Developers should stop using "luxury" in their marketing. It will only create headaches for them. It creates meaningless arguments from people complaining about "we only build luxury housing"
The reality is "we are building housing that meets building code at $1400/unit" and evaluate based on that statement. Then people will realize $1400 / unit is towards the lower end of Charlottesville rent - especially for a new unit.
It’s a part of the problem. Another large part of the problem is stagnant salaries, looking at UVA, with your paltry 2-3 percent raises unless it’s for leadership or athletics head coaches.
I don’t mean to be argumentative in this at all, but I often see people complain about pay at uva, and I don’t understand it. From what I’ve seen, it regularly pays more than other entities here for essentially equivalent jobs. I’ve often seen people go from other public or smaller private entities to uva and make far more money than they were making at their prior employer (private, county, city, etc.).
u/craftypandaAW I think it depends. For entry and mid-level jobs, the pay seems pretty paltry, compared to industry norms. For some of the more senior positions, it seems to overcorrect. I know a year or two ago, one of the schools was looking for an assistant director of communications with an advertised hiring range of 55-65k, which felt quite low to me.
In the area yes, also in a lot of service jobs. IT, Medicine, Engineering, and Science position pay more if itou can work relotely or leave the area. There used to be a common theme that the only way to get a substantial raise was to jump to the private sector for year then come back.
City and County pay is low compared to UVA. In some positions UVA is higher than the state because UVA’s autonomy agreement with the state allows them benchmarks position pay ranges through an outside company that updates their data more frequently than the state HR department. The other large stare schools have similar autonomy agreements with individual milestones to meet to keep their autonomy. Part of UVA’s enrollment growth was driven by that agreement.
What part of 2-3 % raise is confusing you? Woo you got $50 more a month and your rent went up $100. It doesn't even match cost of living.
I've seen positions at UVA requiring a master's degree and 5+ years experiences paying $42k. UVA acts like someone should consider themselves lucky to work for UVA but good vibes don't pay the rent. I left a position at UVA for a smaller, private institution in the Northeast and my salary increased $14k. My rent was actually cheaper there too, though I was living in an old house, not a "luxury" apt complex. An easier ability to commute from other cities where people want to live, with things to do, gives a bit more market competition.
The default shouldn't be grown ass adults having to have roommates or second jobs. The entire time I've worked for UVA, I've had a part time job.
My current role doesn't have much of equilvalent at the city/county level. Private industry does, and it's been incredibility hard to break into it (I'm trying) bc the pay IS so much better.
Real estate and housing is increasingly a speculative and investment asset class heavily supported by government. Also a lucrative tax revenue generator for local governments. Too much in the heavily financialized economy is riding on prices never going down and notching incremental gains year after year. The problem is that those gains required by the system (inflation) have rapidly outpaced the general public’s ability to afford the prices for rent or to buy.
This is why you see these density models as a solution praised by conventional economics. Overall real estate values can still stay high and increase, but the dense units can marginally become more affordable, by giving less to the end user on the same land footprint. Shrinkflation for housing. It’s better than doing nothing, but still games working class people to goose asset values for the number must go up economy.
We need to see local governments generate revenue from a source that isn’t tied to ever increasing property values, and we need to see financial regulators step away from protecting real estate values and avoiding foreclosure at all costs. As long as you have a system that is completely reliant on high prices and stacked to favor investors we will never have truly affordable housing. Note that high real estate prices are bad for builders too since land becomes a huge expanse and hoarder investors sit on vacant properties because they expect price appreciation year after year.
That’s why the problem gets worse and worse each year and it is seemingly an impossible problem to solve without just flat out subsidizing housing costs for financially struggling people. Which then of course becomes something of a feedback loop because you’re requiring more and more tax dollars to house people and guarantee rent payments and property values for landlords and investors.
Just my 10¢ and lived experience as someone who didn’t lock in housing pre pandemic, pays a painfully high portion of my income for housing, and doesn’t qualify for subsidized housing. I’m not an expert, it just seems like inflationary economic practices (capitalism) have reached a state of absurdity that isn’t sustainable, particularly in housing.
A good source of revenue generation is by taxing the highest income earners. It’s a start, but the end goal should be approaching levels of 1950’s era wealth tax. That way we’d have the funds to build high quality affordable housing. Not this “luxury housing” b.s. that’s essentially just trickle down housing. The poorest people and workers, the people that make these cities hum along, should be the ones prioritized for new housing.
and you can say its "trickle down housing" but its incredibly well researched that even building expensive new housing aids affordability. And, the only reason "luxury" is being used here as a term is because of marketing from LV; its comparable in price to other off-campus student housing.
It leads to gentrification as well. Take a look at most U.S. cities where entire blocks have been transformed into cookie cutter, soulless “luxury” developments for yuppies to replace and price out the people who lived there for decades. It changes the culture and the aesthetics of the city for the worse. And soon after these luxury housing units go up you see the mom and pop shops get replaced with Starbucks and “trendy” boba tea shops. In the case of Charlottesville specifically it’s outside money’d interests being catered to over the poor folks who are going to have to live in the shadow of this proposed monstrosity.
You’re looking at this from a purely wonkish, neoliberal economic perspective. I’m taking more aspects and outcomes into the equation.
Bottom line is we need to prioritize affordable housing, not luxury housing. The system needs to change from rich people being prioritized first for housing and the working classes having to wait until that imagined time comes when these luxury properties magically lower prices for everyone else.
you basically have an anti-evidence belief that development is a cause (rather than symptom) of price increases. Im very pro public housing and affordable housing, but supply restrictions just speed up that displacement you are concerned about.
And i think aesthetics can be a valid concern, but generally not worth prioritizing during an affordability crisis. I care more about people being able to live in an area than controlling how it looks.
No, the evidence I have is found in almost all major American cities nowadays. Including this one. What I see is city council prioritizing outside money’d interests (this Texas development company) over the interests and concerns of the poor residents that will have to live in the literal shadow of the proposed 12 story monstrosity. That’s twisted to me.
No, I’m pro development. I want the development of affordable and public housing, not greedy private developer luxury housing.
People conflate affordable with meaning only housing for the working class. NIMBYs hear Affordable and think projects and subsized housing. We also need middle class housing, your local teachers, city workers, mid-level UVA faculty and staff, etc. The middle class is disapperaring rapidly.
Someone making $50k cannot afford a $450k townhouse.
If you want more affordable housing locally then start talking about uva, city, and county slowing economic growth to lower aggregate demand to live here. Uva is constantly growing class sizes and operations, local governments are welcoming new corporate entities left and right.
You’re going full blast on density, but isn’t that already being built?? Go around town and look at all the construction projects for apartments, townhomes, and SFH being built. It even extends into surrounding counties.
I can’t see realistically how the rate of housing construction could be any higher, especially when you consider infrastructure and services also has to be expanded. The easiest lever to pull seems to be lowering aggregate economic growth, and demand to live here will follow. It’s just pure greed on the parts of uva and local governments, with no regard to how it affects quality of life for residents.
didn't say thing about density, so I think you meant to reply to someone else. My point was the cost of living in Cville. Sure, there is new building in Charlottesville- particularly apartments aimed at students and townhouses in $400+ range, both of which miss the mark for a great many people. How would making the largest employer around slow their growth help really? That's false equilvancy. UVA Health is already short staffed and people complain about long wait times. Making Charlottesville an undesirable place to live isn't the solution.
Well first of all, the 1950s didnt have a wealth tax, but they did have high income tax rates in top brackets. And, LVT is functionally a progressive tax that burdens mostly high-income earners.
But that aside, trying to jack up top income tax brackets wont have the intended effect. Firstly, most of the super-rich are making their money of capital gains. 1950s-level top tax brackets will just lead to avoidance and may even reduce our total revenue. Smooth tax rates are generally more efficient.
Rather than looking at the 1950s, I would encourage you to look currently at how the most successful welfare states generate revenue. (its not just "taxing the 1%"). Denmark, Sweden, and Norway all have high tax rates on the middle class, and they get a ton of funding from a VAT (which is regressive!).
There was a 50% corporate tax rate in the 1950’s, and it even increases to 70% for excess profits. Compare that to today’s corporate tax rate of a meager 21%. We’re allowing them to line their pockets.
The top marginal tax rate in the 50’s was 92%. We need to get back to these rates, and we also need to close the loopholes you mentioned. We also need to jack up estate taxes as well. If it leads to “avoidance” then we go after them legally. Believe me, I’m well aware of capital gains taxes, as that’s my main income, and even then I think it should be taxed more.
I don’t care about the conservative think tank article you linked.
Neither of those are wealth taxes. The above message of why I disagree with extremely high top marginal tax rates. Again, Id encourage you to look at the corporate tax rate and top marginal tax rates in nordic countries described in the tax foundation article.
They are a good idea. The 1950’s was a golden era for American families. It was an economic boom time, low unemployment, rapidly rising middle class affluence, high quality infrastructure growth, etc.
Why are you defending the already super rich paying less taxes?
So we start actually funding and modernizing the IRS to go after these cheats. We start enforcing laws that allow the rich to hoard wealth.
Yes I agree, and we must consider what made real estate such a lucrative investment in the first place. For example, we give about 35 billion in tax cuts to home owners every year, and we make it extremely hard to build. An inevitable result of subsidizing demand and restricting supply is that housing will become an extremely appealing investment. Also, I prefer taxing land (at least partially) over property to shift the tax burden away from renters and onto home owners.
citation for the "we give about 35 billion in tax cuts to home owners every year"?
and this? um ok.
the “anti-corporate” framing gets even harder to sustain once you look at who actually invests in student housing. Blackstone, for example,bought American Campus Communities in a roughly $13 billion acquisition, and its large student-housing portfolios in joint ventures, including a portfolio containing assets adjacent to the University of Virginia. In this sense, protests against by-right approval benefit corporate investors and signal to the market that asset prices will continue to climb.
say more about taxing land and not property. Are you saying don't tax land improvement or things like cars? Wouldn't increasing property taxes also increase rent?
So what I would propose (which requires state-level authoritzation) is a split-rate tax. Right now, we already assess the value of land and the value of property on top of that land, then combine those two to get our property tax rate.
I would advocate we tax the value of the land at a higher rate and the value of property at a lower rate, while still keeping the revenue the same. This would shift the tax burden towards single-family home owners and would cut taxes for large apartment buildings, encouraging development and density. It would also functionally cut taxes for renters, since the developer's property tax is passed down and paid by the renter.
Right now property tax is a disincentive to develop land, which contributes to less affordability and more environmental destruction.
With favoring density or single family homes and land ownership, why does it have to be either-or? Build up both models as something people want to and can afford to live in. The main problem is prices have inflated to a level that’s too high for a large portion of the public to afford, and too high for builders to develop into usable and desirable things. Property in general is underutilized because large swaths of it are being hoarded by the wealthiest on the economic ladder.
People want single family homes with land, and dense cities can be great places to live also. Deflate the bubble and start favoring people over capitalist interests.
Well its not really favoring one or the other, just getting rid of our existing incentive that penalizes density.
I would prefer LVT over other forms of revenue generation because
1. its progressive--mainly affects the rich who are way more likely to own expensive land
2. its efficient. since supply of land is inelastic, it doesnt negatively affect behavior in the same way most other tax sources do.
3. its easy to collect (we already measure land value)
I also kind of take issue with your assertion that governments are stopping density to protect their tax base--their tax base would expand a lot under the current system if we had more liberal zoning laws. I think its more the opposite, more privileged individuals lobby the government to eliminate competition and they support tax systems (like property tax) that benefit them.
My assertion was the opposite. They want a density model because it allows land values to stay high or even grow higher, but can provide marginally more affordable units to the public. Win-win in government’s eyes, but the public gets screwed by getting less real estate for their dollars compared to the past. Shrinkflation for housing.
I’m not against density, per-se. But it shouldn’t be a mechanism to keep the inflation game going while keeping the public placated with something-anything affordable. People deserve value for their money.
You seem so invested in this topic of Charlottesville housing you should argue your case in front of city council instead of writing substacks and posting them on reddit.
The entire model of government tax revenue being generated from real estate values needs to go and be replaced with some other taxation scheme (I’m not saying they shouldn’t tax, government needs revenue). There’s too much incentive for governments and regulators to prop up and push real estate prices higher year after year. Investors have taken note and more and more are realizing real estate is a no-loss investment, leading to hoarding and a frozen market that doesn’t turn over. Force some of these hoarders to sell through a falling market, and foreclosure on over-leveraged players and you will see a lot of un-used supply come on the market, fixer uppers become affordable enough to fix, and free up plenty of land to be built on.
No
Luxury is just a marketing term. It doesn’t mean anything outside of false advertising.
Developers should stop using "luxury" in their marketing. It will only create headaches for them. It creates meaningless arguments from people complaining about "we only build luxury housing"
The reality is "we are building housing that meets building code at $1400/unit" and evaluate based on that statement. Then people will realize $1400 / unit is towards the lower end of Charlottesville rent - especially for a new unit.
> a PHAR student advocate cites a survey showing that 89 percent of respondents are unwilling to pay rents starting at $1,400 per month.
A quick search of rental properties, $1,400 is on the low end of Charlottesville rent.
I wonder if the student was conflating what students pay (splitting with roommates) vs total rent.
It’s a part of the problem. Another large part of the problem is stagnant salaries, looking at UVA, with your paltry 2-3 percent raises unless it’s for leadership or athletics head coaches.
I don’t mean to be argumentative in this at all, but I often see people complain about pay at uva, and I don’t understand it. From what I’ve seen, it regularly pays more than other entities here for essentially equivalent jobs. I’ve often seen people go from other public or smaller private entities to uva and make far more money than they were making at their prior employer (private, county, city, etc.).
I’ve talked to people who work in the programming side of the university. Their salary for programmers is at the lower end of the industry.
Interesting! Thanks for sharing and example. I don’t think I know anyone who does that for the university.
u/craftypandaAW I think it depends. For entry and mid-level jobs, the pay seems pretty paltry, compared to industry norms. For some of the more senior positions, it seems to overcorrect. I know a year or two ago, one of the schools was looking for an assistant director of communications with an advertised hiring range of 55-65k, which felt quite low to me.
In the area yes, also in a lot of service jobs. IT, Medicine, Engineering, and Science position pay more if itou can work relotely or leave the area. There used to be a common theme that the only way to get a substantial raise was to jump to the private sector for year then come back.
City and County pay is low compared to UVA. In some positions UVA is higher than the state because UVA’s autonomy agreement with the state allows them benchmarks position pay ranges through an outside company that updates their data more frequently than the state HR department. The other large stare schools have similar autonomy agreements with individual milestones to meet to keep their autonomy. Part of UVA’s enrollment growth was driven by that agreement.
What part of 2-3 % raise is confusing you? Woo you got $50 more a month and your rent went up $100. It doesn't even match cost of living.
I've seen positions at UVA requiring a master's degree and 5+ years experiences paying $42k. UVA acts like someone should consider themselves lucky to work for UVA but good vibes don't pay the rent. I left a position at UVA for a smaller, private institution in the Northeast and my salary increased $14k. My rent was actually cheaper there too, though I was living in an old house, not a "luxury" apt complex. An easier ability to commute from other cities where people want to live, with things to do, gives a bit more market competition.
The default shouldn't be grown ass adults having to have roommates or second jobs. The entire time I've worked for UVA, I've had a part time job.
My current role doesn't have much of equilvalent at the city/county level. Private industry does, and it's been incredibility hard to break into it (I'm trying) bc the pay IS so much better.
Real estate and housing is increasingly a speculative and investment asset class heavily supported by government. Also a lucrative tax revenue generator for local governments. Too much in the heavily financialized economy is riding on prices never going down and notching incremental gains year after year. The problem is that those gains required by the system (inflation) have rapidly outpaced the general public’s ability to afford the prices for rent or to buy.
This is why you see these density models as a solution praised by conventional economics. Overall real estate values can still stay high and increase, but the dense units can marginally become more affordable, by giving less to the end user on the same land footprint. Shrinkflation for housing. It’s better than doing nothing, but still games working class people to goose asset values for the number must go up economy.
We need to see local governments generate revenue from a source that isn’t tied to ever increasing property values, and we need to see financial regulators step away from protecting real estate values and avoiding foreclosure at all costs. As long as you have a system that is completely reliant on high prices and stacked to favor investors we will never have truly affordable housing. Note that high real estate prices are bad for builders too since land becomes a huge expanse and hoarder investors sit on vacant properties because they expect price appreciation year after year.
That’s why the problem gets worse and worse each year and it is seemingly an impossible problem to solve without just flat out subsidizing housing costs for financially struggling people. Which then of course becomes something of a feedback loop because you’re requiring more and more tax dollars to house people and guarantee rent payments and property values for landlords and investors.
Just my 10¢ and lived experience as someone who didn’t lock in housing pre pandemic, pays a painfully high portion of my income for housing, and doesn’t qualify for subsidized housing. I’m not an expert, it just seems like inflationary economic practices (capitalism) have reached a state of absurdity that isn’t sustainable, particularly in housing.
A good source of revenue generation is by taxing the highest income earners. It’s a start, but the end goal should be approaching levels of 1950’s era wealth tax. That way we’d have the funds to build high quality affordable housing. Not this “luxury housing” b.s. that’s essentially just trickle down housing. The poorest people and workers, the people that make these cities hum along, should be the ones prioritized for new housing.
and you can say its "trickle down housing" but its incredibly well researched that even building expensive new housing aids affordability. And, the only reason "luxury" is being used here as a term is because of marketing from LV; its comparable in price to other off-campus student housing.
It leads to gentrification as well. Take a look at most U.S. cities where entire blocks have been transformed into cookie cutter, soulless “luxury” developments for yuppies to replace and price out the people who lived there for decades. It changes the culture and the aesthetics of the city for the worse. And soon after these luxury housing units go up you see the mom and pop shops get replaced with Starbucks and “trendy” boba tea shops. In the case of Charlottesville specifically it’s outside money’d interests being catered to over the poor folks who are going to have to live in the shadow of this proposed monstrosity.
You’re looking at this from a purely wonkish, neoliberal economic perspective. I’m taking more aspects and outcomes into the equation.
Bottom line is we need to prioritize affordable housing, not luxury housing. The system needs to change from rich people being prioritized first for housing and the working classes having to wait until that imagined time comes when these luxury properties magically lower prices for everyone else.
you basically have an anti-evidence belief that development is a cause (rather than symptom) of price increases. Im very pro public housing and affordable housing, but supply restrictions just speed up that displacement you are concerned about.
And i think aesthetics can be a valid concern, but generally not worth prioritizing during an affordability crisis. I care more about people being able to live in an area than controlling how it looks.
No, the evidence I have is found in almost all major American cities nowadays. Including this one. What I see is city council prioritizing outside money’d interests (this Texas development company) over the interests and concerns of the poor residents that will have to live in the literal shadow of the proposed 12 story monstrosity. That’s twisted to me.
No, I’m pro development. I want the development of affordable and public housing, not greedy private developer luxury housing.
People conflate affordable with meaning only housing for the working class. NIMBYs hear Affordable and think projects and subsized housing. We also need middle class housing, your local teachers, city workers, mid-level UVA faculty and staff, etc. The middle class is disapperaring rapidly.
Someone making $50k cannot afford a $450k townhouse.
If you want more affordable housing locally then start talking about uva, city, and county slowing economic growth to lower aggregate demand to live here. Uva is constantly growing class sizes and operations, local governments are welcoming new corporate entities left and right.
You’re going full blast on density, but isn’t that already being built?? Go around town and look at all the construction projects for apartments, townhomes, and SFH being built. It even extends into surrounding counties.
I can’t see realistically how the rate of housing construction could be any higher, especially when you consider infrastructure and services also has to be expanded. The easiest lever to pull seems to be lowering aggregate economic growth, and demand to live here will follow. It’s just pure greed on the parts of uva and local governments, with no regard to how it affects quality of life for residents.
didn't say thing about density, so I think you meant to reply to someone else. My point was the cost of living in Cville. Sure, there is new building in Charlottesville- particularly apartments aimed at students and townhouses in $400+ range, both of which miss the mark for a great many people. How would making the largest employer around slow their growth help really? That's false equilvancy. UVA Health is already short staffed and people complain about long wait times. Making Charlottesville an undesirable place to live isn't the solution.
Yes, I thought I was replying to OP, my mistake
Well first of all, the 1950s didnt have a wealth tax, but they did have high income tax rates in top brackets. And, LVT is functionally a progressive tax that burdens mostly high-income earners.
But that aside, trying to jack up top income tax brackets wont have the intended effect. Firstly, most of the super-rich are making their money of capital gains. 1950s-level top tax brackets will just lead to avoidance and may even reduce our total revenue. Smooth tax rates are generally more efficient.
Rather than looking at the 1950s, I would encourage you to look currently at how the most successful welfare states generate revenue. (its not just "taxing the 1%"). Denmark, Sweden, and Norway all have high tax rates on the middle class, and they get a ton of funding from a VAT (which is regressive!).
https://taxfoundation.org/blog/scandinavian-social-programs-taxes-2023/
Im not saying the rich pay their fair share in taxes in the USA, but thats more about closing loopholes than it is vastly increasingly our income tax.
There was a 50% corporate tax rate in the 1950’s, and it even increases to 70% for excess profits. Compare that to today’s corporate tax rate of a meager 21%. We’re allowing them to line their pockets.
The top marginal tax rate in the 50’s was 92%. We need to get back to these rates, and we also need to close the loopholes you mentioned. We also need to jack up estate taxes as well. If it leads to “avoidance” then we go after them legally. Believe me, I’m well aware of capital gains taxes, as that’s my main income, and even then I think it should be taxed more.
I don’t care about the conservative think tank article you linked.
Neither of those are wealth taxes. The above message of why I disagree with extremely high top marginal tax rates. Again, Id encourage you to look at the corporate tax rate and top marginal tax rates in nordic countries described in the tax foundation article.
And not all avoidance is illegal...
I love how you failed to answer why you're bootlicking for the rich elite paying less in taxes lol.
LVT is progressive, so im doing the opposite 😂 renters are not the rich elite
You're literally arguing against raising the top marginal tax rate lol.
They are a good idea. The 1950’s was a golden era for American families. It was an economic boom time, low unemployment, rapidly rising middle class affluence, high quality infrastructure growth, etc.
Why are you defending the already super rich paying less taxes?
So we start actually funding and modernizing the IRS to go after these cheats. We start enforcing laws that allow the rich to hoard wealth.
Yes I agree, and we must consider what made real estate such a lucrative investment in the first place. For example, we give about 35 billion in tax cuts to home owners every year, and we make it extremely hard to build. An inevitable result of subsidizing demand and restricting supply is that housing will become an extremely appealing investment. Also, I prefer taxing land (at least partially) over property to shift the tax burden away from renters and onto home owners.
citation for the "we give about 35 billion in tax cuts to home owners every year"?
and this? um ok.
the “anti-corporate” framing gets even harder to sustain once you look at who actually invests in student housing. Blackstone, for example,bought American Campus Communities in a roughly $13 billion acquisition, and its large student-housing portfolios in joint ventures, including a portfolio containing assets adjacent to the University of Virginia. In this sense, protests against by-right approval benefit corporate investors and signal to the market that asset prices will continue to climb.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/tax-expenditure-of-the-week-tax-free-capital-gains-for-primary-residences
say more about taxing land and not property. Are you saying don't tax land improvement or things like cars? Wouldn't increasing property taxes also increase rent?
So what I would propose (which requires state-level authoritzation) is a split-rate tax. Right now, we already assess the value of land and the value of property on top of that land, then combine those two to get our property tax rate.
I would advocate we tax the value of the land at a higher rate and the value of property at a lower rate, while still keeping the revenue the same. This would shift the tax burden towards single-family home owners and would cut taxes for large apartment buildings, encouraging development and density. It would also functionally cut taxes for renters, since the developer's property tax is passed down and paid by the renter.
Right now property tax is a disincentive to develop land, which contributes to less affordability and more environmental destruction.
With favoring density or single family homes and land ownership, why does it have to be either-or? Build up both models as something people want to and can afford to live in. The main problem is prices have inflated to a level that’s too high for a large portion of the public to afford, and too high for builders to develop into usable and desirable things. Property in general is underutilized because large swaths of it are being hoarded by the wealthiest on the economic ladder.
People want single family homes with land, and dense cities can be great places to live also. Deflate the bubble and start favoring people over capitalist interests.
Well its not really favoring one or the other, just getting rid of our existing incentive that penalizes density.
I would prefer LVT over other forms of revenue generation because
1. its progressive--mainly affects the rich who are way more likely to own expensive land
2. its efficient. since supply of land is inelastic, it doesnt negatively affect behavior in the same way most other tax sources do.
3. its easy to collect (we already measure land value)
I also kind of take issue with your assertion that governments are stopping density to protect their tax base--their tax base would expand a lot under the current system if we had more liberal zoning laws. I think its more the opposite, more privileged individuals lobby the government to eliminate competition and they support tax systems (like property tax) that benefit them.
My assertion was the opposite. They want a density model because it allows land values to stay high or even grow higher, but can provide marginally more affordable units to the public. Win-win in government’s eyes, but the public gets screwed by getting less real estate for their dollars compared to the past. Shrinkflation for housing.
I’m not against density, per-se. But it shouldn’t be a mechanism to keep the inflation game going while keeping the public placated with something-anything affordable. People deserve value for their money.
You seem so invested in this topic of Charlottesville housing you should argue your case in front of city council instead of writing substacks and posting them on reddit.
The entire model of government tax revenue being generated from real estate values needs to go and be replaced with some other taxation scheme (I’m not saying they shouldn’t tax, government needs revenue). There’s too much incentive for governments and regulators to prop up and push real estate prices higher year after year. Investors have taken note and more and more are realizing real estate is a no-loss investment, leading to hoarding and a frozen market that doesn’t turn over. Force some of these hoarders to sell through a falling market, and foreclosure on over-leveraged players and you will see a lot of un-used supply come on the market, fixer uppers become affordable enough to fix, and free up plenty of land to be built on.
Its not the solution
That's an understatement
Yes.
Yes
Queue the downvotes from this sub’s resident abundance neolibs.