America has expensive and cheap cities, it's just that everyone wants to live in the expensive ones. Also I don't think you realise how expensive apartments can be...
Appartments' prices naturally depend on the city they're in. Of course a NYC appartment is expensive - it's NY. I put in the prices of my country for reference. But that doesn't matter.
Bottom line of my argument is that appartments in the same city, mutatis mutandis, will almost always be cheaper than houses. Which makes them more affordable. Which solves part of the housing crisis.
Well, it has to be a societal shift - the less houses there are, the more appartments there will be. Higher supply means prices will fall. Also, standardisation in building will also decrease building costs if appartment blocks become more standard.
They might not be cheaper now, but the more people that switch a house for a flat, the cheaper they will become, if merely because of property price being used alone. That's just how markets work. That's kind of the point of my post - it's all fucked because not enough people would be willing to move in a flat, thus constructors don't have incentives to build flats because nobody will buy them, and thus the supply of appartments, even for the few people interested, remains low and expensive.
They do build a lot of apartment buildings though, that's the thing. Most downtown areas have their skylines being littered by apartments. It might get rid of the need to purchase land, but it sure as hell increases when it comes to the cost of materials and design.
Happens in a lot of central areas as well, such as around major shopping centres or touristy areas. The main issue is most apartment buildings only allow for one parking space at the most, so you're screwed unless you have access to reliable public transport.
Ohh, because Americans usually have more than a car/family. Makes sense. I imagine there are ways to solve that though. Here we have a lot of underground parking lots, but to be fair, because the cities are so packed, you don't really need a car/person, just a car/family, since you can just walk/get a bus to work. Different lifestyle and all.
Yeah, if people have a family they’ll typically need two cars minimum, because we separate residences from stores, hospitals, and else what. So you can’t always get to the places you need to be by walking, and public transport is often unreliable/inefficient.
As prices fall, apartment buildings will be bought up by landlords. As landlord’s obtain more and more real estate, they’ll charge higher and higher rent. Just as brokers that turn houses charge higher and higher prices. This has happened repeatedly in U.S. cities. So, no, having more complexes doesn’t lead to lower prices out here. And this isn’t even taking all the other issues that come with longterm apartment living in the U.S. Such as building owners deciding to sell, and the new owners deciding to tear everything down and rebuild (which is a huge part of the gentrification process), leaving the occupants homeless.
The whole point of apartment buildings is that you can build new ones if there is demand for them, as long as enough space is still left in the city. And if the city is not the population size of London, chances are it hasn't reached max capacity. Landlords buy real estate to their heart's content, but then more real estate is being created.
What happens here is if you get charged a hypothetical 150k for an apartment that already exists (let's say, hypothetically, a rich company bought all the flats available), you can then almost always buy an apartment that has not yet been built (which is a very common strategy here) from a real estate builder for cheaper. If the builder charges too much, people will go to another competitor that offers better prices. That's, again, just how supply and demand works. As long as there is A) enough space still left to build a 10-level apartment building in a reasonable distance in the city and B) the costs of building + the cost of land aquisition itself remain lower than the market price, then there will be a competitor that will offer cheaper. And, to answer your "building owner" concern, that is all they do - they buy the land underneath, they multiply the legal property via flat-building, they sell it as flats for profit, and they're then out of the picture.
And landlords, evil as they may be, will not purchase more property than is profitable for them - and there is a limited number of people willing to rent. Buying a whole flat's worth of appartments may be profitable for a rental agency in a university city, but will not be a good investment otherwise. They just won't get renters, because people will run to the real estate competitors who'll just build new stuff cheaper.
>Such as building owners deciding to sell, and the new owners deciding to tear everything down and rebuild (which is a huge part of the gentrification process), leaving the occupants homeless.
I have to say, I have no clue on what you mean. Maybe that's a US thing? Here, after you buy an appartment, it's 100% yours, because it's real estate. There is no "building owner" - there is the HOA of the flat, consisting of all the property owners in the flat. It's a council of owners, not an individual. Appartments, legally speaking, are residential property of their own standing - you can't interfere with it in the same way you cannot interfere with a homeowner's house. There is no third party, you can shoot a home invader, etc etc. If there is a building owner, then you do not own that appartment.
The thing is, there isn’t a singular person doing landlording. So while a landlord may not purchase more than a few buildings, the problem is that are hundreds of thousands of landlords (and even entire companies that as act as landlords to), and they all buy a handful of buildings. This happens in combination with real estate brokers that buy up other housing. All of this adds up, and causes a false scarcity of real estate, which drives up the cost of housing and rent. Hence, in major cities like NYC apartments have only driven the cost of housing up, not down.
Also, I mean exactly what I said. A massive part of the gentrification process is that landlords will buy an older complex, in a run down area where the rent is less expensive. Then they kick out all the occupants, tear down the complex and build a new one, and then the charge higher rent because the building is now new.
Certain cities have a law that allows you to evict a person renting the space if you plan to move in 30 days. Depending on the city/state, renters can have plenty of rights or very few. The renter often has no choice, and police can be called if they refuse to leave. :c
I mean. That's not really how housing works here though? You don't buy apartments here, you rent them. It's not exactly an option. It's also difficult to live in apartments when a lot of places don't have many apartment buildings.
I think it is an issue of terminology. In English (at least in American English), apartments by definition cannot be bought and can only be rented. An apartment you can buy is called a condominium or condo for short.
Wow, TIL! That's interesting that there is a separate word for this. I was under the impression condo is fancy word for a studio.
But again, out of curiosity: why are there living spaces in flats that can only be rented and not bought? Are they state-owned? Is there some law involved to forbids sale? Why is this housing property type not available for purchase?
Condo buildings and townhouses are typically part of a homeowners association. Throughout much of the country, they cost only slightly less, or even as much as a house to purchase. Which means, depending on where you live, they’re often a very poor investment, and it’s better to just gamble on a house.
Apartments complexes are owned by landlords, whom rent out the living spaces. The living spaces can’t be sold, because they don’t have the same zoning classification as a condo or townhouse.
>Apartments complexes are owned by landlords
They just... own an entire building of appartments? That is so wild, fuck that though, sounds unethical as fuck.
**Why is it unethical for a person (or a business) to own a building full of apartments?** Certainly a single company bought the land, and then went through the proper process of zoning, applying for permits, and paying for the construction. Why shouldn't they rent apartments for people to live in? Hotels rent rooms for people to temporarily live in. Office buildings rent suites or entire floors for businesses.
BTW - in our area it is possible to convert (single owner) apartment buildings into Condominiums (where each unit is owned by somebody). My understanding, though, is that there are expenses with this, such that each unit must now have individually metered water, gas, electricity, etc. There may also be other requirements for changes in the building based on city codes.
> My understanding, though, is that there are expenses with this, such that each unit must now have individually metered water, gas, electricity, etc.
Basic requirement if you have real estate. I think it's unethical because it's monopolising something that should not be monopolised, and it's a symptom of social inequality. When landlords stop owning individual appartments and just built whole flats to rent from the outset, that just sounds wrong to me.
I do acknowledge that this might be a cultural bias that is impacting my view. As I said, people here overwhelmingly own their homes. Renting is exclusively a student phenomenon and something that happens in the capital (where there are millions of people, so you get house ownership, renting and everything inbetween, the city is huge). If you are a landlord or if you rent in other cities, something is going wrong - either you are not doing well financially, living here temporarily, or you're doing a shady business and want to cover it up by having names off of registers.
They do, often times multiple buildings of apartments. The tenants pay rent to that person every month.
There are tons of apartments in my city. People who complain about not being able to afford permanent housing are often struggling to get by renting. If you are tapped out paying $400 a month for a rental, you aren't going to be able to afford to purchase a home, even a condo, for that. The structure just isn't there.
We have a small, very modest home in a modest neighborhood. It still costs three times what we were paying in rent per month.
I think the problem is more zoning laws in States that are massively popular because of the opportunity on offer. You can find really cheap beautiful homes but people don't want to live in Nebraska.
I’m from Kansas and you are absolutely correct.
It’s kind of ridiculous because I would NEVER want to live in California or New York either. Yeah, you have cool stuff near you but the change in living standards is just insane.
Yeah, I know friends that live in LA and pay like 2k a month for a normal apartment. I'm sure it would normalize if they just allowed more like construction.
I really don't know about America, but where i live the main problem with house (or apartment) crisis is mainly about tourism.
For example, a zero bedroom apartment in the city used to be affordable by a single person some 15-20 years ago, but today you need to make around 3 minimum wages just to pay rent.
That made all the working people move to the suburbs, and that almost doubled the cost of the apartments and houses, making it that a 50 year old, 2 bedroom apartment 45m from the city costs more than the average income of a person.
So yeah i get what you're saying about wanting house instead of apartment, but i don't think that's all that's happening.
Oh yeah, I read that the Chinese buying all the appartments and making them BnBs really fucked up your city. Were I the mayor there, I'd try to copy Amsterdam's policies on rental, and make it illegal to rent an appartment out the first 5 years you buy it or something, just like they do with cars. There has to be a solution to keep homes for living, not renting. It's a shame it happened to Lisbon, your city is amazing!
Not only the chinese, there are plenty of french people and americans as well. Mostly every developed country in the world has more money on average than we do here, so it gets pretty easy for them.
It almost gets funny when an old, wrecked, unlivable apartment goes from costing around 70k to almost 350k.
But then again, we can't really complain since our economy is tourism-based, so it's a pickle.
Im from the UK. Our property prices vary based on location.
I was watching that property brothers show from America and every episode the families are like "we dont have enough space we need to move" while they have a massive fucking house which would probably be the upper 5% of houses in the UK.
Their bedrooms are the size of my living room and its literally just a bed and a wardrobe. If they needed more space they could easily put up a partition wall and turn 1 bedroom into 2.
They'll say some shit like "I need a bigger garden" and their garden is like quarter of an acre.
Or "we need a bigger kitchen" when they have a fucking island. Meanwhile most homes in the UK have a smaller kitchen with no separate dining room or utility room so you have to dine in the kitchen and do your laundry in a space smaller than their kitchen alone and they complain they need more space
Is there anything WRONG with wanting a larger home, if you can afford it? My wife & I raised 6 children in a 1400 sq ft townhouse. As they grew older (and stuff accumulated), the house just seemed to shrink. Yes, we were surviving there and could enjoy our postage-stamp sized backyard.
We could afford it, so we moved into a house that is twice as big and sits on 1/3 of an acre. We are ***blessed***. Each of the remaining children (2 moved out) finally have their own bedrooms. We redid the kitchen to have that island you mentioned. I have room enough for a workshop. We also have room enough to have a couple of other large families over to socialize. It beats the heck out of merely *surviving* at our other house.
This is my point. The homes in America that these people live in are huge.
What we would consider a big house in the UK is a lot smaller than the houses they currently live in.
If its available and you can afford it then why not but I think OP is right. Houses in America are significantly larger than those elsewhere
In our American Big Cities, there are lots of apartment buildings. The Population Concentration is too high to have tons of individual houses. Because of the demand, prices for each piece of property is high, and smaller houses are bought up be developers to make money building apartment buildings.
If you are willing to go further out into the suburbs, there is plenty of land for houses. My son bought a "starter" townhouse with maybe 1000 sq ft at auction for $50k. My 1400 sq ft townhouse sold for $170k.
If you have a job and are saving for a couple of years, there is no reason that you cannot afford a "starter" house or condo. Actually - there is a reason. Some people go into stupid amounts of debt. The average university graduate owes $25k at graduation (if they borrowed). I have seen some students who DIDN'T graduate and still owed $60k when they dropped out. Either that, or they graduated (after 5-6 years) with a boatload of debt and a degree that is not marketable. THEN, having graduated, they believe that because of their hard work, they "owe" themselves a brand-new car (adding an additional $30-40k in debt).
Their fault for buying a 30k car, I have no compassion for all these people screaming "I cAnNot aFfOrD a hOuSe oR cAr" and when you ask them why they don't buy a Dacia Logan brand new at 6k$ they tell you they want a Tesla because they are eco-warriors or whatever.
America has expensive and cheap cities, it's just that everyone wants to live in the expensive ones. Also I don't think you realise how expensive apartments can be...
Not everyone wants to live in cities. I like living in the suburbs and preferably a good distance from the actual city.
Appartments' prices naturally depend on the city they're in. Of course a NYC appartment is expensive - it's NY. I put in the prices of my country for reference. But that doesn't matter. Bottom line of my argument is that appartments in the same city, mutatis mutandis, will almost always be cheaper than houses. Which makes them more affordable. Which solves part of the housing crisis.
They're cheaper yes, but it's not as though they're all suddenly affordable to everyone.
Well, it has to be a societal shift - the less houses there are, the more appartments there will be. Higher supply means prices will fall. Also, standardisation in building will also decrease building costs if appartment blocks become more standard. They might not be cheaper now, but the more people that switch a house for a flat, the cheaper they will become, if merely because of property price being used alone. That's just how markets work. That's kind of the point of my post - it's all fucked because not enough people would be willing to move in a flat, thus constructors don't have incentives to build flats because nobody will buy them, and thus the supply of appartments, even for the few people interested, remains low and expensive.
They do build a lot of apartment buildings though, that's the thing. Most downtown areas have their skylines being littered by apartments. It might get rid of the need to purchase land, but it sure as hell increases when it comes to the cost of materials and design.
Why only downtown and not central areas as well? HOAs?
Happens in a lot of central areas as well, such as around major shopping centres or touristy areas. The main issue is most apartment buildings only allow for one parking space at the most, so you're screwed unless you have access to reliable public transport.
> The main issue is most apartment buildings only allow for one parking space at the most Per person, no? Do you need more?
Per apartment. Tends to be a deal breaker for people who rely on cars for transport.
Ohh, because Americans usually have more than a car/family. Makes sense. I imagine there are ways to solve that though. Here we have a lot of underground parking lots, but to be fair, because the cities are so packed, you don't really need a car/person, just a car/family, since you can just walk/get a bus to work. Different lifestyle and all.
Yeah, if people have a family they’ll typically need two cars minimum, because we separate residences from stores, hospitals, and else what. So you can’t always get to the places you need to be by walking, and public transport is often unreliable/inefficient.
As prices fall, apartment buildings will be bought up by landlords. As landlord’s obtain more and more real estate, they’ll charge higher and higher rent. Just as brokers that turn houses charge higher and higher prices. This has happened repeatedly in U.S. cities. So, no, having more complexes doesn’t lead to lower prices out here. And this isn’t even taking all the other issues that come with longterm apartment living in the U.S. Such as building owners deciding to sell, and the new owners deciding to tear everything down and rebuild (which is a huge part of the gentrification process), leaving the occupants homeless.
The whole point of apartment buildings is that you can build new ones if there is demand for them, as long as enough space is still left in the city. And if the city is not the population size of London, chances are it hasn't reached max capacity. Landlords buy real estate to their heart's content, but then more real estate is being created. What happens here is if you get charged a hypothetical 150k for an apartment that already exists (let's say, hypothetically, a rich company bought all the flats available), you can then almost always buy an apartment that has not yet been built (which is a very common strategy here) from a real estate builder for cheaper. If the builder charges too much, people will go to another competitor that offers better prices. That's, again, just how supply and demand works. As long as there is A) enough space still left to build a 10-level apartment building in a reasonable distance in the city and B) the costs of building + the cost of land aquisition itself remain lower than the market price, then there will be a competitor that will offer cheaper. And, to answer your "building owner" concern, that is all they do - they buy the land underneath, they multiply the legal property via flat-building, they sell it as flats for profit, and they're then out of the picture. And landlords, evil as they may be, will not purchase more property than is profitable for them - and there is a limited number of people willing to rent. Buying a whole flat's worth of appartments may be profitable for a rental agency in a university city, but will not be a good investment otherwise. They just won't get renters, because people will run to the real estate competitors who'll just build new stuff cheaper. >Such as building owners deciding to sell, and the new owners deciding to tear everything down and rebuild (which is a huge part of the gentrification process), leaving the occupants homeless. I have to say, I have no clue on what you mean. Maybe that's a US thing? Here, after you buy an appartment, it's 100% yours, because it's real estate. There is no "building owner" - there is the HOA of the flat, consisting of all the property owners in the flat. It's a council of owners, not an individual. Appartments, legally speaking, are residential property of their own standing - you can't interfere with it in the same way you cannot interfere with a homeowner's house. There is no third party, you can shoot a home invader, etc etc. If there is a building owner, then you do not own that appartment.
The thing is, there isn’t a singular person doing landlording. So while a landlord may not purchase more than a few buildings, the problem is that are hundreds of thousands of landlords (and even entire companies that as act as landlords to), and they all buy a handful of buildings. This happens in combination with real estate brokers that buy up other housing. All of this adds up, and causes a false scarcity of real estate, which drives up the cost of housing and rent. Hence, in major cities like NYC apartments have only driven the cost of housing up, not down.
Also, I mean exactly what I said. A massive part of the gentrification process is that landlords will buy an older complex, in a run down area where the rent is less expensive. Then they kick out all the occupants, tear down the complex and build a new one, and then the charge higher rent because the building is now new.
>Then they kick out all the occupants But how? That's what I am asking. It's private property. How can you kick someone out?
Certain cities have a law that allows you to evict a person renting the space if you plan to move in 30 days. Depending on the city/state, renters can have plenty of rights or very few. The renter often has no choice, and police can be called if they refuse to leave. :c
I mean. That's not really how housing works here though? You don't buy apartments here, you rent them. It's not exactly an option. It's also difficult to live in apartments when a lot of places don't have many apartment buildings.
>You don't buy apartments here, you rent them. Why not, though? Where there is demand, there is supply, surely.
I think it is an issue of terminology. In English (at least in American English), apartments by definition cannot be bought and can only be rented. An apartment you can buy is called a condominium or condo for short.
Wow, TIL! That's interesting that there is a separate word for this. I was under the impression condo is fancy word for a studio. But again, out of curiosity: why are there living spaces in flats that can only be rented and not bought? Are they state-owned? Is there some law involved to forbids sale? Why is this housing property type not available for purchase?
Condo buildings and townhouses are typically part of a homeowners association. Throughout much of the country, they cost only slightly less, or even as much as a house to purchase. Which means, depending on where you live, they’re often a very poor investment, and it’s better to just gamble on a house. Apartments complexes are owned by landlords, whom rent out the living spaces. The living spaces can’t be sold, because they don’t have the same zoning classification as a condo or townhouse.
>Apartments complexes are owned by landlords They just... own an entire building of appartments? That is so wild, fuck that though, sounds unethical as fuck.
**Why is it unethical for a person (or a business) to own a building full of apartments?** Certainly a single company bought the land, and then went through the proper process of zoning, applying for permits, and paying for the construction. Why shouldn't they rent apartments for people to live in? Hotels rent rooms for people to temporarily live in. Office buildings rent suites or entire floors for businesses. BTW - in our area it is possible to convert (single owner) apartment buildings into Condominiums (where each unit is owned by somebody). My understanding, though, is that there are expenses with this, such that each unit must now have individually metered water, gas, electricity, etc. There may also be other requirements for changes in the building based on city codes.
> My understanding, though, is that there are expenses with this, such that each unit must now have individually metered water, gas, electricity, etc. Basic requirement if you have real estate. I think it's unethical because it's monopolising something that should not be monopolised, and it's a symptom of social inequality. When landlords stop owning individual appartments and just built whole flats to rent from the outset, that just sounds wrong to me. I do acknowledge that this might be a cultural bias that is impacting my view. As I said, people here overwhelmingly own their homes. Renting is exclusively a student phenomenon and something that happens in the capital (where there are millions of people, so you get house ownership, renting and everything inbetween, the city is huge). If you are a landlord or if you rent in other cities, something is going wrong - either you are not doing well financially, living here temporarily, or you're doing a shady business and want to cover it up by having names off of registers.
They do, often times multiple buildings of apartments. The tenants pay rent to that person every month. There are tons of apartments in my city. People who complain about not being able to afford permanent housing are often struggling to get by renting. If you are tapped out paying $400 a month for a rental, you aren't going to be able to afford to purchase a home, even a condo, for that. The structure just isn't there. We have a small, very modest home in a modest neighborhood. It still costs three times what we were paying in rent per month.
I think the problem is more zoning laws in States that are massively popular because of the opportunity on offer. You can find really cheap beautiful homes but people don't want to live in Nebraska.
I’m from Kansas and you are absolutely correct. It’s kind of ridiculous because I would NEVER want to live in California or New York either. Yeah, you have cool stuff near you but the change in living standards is just insane.
Yeah, I know friends that live in LA and pay like 2k a month for a normal apartment. I'm sure it would normalize if they just allowed more like construction.
I really don't know about America, but where i live the main problem with house (or apartment) crisis is mainly about tourism. For example, a zero bedroom apartment in the city used to be affordable by a single person some 15-20 years ago, but today you need to make around 3 minimum wages just to pay rent. That made all the working people move to the suburbs, and that almost doubled the cost of the apartments and houses, making it that a 50 year old, 2 bedroom apartment 45m from the city costs more than the average income of a person. So yeah i get what you're saying about wanting house instead of apartment, but i don't think that's all that's happening.
Amsterdam?
Lisbon
Oh yeah, I read that the Chinese buying all the appartments and making them BnBs really fucked up your city. Were I the mayor there, I'd try to copy Amsterdam's policies on rental, and make it illegal to rent an appartment out the first 5 years you buy it or something, just like they do with cars. There has to be a solution to keep homes for living, not renting. It's a shame it happened to Lisbon, your city is amazing!
Not only the chinese, there are plenty of french people and americans as well. Mostly every developed country in the world has more money on average than we do here, so it gets pretty easy for them. It almost gets funny when an old, wrecked, unlivable apartment goes from costing around 70k to almost 350k. But then again, we can't really complain since our economy is tourism-based, so it's a pickle.
Im from the UK. Our property prices vary based on location. I was watching that property brothers show from America and every episode the families are like "we dont have enough space we need to move" while they have a massive fucking house which would probably be the upper 5% of houses in the UK. Their bedrooms are the size of my living room and its literally just a bed and a wardrobe. If they needed more space they could easily put up a partition wall and turn 1 bedroom into 2. They'll say some shit like "I need a bigger garden" and their garden is like quarter of an acre. Or "we need a bigger kitchen" when they have a fucking island. Meanwhile most homes in the UK have a smaller kitchen with no separate dining room or utility room so you have to dine in the kitchen and do your laundry in a space smaller than their kitchen alone and they complain they need more space
Is there anything WRONG with wanting a larger home, if you can afford it? My wife & I raised 6 children in a 1400 sq ft townhouse. As they grew older (and stuff accumulated), the house just seemed to shrink. Yes, we were surviving there and could enjoy our postage-stamp sized backyard. We could afford it, so we moved into a house that is twice as big and sits on 1/3 of an acre. We are ***blessed***. Each of the remaining children (2 moved out) finally have their own bedrooms. We redid the kitchen to have that island you mentioned. I have room enough for a workshop. We also have room enough to have a couple of other large families over to socialize. It beats the heck out of merely *surviving* at our other house.
This is my point. The homes in America that these people live in are huge. What we would consider a big house in the UK is a lot smaller than the houses they currently live in. If its available and you can afford it then why not but I think OP is right. Houses in America are significantly larger than those elsewhere
In our American Big Cities, there are lots of apartment buildings. The Population Concentration is too high to have tons of individual houses. Because of the demand, prices for each piece of property is high, and smaller houses are bought up be developers to make money building apartment buildings. If you are willing to go further out into the suburbs, there is plenty of land for houses. My son bought a "starter" townhouse with maybe 1000 sq ft at auction for $50k. My 1400 sq ft townhouse sold for $170k. If you have a job and are saving for a couple of years, there is no reason that you cannot afford a "starter" house or condo. Actually - there is a reason. Some people go into stupid amounts of debt. The average university graduate owes $25k at graduation (if they borrowed). I have seen some students who DIDN'T graduate and still owed $60k when they dropped out. Either that, or they graduated (after 5-6 years) with a boatload of debt and a degree that is not marketable. THEN, having graduated, they believe that because of their hard work, they "owe" themselves a brand-new car (adding an additional $30-40k in debt).
Their fault for buying a 30k car, I have no compassion for all these people screaming "I cAnNot aFfOrD a hOuSe oR cAr" and when you ask them why they don't buy a Dacia Logan brand new at 6k$ they tell you they want a Tesla because they are eco-warriors or whatever.