Austin's Surge of New Housing Construction Drove Down Rents

Re:Austin's Surge of New Housing Construction Drove Down Rents by alistairSH on Thursday March 19, 2026 @01:50PM (#47443211)

But rents aren't the same as property values (though they are linked). Rents could go down while the value of the underlying land goes up (extreme example - build a high-rise apartment, land and building value goes up, even though the rent for each unit comes down). And the apartment market and SFH market are linked but also not exactly the same.

Also agree it's difficult/impossible to know for a single piece of real estate. And impossible to know for sure since the market is complex (impacted by rates, other policy decisions, etc)

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Re:Austin's Surge of New Housing Construction Drove Down Rents by giaour on Thursday March 19, 2026 @04:55PM (#47445954)

You're right, but I think everyone is looking at second-order effects where causal links are impossible to prove. [0] is recent research on how expanding housing stock (even just at the top end) will "expand affordability," although they, too, are mostly looking at the effect on rents.

The most overt statement of "we don't want to build more houses because it will decrease the value of existing houses" in recent memory was Trump[1], who is not exactly a reliable source (and whose whole brand prior to politics was destroying the character of established neighborhoods by building giant condo complexes).

[0]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5780364 [1]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/general/trump-says-the-quiet...

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