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limagnolia | 17 days ago

If cities allowed more supply to be constructed, landlords couldn't just raise the price.

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autoexec|17 days ago

Just like in the US, there are a ton of homes in Ireland just sitting vacant. Supply isn't nearly as large a problem as affordability. Ireland introduced a vacant homes tax to try to help, but it seems they haven't gone far enough.

WesolyKubeczek|17 days ago

I know of cities where real estate development is rampant, sometimes to the detriment of quality, and yet apartment prices are soaring.

parineum|17 days ago

That's because, in the places where housing is expensive, it's expensive because a _LOT_ of people want to live there. It's a pipe dream that you can out build demand in these places. Reducing prices of housing in nice places to live (by any means, including building) will only result in more demand up until that insatiable demand is satisfied.

Nice places to live can't support all the people that want to live there.

Because demand is, for all intents and purposes, insatiable, the dollar value of housing/property isn't based on supply and demand because supply can't practically be increased to affect demand. Instead, the price is related to what a prospective buyer can afford to pay _every month_ and, thus, is related to interest rates. Interest rates go down, prices go up to the point where a prospective buyer's mortgage payment would be the same.

People who bring up the (un)affordability of housing are never talking about Oklahoma, they're talking about the Bay Area, Southern California, New York City, Seattle, Portland, etc. All places that are so desirable, they can't practically support everyone that wants to live there.

jodrellblank|17 days ago

It seems London hit record levels of empty properties in 2024, some 30,000 of them worth £2Bn or so.

What part of your idea was supposed to stop that happening and why didn't it work?

jimnotgym|17 days ago

Too much capital, too few assets. We can't keep building assets, so perhaps we need to do something about the capital?

We could tax it and pay some of the money to artists?

forgotaccount3|17 days ago

> What part of your idea was supposed to stop that happening

The part where people see their money burning away paying maintenance and tax on deteriorating assets.

Why are people holding assets unused?

Because they don't believe that the city will allow sufficient development to allow them to purchase like-assets in the future if they chose to reinvest and the carrying cost is minimal because council taxes are trivial relative to the value of the asset. If my research is correct, Kensington council taxes are under 10k USD per year.