It’s similar to how totally full employment is actually a sign of a labor shortage.
3% may represent local shortages as Santa Monica is more desired than West Adams etc. So increasing availability in undesirable places may not reduce rents in general.
In aggregate, 5-7% seems to be a sweet spot where landlords can find tenants in a reasonable amount of time and tenants are not scrambling to send out a dozen applications a week.
Though I agree less desirable locations should definitely increase the average, as should purchases vs rentals etc. It’s just 3% is already including a lot of mandatory time from cleaning, painting walls, replacing carpets, etc. So prices could fall heavily at a sustained 4% long before you hit the 5-7% range.
The other metric is median rent as a percentage of median income. Nationally it has hit 40% when the affordability mark is 33%.
Just because what you are experiencing has been a norm for a while does not make it good, or the goal.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/states/california...
That includes both births/deaths and in/out migration. Population growth rate has been generally falling since 1990 (except for a peak in 2000) and significantly so since the GFC in 2009. However, prices have skyrocketed.
China has overbuilt their population by 10-100million (yes, and there are even more outrageous numbers) homes over the last 10-15 years, and yet prices in Shanghai/ Beijing/ Shenzhen still exceed NYC or SF by 50%. They have a falling population.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/city_price_rankings?it...
This is not even a new problem. The imperial landed gentry was so named because bureaucrats would shovel their money into land.
Population geography also shifts from rural to urban and from declining to rising cities even as the total population size holds constant or shrinks. The fact that there is space for you on a farm or in a coal-mining town is cold comfort to someone with a STEM degree and a job offer at a corporate headquarters.
It's harder live further out, when traffic slowdowns extend commute time 10x. And governments love the idea that expensive roads can be waved away using environmentalism as an reason.
Yet these same governments don't build fast transit either, and without fast amd efficient transit, trips take far far longer than a car.
At this stage we should be building both, as we're that far behind.
The point is, there is a move for 'dense urban areas'. Pack 'em in. Increase that housing density. Yet there is another way in North America, where there is often an endless bounty of space. Better transportation corridors.
Better transportation corridors means that housing costs plateau, because it's just easier to drive 10 minutes more, 20 minutes more, than spend 4x for housing.
That said, even the laptop class often does need to commute:
* Many remote workers have to attend once a week, or more often.
* People make lives, friends, contacts, have relatives in specific areas.
* Every once in a while, you may need to go to "the city" for something important. Medical treatment or specialists, specialty products, etc. Not everything can be shipped, or is shipped.
Anyhow, it seems you sort of missed the point, that is... the faster you can get into a city, the further you can live from the city and still be part of it.
This reduces housing value close/in the city.
Average house size has increased significantly over time. Average household size trends broadly downward, with rare counterexamples.
When is "better" also "more"? Because better costs more, just like more area costs more. What resources should be redirected from quality to quantity?
Consider a city of 10 million people vs 1,000 small towns of 10k people. The variability for demand in those small towns is higher and vacancy rates can’t drop below zero. So some towns hit 0 while others might be 20%. But in a city if some apartment complex is full people just go to the apartment down the street.