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A comment on The housing shortage is larger than you think. Parent comment

Re:The housing shortage is larger than you think by jeffbee on Tuesday December 19, 2023 @05:32PM (#38702802)
You add housing at the top of the market, the highest price point, because people will pay more for a newer home. Consequently the older ones become cheaper, because people who prefer the new ones and can afford them no longer compete in the market for older ones.

This has been dramatically demonstrated in Berkeley, where I live. We have added tons of 0- and 1-bedroom apartments recently. These are very expensive, $3000/mo+. This building boom has caused the price of rent-regulated older apartments to plunge. What had been renting for $2252/mo in November 2018 is now renting for $1688/mo in November 2023. That is a significant increase in affordability of studio and 1-bedroom apartment, effected by building newer, expensive ones.

Edited to add sources:

The discussion is too long for me to recapitulate here, but all of my data in various forms and some visualizations are available here:

https://observablehq.com/@jwb/berkeley-rent-board-data

Also in random tweets such as:

https://twitter.com/Jeffinatorator/status/172890293692602402...

I believe these are visible to non-account holders.

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Re:The housing shortage is larger than you think by voidwtf on Tuesday December 19, 2023 @05:42PM (#38702925)
Can you please provide a source for the rent decreasing? Maybe a site showing the historical rental cost(s) for a given unit? I've not seen that happen in my market at all, I've only seen existing rental rates increase.

Edit: I think I see where a lot of our disconnect is coming from. We have no rent control here, rent very rarely decreases and is mostly pegged to comparative sq.ft. rentals in the area. Age of the property does not factor as much as location.

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Re:The housing shortage is larger than you think by bombcar on Tuesday December 19, 2023 @07:18PM (#38703864)
It’s also simple math. If 10k new units are built, you either need 10k new people to enter the market, or prices will drop.

Do enough of it and rents will begin to fall below loan maintenance, causing even more sales and more price drops.

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Re:The housing shortage is larger than you think by OrwellianChild on Wednesday December 20, 2023 @11:46PM (#38717108)
Rent control only fights against upward pressure for existing renters... When you describe rents continually going up, it's due to more people competing for limited rental units. Cities can and do see rent declines (they first show up as "first month free" etc. before landlords bite the bullet and reduce rate). Seattle has seen temporary competition for rents in some neighborhoods as new construction started in 2019/2020 comes online. It won't last since we've seen such a decline in new construction starts, but the mechanism is sound.
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