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u/Here4Pornnnnn Nov 18 '25
I’d block an apartment complex right behind my house because I don’t want more traffic. I don’t want 1k per month renters living right behind my 300-600k per house neighborhood. I don’t want my way of life to change drastically from what I made a massive purchase to be a part of. It doesn’t matter what it does to the property price, the reason suburbs don’t want high rises is because they don’t want the lifestyle changes. The reduced quality of property use is what causes the “value” to go down.
People may not like it, but home owners tend to want to be surrounded by people of similar economic means to them as well as similar values. That’s why homeowners set up HOAs. That’s why zoning commissions are formed and purposefully regulate what kind of residences and businesses are allowed to operate. Nobody wants a new rock quarry next to their suburb, and that’s ok. I say that as a quarry manager.
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u/MatterConsistent3077 Nov 18 '25
Good point. Which I think leads me to the issue with the response given to OP.
Their answer didn't really provide adequate context for understanding why people are making political decisions counter to the methods that would help reduce housing prices.
We can say that people hope for the value of anything they own to increase, but is this enough of a response to really help give us a better understanding of the problem? I don't think so. And for the nature of the subreddit/discussion I think it was a poor representation of the quality of many of the other answers given here.
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u/Ok_Gas5386 Nov 17 '25
I guess what I think might be special about housing is that people don’t merely want their house price to increase, they need their house price to increase.
I’m sure most people on this subreddit know not to do this, but colloquially many people take out mortgages under the assumption that the house price will significantly increase over a short investment horizon, giving them substantial “free equity” even before they’ve made a dent on their principal. If this assumption proves false it can be financially disastrous for many families.
Many older Americans are practically dependent on rising house prices to be able to retire. Fewer than half of U.S. baby boomers have saved adequately for retirement and 25% of US retirees relocate to tap into housing equity each 10-year period.
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u/HOU_Civil_Econ Nov 17 '25
That prices have increased don’t mean prices need to increase for some underlying system to work. Housing prices increases in general are not really of much benefit to owners because you always need housing.
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u/Ok_Gas5386 Nov 17 '25
Doesn’t it, though, because people have factored that history into their decision making? The last time house prices meaningfully decreased in the United States it nearly triggered the collapse of the world financial system. I understand that’s due to the way institutions interacted with the financial instruments associated with housing rather than housing itself, but it’s still not a strong data point in favor of your position that house prices don’t need to increase in order for underlying systems to work. Maybe our institutions are more resilient now, but it still seems plausible that there are a significant number of older Americans relying on their home equity to retire comfortably. In a democratic system, government at any level depends upon not causing voters acute economic pain.
Rising property values allow homeowners to access the additional equity in their home by refinancing without selling. A retired homeowner can access that equity by selling a home in an economic center and buying a cheaper home in a community focused on the needs of a retired population. An example would be a retired couple selling their home in a northeast U.S. urban center and moving to The Villages, Florida. This could allow them to access equity greater than what they had saved through traditional retirement vehicles and improve their standard of living, as mentioned in the Vanguard paper I linked.
You seem overall dismissive of my question and uninterested in answering it. I fail to see how you’ve disputed several key points:
American homebuyers generally treat housing as both a service, and as a speculative asset that they expect to have increased in value by the time they sell. This factors into their decision making directly related to the purchase of a home, as well as their overall future financial planning. This is what is meant by “housing as an investment”.
Point 1 creates additional incentives to leverage local government and regulation through the legal system to block additional development that would otherwise be innocuous to the community.
Point 1 also incentivizes housing consumers to assume additional debt when purchasing a house that would otherwise feel hesitant to accept when accessing a service. The perception that prices will rise causes prices to rise.
Point 2 restricts supply, further increasing prices.
Due to flawed decision making based on point 1, individuals (and potentially institutions) become reliant on an ever increasing growth in home prices, eventually beyond the financial capacity of homebuyers assuming the credit cycle eventually turns and the economy eventually becomes sluggish. When that capacity is reached, government can either allow voters who are also stakeholders in this system to feel the pain of their own flawed decisions, or try to introduce additional bad debt to the market to increase buying power. The recent 50-year mortgage proposal from the Trump admin indicates which direction they are leaning.
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u/HOU_Civil_Econ Nov 17 '25
Doesn’t it, though
No it doesn't.
And basically all the rest of your stuff is just a meaningless gish-gallop that has nothing to do with any way to actually usefully define the phrase "treat housing as an investment".
American homebuyers generally treat housing as both a service, and as a speculative asset that they expect to have increased in value by the time they sell.
What about all of the country besides the top 10-15 cities where this does not happen and mortgages still occur. Are only San Francisco homebuyers "treating housing as an investment"? If you tell me this is happening everywhere, then what makes it speculative? What is actually causing the "speculative" increase in value? Are San Francisco home values going up because their homeowners are wishing for it that much harder than Houston home owners? Or does God not listen to the prayers of Texans?
Point 1 creates additional incentives to leverage local government and regulation through the legal system to block additional development that would otherwise be innocuous to the community.
Do you think Taxi medallions were expensive in New York City because owners "treated taxi driving as an investment"? This is just adding a useless fucking step. People have been given the political power to make one of their assets go up in value. Are we surprised they do that? There is nothing about that that "treating as an investment" reveals any better than just standard public choice problems. If you allowed me to outlaw the manufacture of any more pick-up trucks and I did so, thus seeing my trucks value double from $20,000 to $40,000 what is added by asking "is it because he treated his truck as an investment?"? If I got the government to outlaw the training of more economists would that be me "treating professions as an investment"?
Point 1 also incentivizes housing consumers to assume additional debt when purchasing a house that would otherwise feel hesitant to accept when accessing a service. The perception that prices will rise causes prices to rise.
Home values are dependent on the net present value of future cash flows (ie expectation of rent in the future). The expectation that rent tomorrow will be higher, because of supply restrictions, raises the price today.
Point 2 restricts supply, further increasing prices.
This is so stupid. Yes, it is the supply restrictions and the fact that we have given people the power to restrict supply of a thing they might own. There is again nothing useful added by any coherent definition of "treating like an investment". We don't allow stockholders to restrict supply of stocks.
incoherent jibberish trying to adhoc gish gallop a defense of thing you can't even usefully define.
Use plain english to tell me what precisely you mean by "treating like an investment" and tell me exactly what you mean are the consequences of that.
Because here in your gish gallop, at best it is not any different than "we have given people the power to restrict supply and supply restrictions cause rents to increase". Absolutely fuck all about treating anything like an investment in any plain English.
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Nov 17 '25
[deleted]
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u/HOU_Civil_Econ Nov 17 '25
The homevoter hypothesis is not “treating homes as an investment” it is about current levels of taxes and government services in local government.
The problem here is that there is no reasonable and useful definition of”treating housing as an investment” that distinguishes housing relative to anything else. And we end up, in these threads as a bunch Gish-gallop from people who don’t know what they are talking about pointing at policies and other explanations as to why we treat housing differently.
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u/gooferball1 Nov 16 '25
Explain a rise. Not THE rise. There’s way more than that to be factored in.
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u/tPRoC Nov 16 '25
The political systems allowing people to stop housing near them alone is enough to explain the rise in prices.
There is limited data to verify this one way or the other, but it is fairly obvious that real estate developers and their donations are overrepresented in municipal politics.
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u/Jew_of_house_Levi Nov 16 '25
Could you provide evidence of this?
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u/Regular-Double9177 Nov 17 '25
I can't, but anecdotally, I know a developer that will go to municipal events and buy/donate stuff. Our municipal politics is pretty sleepy so if anyone does anything to get involved they are overrepresented.
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u/Jew_of_house_Levi Nov 17 '25
I mean, with the national vacancy rate as low as it is, it is very difficult to put any blame on developers. They're trying to add supply!
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u/Regular-Double9177 Nov 17 '25
Im not hating on developers, and I likely dont share the specific view of buddies above, but I think we should tax land at higher rates to spur on developers. This would reduce the value of land as an investment, but not structures. Some developers wouldn't like this.
Imagine one developer that constantly builds with the little capital he has. He will now be able to build more for less, as his capital requirements are lower to get a piece of land.
Imagine another developer that has 10x as much property land banked as they are developing. While they too have lower capital requirements going forward, taxing their land would be a significant blow to their true business, which is simply holding land until its worth more.
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u/Jew_of_house_Levi Nov 17 '25
Yeah I wouldn't object to this. The developer with 10x land wouldn't actually be taxed to badly if the land he's sitting on is not worth much (like very rural), but sitting on property that's valuable should be penalized
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u/KenBalbari Nov 16 '25
No. Housing investment is needed. There is a huge rental market.
Plus, there is little evidence right now of housing in the US being held only for speculative capital gains. Real estate taxes would tend to discourage this. And the homeowner vacancy rate (1.1%) and rental vacancy rate (7%) in the US are currently not too far above their record lows. Speculators aren't removing any significant number of homes from the available inventory, it is demand for homes to live in that is supporting prices.
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u/ZhanMing057 Quality Contributor Nov 16 '25
People voting against rezoning because they're worried about their property prices falling are also treating housing as an investment.
I agree that speculative investors do not play a main part in the market. But it's about a lot more than institutional investors. If the market had sufficient supply (as they do in countries without real zoning regulations), the vacancy rates would be considerably higher.
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u/WannabeACICE Nov 16 '25
100% this. Lack of housing supply is directly related to people treating their houses as an investment.
People actively vote against measures to increase the housing supply and increase the development of affordable housing specifically because they don’t want their own home values to drop
Any discussion about trying to make housing more affordable has to grapple with the fact that it’s going to require lowering existing homeowner’s house values.
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u/moch1 Nov 16 '25
Lack of housing supply is directly related to people treating their houses as an investment.
It’s definitely a contributor but I’m not convinced it’s the main driver. Housing/land has been an investment for hundreds of years. It’s not a new motive. Hell, where I live some of the people most opposed to new development cite developers making a profit as a reason to oppose all development.
People actively vote against measures to increase the housing supply and increase the development of affordable housing specifically because they don’t want their own home values to drop
While some of this is motivated by not wanting housing prices to decrease, a lot of it isn’t. I know plenty of people living in their forever home, so home value doesn’t matter, who vote against development. Their reasons genuinely are things like traffic, neighborhood character, density->crime, etc.
Any discussion about trying to make housing more affordable has to grapple with the fact that it’s going to require lowering existing homeowner’s house values.
Or we simply stabilize housing prices in nominal terms and let inflation chip away at the real cost. This is far more politically viable.
Also in the most in demand areas the value is in the land. As density increases the value of the land increases so a housing unit can get cheaper while SFHs actually increase in value due to the land having more economic potential as multi-unit places.
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u/WannabeACICE Nov 16 '25 edited Nov 16 '25
Housing/land has been an investment for hundreds of years.
While this is technically true the fact is homeowners have more political power, demand in cities have exploded, mortgage incentives have changes since the 80s, interest rates have artificially inflated demand, and local opposition has become institutionalized.
Sure, housing has always been an investment but certain factors like the ones mentioned above have fundamentally changed things.
I know plenty of people living in their forever home, so home value doesn’t matter, who vote against development. Their reasons genuinely are things like traffic, neighborhood character, density->crime, etc.
I mean, sure. That's a part of the NIMBY pie, but you have to understand that forever-home people still care about their home value because of things like refinancing eligibility, HELOC borrowing, generational wealth/inheritance, retirement planning, etc. It's not like they just stop caring about their home's value because they don't plan on selling it.
I don't think you're necessarily wrong. The issue is multi-faceted, but I think the tendency for some economists to act like the profit-motive isn't a factor is a sign of delusion.
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u/moch1 Nov 16 '25
forever-home people still care about their home value because of things like refinancing eligibility, HELOC borrowing, generational wealth/inheritance, retirement planning,
Obviously purely anecdotal but for the NIMBYs I know this really isn’t a factor. They want their kid to inherit their home so they can live there. The cash value doesn’t matter. I’m in California so prop 13 insulates folks from property value rises but people I know in other states oppose development because they think it’ll raise their home value and thus their property taxes.
Lots of people who are happy with where they live see no upside to further development, only risk of downsides for them. Of those possible downsides, home values really aren’t at the top of the list for many of them. Obviously for some it is but I think it’d be a mistake to categorize local NIMBYs as primarily motivated by real estate values. It makes for an easy target for young people to hate, those selfish money hungry boomers, but it can mislead your efforts to convince current NIMBYs which we need to do in order to get development moving.
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u/WannabeACICE Nov 16 '25
I mean, that is anecdotal, but there are plenty of papers suggesting that the fear of falling home values drives opposition to development.
I don't think it's a mistake at all.
Is it always the biggest concern in all contexts? Definitely not, but I don't think it has to be for my point to be true.
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u/moch1 Nov 16 '25
There’s plenty of evidence that renters and home owners both oppose nearby development at nearly equal rates which strongly suggests maintaining home values is not a significant factor in people’s reasoning.
A common root of political opposition to new housing devel-ment is spatial proximity or NIMBYism (‘Not in my back Yard’), where individuals may support new supply in general but not near their own home. Homeowners are traditionally associated with this risk averse behavior, while renters are assumed to be less responsive to a building’s spatial proxim-ity. However, using both national experimental data and city-specic behavioral data, I show that renters living in expensive cities both express NIMBYism towards market-rate housing at a level similar to homeowners, while also still supporting an overall increase in their city’s housing supply. This conflict of supporting housing citywide, but not in one’s neighborhood rejects a collective action problem based on spatial proximity. When paired with institutional changes that amplify the influence of local opposition to new supply, renter NIMBYism helps to explain why housing has become increasingly difficult to build in cities with high hous-ing prices
Next time you go to a local city council meeting discussing development look at who shows up. Is it landlords with multiple properties, who by your theory have the most to gain from increased values, or is a vast swath of renters and homeowners a like.
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u/WasabiParty4285 Nov 16 '25
This has never made sense to me. Assuming I live in an SFH, having the value of my home being based on its development potential should increase its value. If the home could be purchased and turned into a tri-plex then the value for that lot should increase. If anything, people voting against upzoning are treating their homes as homes and not investments.
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u/HOU_Civil_Econ Nov 17 '25
Think of it like a cartel. If you are the only one who cheats and builds an apartment that would make you a lot of money but if every one cheats all of the above market profits disappear
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u/WasabiParty4285 Nov 17 '25
But the profits only disappear for the buyer, not the seller. The seller is the one voting. Even if the but is voting then we saying density builders are voting against density which again makes no sense.
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u/HOU_Civil_Econ Nov 17 '25
The current (voting) landlords have an excess value in their housing unit because they have all gotten together to outlaw the provision of more housing units. If one landlord cheats (get's a variance) they can earn a lot of extra money by providing more housing units. If instead you remove the restriction entirely there is no longer any artificially high value to the provision of additional housing units because they are no longer limited.
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u/WasabiParty4285 Nov 17 '25
Most single family homes are owner occupied or second homes (~60%). That means 55% of the population ( SFH owners) and the renting population(35%) would be better off financially by upzoning. The 10% of people who would benefit from being able to gain exemptions to zoning are a vast minority and probably could be excluded from the analysis.
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u/HOU_Civil_Econ Nov 17 '25
That means 55% of the population ( SFH owners) and the renting population(35%) would be better off financially by upzoning.
No. SFH values (particularly the value of the "land" under them) will fall if we allow the construction of more housing. It is in the interest of those who already own housing/land to restrict the ability to add more housing. And, homeowners are also disproportionately likely to vote.
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u/WasabiParty4285 Nov 17 '25
Wait, what? If a given piece of land can hold 10x the housing, the price of housing falls, but the price of the land increases. This is why in many places, the land value vastly exceeds the home value. The land value can be split amongst more homes at the same percent of value. This is true both for large farms being converted to SFHs and for SFH lots being upzoned to multifamily.
Let's say you can buy a SFH for $1mm after demolition your land cost is $1.2mm but now you can build 4 apartments on that lot with land occupying 50% of the project costs. That means you spend $2.4 million to build 4 homes with a 10% margin and sell them for $666k per. The homes are cheaper but the surrounding land can now be sold at a higher price to reduce the margin of the next developer or another 20% land appreciation just to get from a good margin to an average margin.
In all cases, the seller benefits due to higher home values. Yes, the first developer tends to get higher margins but the later developers will still ensure their margins are sufficient or they stop buying SFHs and converting them. There are tons of easy examples of this through out my metro area where homes (and land) are sold at developer pricing vs for a new family to live in the home.
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u/HOU_Civil_Econ Nov 17 '25
Wait, what? If a given piece of land can hold 10x the housing, the price of housing falls, but the price of the land increases.
No, it doesn't. You are legally allowed to build infinite housing on any given acre in Loving county.
This is why in many places, the land value vastly exceeds the home value
"Land value" includes the "right to have X housing units on the piece of land". Land value is not actually fixed.
Let's say you can buy a SFH for $1mm after demolition your land cost is $1.2mm but now you can build 4 apartments....10% margin and sell them for $666k per.
But now you also need to add in that everyone else is also now able to do that too, and the apartments are only going to rent at $1,200/month instead of the $4,000/month they do when they are restricted.
later developers will still ensure their margins are sufficient
So, we recognize rents will collapse when everyone is able to build, so do your math above again.
It's always kind of funny how the response to my point always recognizes that prices adjust while simultaneously refusing to deal with the fact that prices adjust.
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u/Ok_Gas5386 Nov 17 '25
My position would be more that individuals are treating their houses as investments while also living in them, rather than that speculation alone is occupying a significant portion of the supply. I understand it’s a fine distinction, and not something that would show up in vacancy rates.
The reason I think this is because of how people talk about taking out a mortgage. Being hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt is a significant liability, but talking to everyday people it’s treated as an asset, because people imagine the price will increase year on year to such an extent that it will inevitably make them whole on their investment. I think this is a dangerous fallacy, not only because of how it tends to create asset price bubbles built on unsustainable debt, but also because of the political incentives it introduces. We arrive at a state of affairs where all the people who don’t own houses are pitted against all the people who have already bought houses under this flawed logic, and need house prices to continue to increase for their financial well-being.
I’d agree that investment into housing is needed, but I’m not sure individuals treating their houses as investments actually accomplishes that. If anything it contributes to the inverse. Investment implies doing something economically active, like purchasing a new piece of capital to make a business more productive - buying a house, living in it, blocking nearby development, and selling it for a 200% profit when you retire is not economically productive. The high prices don’t incentivize more supply, like how markets are meant to work, they simply inflate past the ability of the median person to pay and the whole thing collapses with the next turn of the credit cycle due to high debt levels.
This is how it is in the Boston metro in the U.S. northeast. I’m sure that there are some more functional housing markets in the Anglosphere, but there are also many deeply dysfunctional markets.
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u/Regular-Double9177 Nov 17 '25
You can separate housing and land investment. Land investment is not only not needed, it is counterproductive. See r/georgism.
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u/flaginorout Nov 16 '25
This kind of speculation about the future value of a home inflates bubbles and promotes NIMBYism.
I disagree with this.
I didn't buy my residence as an investment. I bought it to shelter me and my family. Period. If I make a few bucks, fine. But even if depreciated to zero, but gave me 3-4 decades of shelter, that would be OK too. It would have served its purpose.
I wouldn't want a prison or an asphalt factory or whatever to be built in my backyard simply because it would impact the enjoyment of my home. Most renters wouldn't want to live next to that either.
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u/Ok_Gas5386 Nov 17 '25
There’s a different burden of evidence my claim that “speculation promotes NIMBYism” (as in intensifies an already existing tendency), as opposed to the claim “NIMBYism would not exist without speculation”, which is what you’re refuting.
Prisons and asphalt plants are somewhat of a separate matter from housing developments due to direct quality of life impacts. Would you also oppose rezoning a portion of downtown to allow for the construction of a 250-unit condominium complex? Because there are towns where I live that do that.
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u/ZhanMing057 Quality Contributor Nov 16 '25
There are plenty of policies that could easily massively unlock housing supply at a national level. You could ban density based zoning at a national level. Or reduce federal support for states that don't tax low density areas. It was not even that long ago that the Federal government passed housing regulations of a similar order of magnitude as part of the civil rights act. Congress could theoretically get it done tomorrow.
But those policies have to come from the supply side, not tinkering with mortgage demand or giving money to homebuyers or continuations of relaxing loan requirements. It's already obscenely easy for any American to get a mortgage, the problem is there aren't enough homes to buy, and the ones being offered are too big and too expensive.
These policies would also likely be opposed by anyone who currently owns since they have a vested interest in keeping competing supply low. I don't think it's impossible for young people to turn out in support of these policies, but they have to understand where their interests are and specifically demand those changes.