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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29421 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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It’s clear that Americans do want this kind of housing. The handful of ex-NYC neighborhoods that offer even the vaguest semblance of this kind of lifestyle are often extremely expensive. See Venice and Santa Monica in LA, Georgetown in Washington, D.C., Back Bay in Boston and so on.

The problem is that the only way this kind of thing emerges organically is because it was already there or because of the gentrification of dense urban neighborhoods that survived the 20th century (eg. what has happened in Brooklyn since the 1980s). You can’t build it because large downtown parcels of contiguous land rarely come up for sale and when they do developers would prefer to build a few big condo buildings, a large parking lot (often mandated by zoning laws) and stuff a small mall on the lower levels instead of creating more of a mid-rise community. And in many US cities where downtowns were hollowed out for parking lots and office buildings between 1950 and 1980, there just isn’t the residential capacity to make the network of small local businesses that bring that kind of community to life viable. So there’s a chicken-and-egg problem to it.

Amen, thank you for beating this drum with me. The market has shown that people will pay a ton for this kind of housing, and any sort of mixed-use residential/commercial developments that do get built are typically very high-class and quite desirable. Prices reflect that reality.

The true cause of these issues, specifically the large parcels of land being sat on, goes down to how we value/price land in the US. Land values at local assessors' offices are literally calculated by taking an arbitrary % of the total value, and saying "That's the land value!". You will see values of improvements (buildings) jump up 20-30% in one year, and assessors just shrug their shoulders and say 'that's how our system calculated it.' It is utterly absurd.

What's worse is that many large department stores, like Walmart etc, who buy these massive parcels of land often have specific tax cuts for them that they carve out with local government. On top of that, the plattage effect means that land value does not rise linearly with square footage, it drops off as you get an increasingly large parcel. There are good reasons for that, but it turns into a situation where large retail stores can acquire massive amounts of land for cheap, and they do.

This isn't even getting into land speculators who sit on vacant land for years as an investment, because they know it's one of the safest investments out there. After the massive housing price raise during Covid we're seeing far more activity in the land speculation space as well. For some reason we've decided to tax buildings, the things that actually generate economic activity and benefit, far more than land. This is ridiculous because useful land parcels in desirable locations are scarce and if you let people sit on them, you miss out on a ton of opportunity to beautify a space, create new businesses, or just leave the land to nature.

IMO dense cities should have practically 0 vacant lots sitting there, ever. Land needs to be taxed far higher than it is currently.

the plattage effect means that land value does not rise linearly with square footage, it drops off as you get an increasingly large parcel. There are good reasons for that

How does that work? It seems to be a well-studied effect, yet I would naively assume that an owner of a large parcel in such a market would always choose to subdivide that parcel, thereby making more money, up until the point where the thereby increased supply of small parcels and reduced supply of large ones eliminated the effect. I could imagine constant-cost overheads (if you need the same number of real estate + escrow + whatever agents whether you're selling a fifth of an acre or 50 acres, the 1/5-acre option has 25x as much transaction cost per square foot) ... but economists seem to be modeling the plattage effect as logarithmic, and I don't see how that would happen at all.

I would naively assume that an owner of a large parcel in such a market would always choose to subdivide that parcel,

Many big businesses like Walmart, Target etc require large parcels all in one segment to operate by law. Also, I forgot to mention they get massive subsidies on their parking lots as well since parking lots are often not taxed like normal parcels or have specific adjustments/write-ins from the city.

Those are great demand-side reasons for Walmart to bid up the price of large parcels ... but apparently they didn't, so what's the supply-side reason why someone would want to sell them a parcel anyway? If I can make $M by selling N acres to Walmart but I can make 2($M/2+$P) by instead selling N/2 acres each to a restaurant and a gym, why would I ever do the former if the premium $P for the latter is positive?

Subdivision is not always trivial. I would not say that the there is only a single fixed cost, there are also variable costs associated with land surveys, environmental surveys, administration, utilities, etc.

Then there are selection effects. Areas with large blocks of land are usually more rural which have lower land prices.

I have a feeling that the complete picture here has to do with the marginal utility of developed vs undeveloped land, economies of scale, and maybe commercial vs residential markets.

It seems intuitive to me that the utility value of developed land does not scale linearly with size, unless you're a farmer or something.

If I'm a large developer that can afford to buy a large parcel, subdivide, AND develop those parcels, I will likely (up to a point) get a better ROI from a larger number of smaller plots. In SFH residential markets this happens often because there is a consumer desire to "own" their plot. In commercial markets, this demand matters less, so the ROI maximizing strategy is to buy a large plot, build X storefronts, and rent to tenants. The size and distribution of those storefronts should reflect the market for commercial renters, and I think that is what you do see (a decent mix of large home-depot style tenants and smaller independent businesses).

Yet on the other hand, selling a small plot of undeveloped land is challenging since you need to develop it, and you will almost always be outcompeted by large developers who can afford to buy the larger plot in one go.

So you have a market dynamic where both things are true: the utility (and marginal market) value of the developed land is proportionally greater for small plots (or small storefronts), yet it is not always useful to simply buy a large plot, subdivide, and resell.

All this is to say, holders of large plots of undeveloped land are usually incentivized to sell in one go. Whereas developers are incentivised to buy large plots and then extract maximum utility via subdivision or multiple storefronts, which is what I think we do see in practice.

That all makes sense; thank you!

any sort of mixed-use residential/commercial developments that do get built are typically very high-class and quite desirable.

Where permitting and regulatory regimes are complex, slow, restrictive, and carry significant ongoing costs (i.e. mandatory set-asides for "affordable" units) for those few projects that do get approved, developers are highly incentivized to make all new construction as high-class and high-cost as possible in order to maximize return per unit; they can set their own price because pent-up demand is so high, and face little competition from other new builds to drive down cost.

That's the reason mixed-use projects in major cities are so "high class and desirable" - not any inherent property of the type of units being built.

This.

Also, there is always incentive to market your product, regardless of it's actual place in the market, as "luxury" or "premium". Nobody sells "cheap cars for poor people", but they will market "affordable, reliable vehicles".

The fact that as you say “pent-up demand is so high” is exactly the point that he’s making, though.

I mean pent-up demand for any new housing in an economically-productive area; I postulate the fact that they're housing units on the market in west-side LA (in the case of his Venice example) is much more important for driving demand than their character as "missing middle" or whether or not neighborhoods are walkable, serviced by transit, or otherwise Urbanist-ideology-approved. People happily pay out the nose for studios or "shared living" dorm spaces with no transit, a mile walk to the nearest grocery, and no dedicated parking, just because it's a place to live.

Years ago there was a Silicon Valley rental ad that was for an unusually wide gap between walls with a foam mat laid onto the unfinished floor to sleep on. Like how a rodent might live. But you gotta live somewhere and they keep importing more people and they don't build comparably more housing, so live like a rat I guess.

Property taxes on real estate are rather weird in general: structures in many jurisdictions are valued well above the replacement cost, which as far as I can tell reflects artificial scarcity from permitting and zoning restrictions. The value of "a roof to live under in [jurisdiction]" far exceeds the cost of the roof itself and the land to put it on! And that doesn't include manufacturing businesses having to play games with inventory to limit property taxes on that.

All this has made me think that the Georgists aren't wrong and that we should consider taxing property near-exclusively based on the land itself to incentivise more efficient utilization.

structures in many jurisdictions are valued well above the replacement cost

Actually a lot of this is due to the fact that quality of construction and depreciation are rather arbitrary place to place, and appraiser to appraiser. So especially in the big counties you can literally have two assessors that would look at the same building, one mark it grade A and another mark it grade C. It's rather wild.

But most of it is the fact that the land/improvement splits are garbage based on nothing.

When it comes to calculating value, quality of construction is usually one of the top factors in driving value as well. At least for residential parcels.

There's a reason that safe and dense housing only exists in expensive areas: it has to be expensive to keep the undesirables out.

Which ones? San Francisco is 40% white, 35% Asian, 5% black (a much lower proportion in the latter case than Paris, London and many other major European cities). It has extremely high median income. The reason it is a shithole has nothing to do with demographics, and everything to do with policy (regarding the homeless, mostly).

Enforce the law, and it’s entirely possible to have affordable, safe and dense housing. Inner cities (provided they’re safe, amenable and walkable) will always be expensive, but dense inner suburbs like in most Euro cities and NYC are totally feasible.

Which ones? San Francisco is 40% white, 35% Asian, 5% black (a much lower proportion in the latter case than Paris, London and many other major European cities). It has extremely high median income. The reason it is a shithole has nothing to do with demographics, and everything to do with policy (regarding the homeless, mostly).

It's a shithole precisely because of demographics.

Childless PMC whites in San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland vote for shithole policies because they're the shithole demographic. Once you get out to Bay Area suburbs that are full of Indians and Chinese, the shithole factor declines to nearly nothing.

Quite a few of the most zealous supervisors and school board members in SF have been Asian, iirc.

Back in the 1950s-80s 5-10% was often the tipping point for safety.

There are plenty of areas in NYC that are dense* and safe middle class neighborhoods. Jackson Heights, Forest Hills, etc.

*Relative to most of the rest of the US.

According to this, "Median household income in 2021 was $69,880[.]" The 2021 median income for the US as a whole was $70,784.

Per www.streeteasy.com there are currently 48 2-bed+ apts for sale in Jackson Heights. Fifteen are listed at under $400K. There are only two for more than $800K,

I suggest you look at Streeteasy, which is the go-to site for NY real estate. I see a 1050 sq ft unit for 425K, five separate 1000 sq ft units in the $340 range; several others with no sq ft listed but with floor plans.

still seems insane for what you get,

Well, we all know that NYC apts tend to be small. But that is the nature of the city. There are plenty of much more expensive places in more upscale areas that are no larger. It really says nothing about whether a particular area is middle class. As i noted, the median household income there is right at the US median.

also has an $850 per month HOA fee.

Remember, most of the places you see are coops, and that means that the HOA fee includes property tax, insurance and, usually, heat and water. In some places it includes the electric bill, but I think that is rare. Plus, the HOA fee covers garbage and other standard city services fees.

I honestly don't understand how a household making 70k a year can afford a 340k apartment.

Since only about 65% of households own their homes, the median income of homeowners is presumably higher than the median income overall.

And it looks like median income in Pittsburgh (to choose an average city) is 54K, while the median home price is 275,000, or about 5x higher. About the same as 70k versus 340k.

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