hunterpayne's comments

On: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

[hunterpayne]

"In fact my landlord cited the increased median rent in the neighborhood as a reason to raise my rent."

Your landlord lied to you to get you to pay the increase. You had little choice because finding a cheaper apartment probably wasn't possible/desirable and you probably didn't want to argue with him in front of the rent board. Understandable but that doesn't mean your landlord's explanation has any validity.

[bartlebyS → hunterpayne]

You're saying that even though landlords may justify rent increases because of new constructions, if new constructions hadn't been built they would have used a different justification? And the rent increase would have increased just as much?

That's possible!

Maybe the rent increase is independent of that single new construction. Or it could be mixed depending on the type of housing. I looked into it a bit more[1] and it seems like lower-quality apartments near a new build go up in price but high-quality ones go down in price.

[1]: https://nlihc.org/resource/new-construction-has-mixed-short-...

On: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

[hunterpayne]

When? Because we don't use market solutions for those things now. Those are two of the most manipulated markets in the US. They also are two of the three industries whose prices increased by more than inflation, everything else has gotten cheaper (inflation adjusted) over the last several decades. Those things are related.

On: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

[hunterpayne]

Note to the mods, /s is Reddit for sarcasm and this post is a good example of the psychology that leads to people support policies that increase housing costs even though they are designed to decrease housing costs.

On: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

[hunterpayne]

"they mix up all the oil from different producers in the same reservoir"

Only when avoiding sanctions, not normally. And housing does follow economic principles no matter how much you wish that wasn't so.

On: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

[hunterpayne]

Telling people lies that they want to believe has always been profitable.

On: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

[hunterpayne]

It all depends on how those things are calculated. Are you including home value in retirement savings or not?

On: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

[hunterpayne]

You do know that the posters on r/landlord are often selling services to landlords and thus have a financial incentive to make being a landlord seem attractive. Its a pretty safe assumption that reality isn't that rosy.

On: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

[hunterpayne]

You are entirely missing the point. The correct answer is to build 2 houses. The problem with these policies is that they artificially restrict demand. If they didn't do that, nobody would have a problem with them.

[chii → hunterpayne]

> The correct answer is to build 2 houses

the utopian answer is to build two houses. But we don't live in utopia.

The constraints faced today is real (paper or physical). You can't wish it away, and you can't say it's "easier" to just build two houses.

On: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

[hunterpayne]

That is simply not true in any way. Have you ever lived somewhere with rent control? Working class families who have members working jobs in rent controlled areas commute in from often over an hour outside of the city. There are only 3 types of people who live in those cities: those in public housing, upper middle class and wealthy. Their plumbers live in Tracy.

On: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

[hunterpayne]

Can you guess what the #1 source of wealth increase in the AA community has been over the last 20 years? That's right, grandma's house...guess where she lived.