Yes, You Can Build Your Way to Affordable Housing (Atlanta: foreclosures, lenders)

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by evannole

Good find, Arjay. Also, look at how the other large sunbelt metros (Charlotte, Dallas, Las Vegas, Miami, Phoenix, Tampa) have fared. Atlanta is well below each and every one of them, and considerably below the US as a whole as well.

Yep, we've held the line pretty well here in the ATL.

Today's mortgage rates also make for a huge improvement in affordability. A $200,000 mortgage today will run you $946 a month.

By comparison, in the early 90s it would have cost $1,468 per month, and in the late 70s/early 80s you'd be staring at a whopping $2,212 payment!

That's why we had to scrimp and save and slowly try to ratchet ourselves up the ladder.

[jsvh]

Yes, we have very few limits on suburban development so there is plenty of supply of that. We are cranking out mansions like McDonald's cranks out hamburgers. And plenty of supply is what has been great at keeping Atlanta housing prices so moderate.

However, urban living options around Atlanta are pricey and increasing rapidly. We need to increase the supply of urban housing otherwise we are going to force everyone that is not making six figures OTP.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by evannole

I think you exaggerate a bit about the run-up in housing prices. They are at all-time highs for the metro area, yes, but they're also barely above where they were in late 2007, before the crash.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATXRNSA

The CAGR from the early 2000s to 2007 was around 4%, and the CAGR over the past four years has been 5%. So, yes, higher, but hardly a quantum shift.

Using 2012 as your reference point, as you have repeatedly done, is intellectually dishonest.

Originally Posted by arjay57

Housing prices in the ATL, adjusted for inflation, are not a whole lot different than they were 25 years ago.

Let's also remember that mortgage interest rates were brutal back in those days. Many of us can remember when you paid 14% or more to buy a house.

Case-Shiller Home Price Trends in 20 Cities - Real Estate Decoded

Y'all realize we shouldn't want prices being back to per-recession levels, right? The housing market crash was supposed to be a correction in the market. It was fixing a bubble of prices built on toxic mortgages, and speculation that installed an oversupply of housing for non-existent demand.

When it became obvious that that demand didn't really exist, the bubble burst, and prices corrected. What we should have wanted to see, then, was a price growth close to that of inflation, indicating a corrected market meeting the actual demands of the population. Well, we've actually been seeing price growth at the same rates as pre-recession ever since the trough.

The difference now, though, is that there actually is demand for that housing. Our vacancy rates continue to drop, we're not building new stock nearly as fast as prerecession, and we've been adding 20% more jobs than housing for those jobs.

Basically, we blew through the excess housing stock from prerecession. The market corrected, but we've failed to allow it to stay corrected, and so now we have the opposite problem. Instead of a bubble raising prices due to speculation beyond demand, we have a supply shortage raising prices as it fails to meet demand.

To make things worse, wages haven't kept up with the recovery, and housing price growth is far outpacing earnings growth for the lower and middle classes.

[evannole]

Yet our housing prices are rising at considerably slower rates than both comparable Sun Belt metropolitan areas and the nation as a whole. Yes, those price indices include the suburbs, but you know what? They include the suburbs everywhere, and the level of suburban development in those other Sun Belt areas is quite similar to that of metro Atlanta. This is not an Atlanta-only issue. Moreover, there's no law stating that anyone should be able to live in their preferred neighborhood with the hippest restaurants and the greatest amenities.

This is not a new paradigm. When I moved here twenty years ago, my salary wouldn't buy me anything in the "cool" areas. So, I bought something in Smyrna, which was reasonably close to the "cool" areas, and had picked up at least a modicum of "cool" itself by the time I moved away 15 years later. By then, with me better established in my career and with a much higher salary, plus a wife who brought her own salary to the table, and significant equity built up in our original house, we could indeed afford to live in a "cool" area. It took many years, however, and patience - weathering recessions, corporate bankruptcies, company-wide pay cuts, teacher furloughs... Yes, patience was key, and is something that the newest generation of potential homebuyers seems to lack.

I am all in favor of making it easier for people to find affordable housing - particularly public servants like teachers, police officers and firefighters - people who work long hours, often starting early in the morning and so for whom a long commute would be particularly burdensome. I am also all in favor of making it easier to build dense developments throughout the metro area. Shoot, I LIVE in one - all of the homes in our neighborhood are newly built, on about a tenth of an acre. We don't need or even want a large lot to care for. What bothers me, though, is that a lot of the grousing about "affordable housing" is more along the lines of, "I can't afford to buy my ideal (but first) place at age 28 in my favorite neighborhood, where the cool kids hang out." I have exactly zero sympathy for that argument.

[jsvh]

Evannole -

You think these < 800 SF units with shared walls, zero parking, & minimal private outdoor space we are trying to legalize more of is the "ideal" money-is-no-option place for about anyone?

No. But it is the practical solution and the most effective way to build affordable housing with a good quality of life for many people.

GTFO of here with your "zero sympathy". Those that want affordable housing should not be pushed to the exuburbs and terrible commutes. If they want to make sacrifices such as less living space to live in a better location or go car-free, they deserve that option.

People want urban housing choices. We need to legalize enough area to build them to keep up with demand.

With as much land as we have in our metro no zoning type should be so constrained that there is no empty land in the metro with it unless you spend millions per acre.

[john-staten island]

Originally Posted by jsvh

Evannole -

You think these < 800 SF units with shared walls, zero parking, & minimal private outdoor space we are trying to legalize more of is the "ideal" money-is-no-option place for about anyone?

No. But it is the practical solution and the most effective way to build affordable housing with a good quality of life for many people.

GTFO of here with your "zero sympathy". Those that want affordable housing should not be pushed to the exuburbs and terrible commutes. If they want to make sacrifices such as less living space to live in a better location or go car-free, they deserve that option.

People want urban housing choices. We need to legalize enough area to build them to keep up with demand.

With as much land as we have in our metro no zoning type should be so constrained that there is no empty land in the metro with it unless you spend millions per acre.

Great points, people entering the housing market need to start somewhere to build equity. My daughter lives in the Arts District /Marta area, she wants to buy an affordable condo. I was surprised how much a 1br 1ba condo would cost her in a safe area that has mass transit. I told her location is #1, so moving 25 miles from her job downtown wouldn't be a good idea.Affordable housing in the city isn't too much to ask.

[brown_dog_us]

Originally Posted by john-staten island

Great points, people entering the housing market need to start somewhere to build equity. My daughter lives in the Arts District /Marta area, she wants to buy an affordable condo. I was surprised how much a 1br 1ba condo would cost her in a safe area that has mass transit. I told her location is #1, so moving 25 miles from her job downtown wouldn't be a good idea.Affordable housing in the city isn't too much to ask.

What do you consider affordable for a 1 bedroom condo in a nice safe neighborhood within walking distance of a train station?

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by brown_dog_us

What do you consider affordable for a 1 bedroom condo in a nice safe neighborhood within walking distance of a train station?

Certainly less than $200K. $100K for smaller, no included parking, older buildings.

Today they are harder to find, but even just a year ago you could find multiple of the latter listings in downtown.

[evannole]

Originally Posted by jsvh

Evannole -

You think these < 800 SF units with shared walls, zero parking, & minimal private outdoor space we are trying to legalize more of is the "ideal" money-is-no-option place for about anyone?

No. But it is the practical solution and the most effective way to build affordable housing with a good quality of life for many people.

GTFO of here with your "zero sympathy". Those that want affordable housing should not be pushed to the exuburbs and terrible commutes. If they want to make sacrifices such as less living space to live in a better location or go car-free, they deserve that option.

People want urban housing choices. We need to legalize enough area to build them to keep up with demand.

With as much land as we have in our metro no zoning type should be so constrained that there is no empty land in the metro with it unless you spend millions per acre.

I could just as easily tell you to go jump in a lake (no, I won't stoop to using even acronyms for profanity in a forum) with your "exurbs and terrible commutes." One does not need to go to the exurbs, nor does one need to have a terrible commute, to find affordable housing. My nominal starting salary of twenty years ago, unadjusted for inflation and pretty modest though it was, would still support a decent rental or purchase in Smyrna, which is hardly the exurbs and actually provides a very good commute by ATL standards to most of the major job centers in the metro area, or any of who knows how many close-in and even in-town locations. Would it swing a place in O4W? No, not likely. But I also am under no misapprehension that it should.

I made it clear before that I support increasing density and I support finding ways to make close-in housing more affordable. What more do you want from me? What I don't support is the notion that everyone should be able to live in the coolest areas - not because I am spiteful but because it simply is not going to happen, practically speaking. I have no particular problem with increasing density in the most popular areas, but being popular, and already more dense than much of the city, as they are, it's unlikely that they'll ever be affordable again. The vast majority of what's built there, even with increased density, is still likely to be aimed at the higher end of the market. In areas that aren't white-hot yet, density probably can indeed help, and I have no issue with that; indeed, I encourage it.

[Gulch]

Originally Posted by evannole

We don't need or even want a large lot to care for. What bothers me, though, is that a lot of the grousing about "affordable housing" is more along the lines of, "I can't afford to buy my ideal (but first) place at age 28 in my favorite neighborhood, where the cool kids hang out." I have exactly zero sympathy for that argument.

Bingo. Many people around these parts think that if they can't find a 3/2 for under $200K in Virginia-Highland that automatically translates to "I can't find anything cheap in the City of Atlanta."