A first time home owner credit helps, but most of the credit will be absorbed by the market in the form of increased home prices. Like every other time the government has tried similar policies for other things, prices of the underlying asset will go up, stimulus checks brought asset inflation, government backing student loans with no questions asked brought expensive higher ed, etc.

P.S. I'm not suggesting stimulus checks weren't necessary, just the effects weren't desirable long term.

There's a lot of off-topic flamebait in there, but let me focus on the small part of your comment that's on-topic.

> A first time home owner credit helps, but most of the credit will be absorbed by the market in the form of increased home prices.

The article addresses this concern with an evaluation of the policy in Singapore. A 9.8% increase in home purchases comes with a 1.1% increase in price. We don't have any way to know the effect of the policy in the US, but it's hard to understand why the only effect would be a higher price.

I don’t think it is reasonable to take that at its face value. The are a lot of differences between the housing market in Singapore and US. For one, almost 80% of residents live in public housing and for a very long time, there were restrictions on the sale price of that house. Since the restrictions have been removed, Singapore has seen a spike in the housing prices. Which brings me to the second difference: Singapore is already very expensive to buy a house in as compared to the incomes, and home ownership rate has remained at around 90% since the 80s. So a 9.8% increase in home purchases is not that big of a number because the total home purchases remain low (only 2000 units were sold in Singapore in the first half of 2024). Understandably, the market prices won’t be impacted that much if 200 more units were sold. Other differences include: government building more housing regularly, tight control over population growth through immigration, etc.

California saw a 7.4% increase in median sale price when the number of purchase were down 8% in June of 2024. We shouldn’t be using what worked in Singapore as an indicator of what will work here. https://www.redfin.com/state/California/housing-market

Yes. Good post.

In the English speaking world houses are a financial asset. In Singapore houses are homes to live in.

No matter how many condos and houses you build they will be bought by speculators.

A lot of the QE since 2008 went in buying assets which includes houses. Now the Fed is trying to shrink the money supply.

The first part of the plan where they deregulate makes a ton of sense, the second part makes no sense. Singapore has very limited land and a very high population density so it potentially needs extra incentive to counteract the market failure for first time home buyers (causing other market failure that is deemed to be less egregious for policy goals). This is not true in North America. North America is a story of local nimbys capturing regulatory bodies and stopping densification and development causing scarcity and property value increases. All we have to do to solve it is force through zoning changes that allow building much more density everywhere that is approved in weeks instead of months or years plus force stringent time requirements and cost requirements on any inspections by the city to get things moving and this will sort itself out first by a massive luxury build out, then buildouts of lower cost stuff as market shortages diminish. There is no reason the market can't fix this itself once we get the government very far out of the way.

"if owner-occupied housing becomes more affordable, that makes most Americans poorer"

This is true only in nominal terms. Shelter is the largest expense for most Americans, an across-the-board rise in shelter cost would drive significant inflation.

Because housing is treated as an asset in the Anglosphere.

Most of the money over the last 20 years has just gone into Asset purchases, little into in productive activities. Hence the asset price inflation.

The real blocker to building more housing is overbearing local codes.

Local municipalities adopt building codes that are so stringent as if you were building some kind of nuclear bunker, and local builders/developers happily use it as an excuse to gouge potential home-buyers to extract the absolute maximum they are willing to pay.

Let people build what they want on their land. Someone wants to build an ADU in their backyard? Let them. Let them do it shoddily if they want.

Building more is 90% of driving down costs.

In Vancouver Canada supply was not the problem.

When certain people raised the alarm about foreign buyers buying up the supply the charge of racism was trotted out to shut them up, even when the person raising the alarm was of the same race as those buying.

Housing is now an Asset and all its problems of affordability derive from that.

A lot of people are assuming supply is the problem.

> The real blocker to building more housing is overbearing local codes.

Isn't that the new plan? I'm not partisan on this, I understand that some Americans didn't like the fact that it remove local power do forbid new construction.

Centralisation/decentralization is a complex issue and I don't have the knowledge to have an informed opinion.

Cutting red tape is part of the plan discussed in the article, and the article also points out that the feds can't entirely fix the problem because they don't control local zoning and codes.

FWIW, I agree with the comment that was flagged to death. What did they say that was so bad it needed to be dead?

They are shadowbanned; I couldn't get far enough back in their history to see why, but it was probably for the constant hostility and partisan flamewarring.

Also though, most of the issues they raised (e.g. zoning, permitting, fees, property and sales taxes, demographic sales restrictions [I'm gonna need a cite on that one]) are municipal and state government concerns and not particularly relevant or actionable at the federal level.

If you click on the timestamp of comments that are dead and you have enough karma(?) you can vouch for them and they sometimes come back.

Thanks for pointing this out, I've seen a lot of flagged dead comments come back and wondered how that happens. It seems the one in question now has as well.

It does not seem to be flagged, but down voted.

Personally I wold also down vote it as it is not very well founded. A change of the wording would probably go a long way not to be down-voted and also some support for the ideas.

Furthermore, it represents a sentiment and a direction I think most people on HN do not agree with. As a European I also do not not agree that direction to solve the issue.

I am guessing you and the other poster didn't read the full article, because reducing bureaucracy is a part of this proposal:

> Cut Red Tape and Needless Bureaucracy. These plans will build on the Biden-Harris Administration's efforts to cut red tape and enable more home building to bring down housing costs-which have advanced record levels of new home construction. Pushing this forward also means streamlining permitting processes and reviews, including for transit-oriented and conversion development, so builders canget homes on the market sooner and bring down costs.

Same here... it was also pretty similar to the idea the article was about. When I've talked about YIMBY ideas of allowing more housing to be built on here in the past, I also usually get downvoted and get a lot of angry replies.

My take is there are some active YIMBY groups in SF in particular, and for some reason they are strongly and actively disliked by a lot of the local HN crowd- but they generally don't seem to want to say anything about it or explain why. I'm not informed enough to know what is actually going on, as I don't live there, but have been accused of being part of specific groups in specific places that I know nothing about when I've posted.

I don't know if this is why, but it's not a constructive comment. Just saying something people will agree with shouldn't be a reason to post here. A comment should add something to the discussion. There's no substantial justification in their comment for the their preferences. Just voicing your policy preferences doesn't add anything to the discussion other than flame bait.

get the government out of the way and people will build to surplus

streamline permitting

knock down ridiculous fees and paperwork

don't try to tax the builder out of business

don't put stupid mandates about forcing builders to sell to demographics the current administration prefers

basically, get out of the way and homes will be built

It sounds like you agree with much of the Harris plan, which includes provisions for streamlining the permit process and reducing red tape.

Eliminating single-family-only zoning and similar restrictions would be an important part of "getting out of the way".

Yeah, how would the federal govt do that? Isn’t that a local govt or state jurisdiction?

Yes indeed it is. The feds would have to find some financial incentive which could strongarm the states into passing laws overriding local zoning ordinances, in the same way that they used the threat of withholding highway funding to coerce states into establishing speed limits and the 21-year minimum drinking age.

That is literally what Harris' plan is about.

But most of the building restrictions are coming conservative older homeowners at the local level. There's only so much Harris can do at the Federal level to reduce state and county bureaucracy.

The supremacy clause exists as does the interstate commerce clause. The existence of HUD is proof the the federal government has the ability and constitutional authority to cut through this red tape when so motivated. That said, I would suspect protracted legal battles, with uncertain outcomes given SCOTUS, around any attempt for the federal government to cut through local zoning regulations.

Any data it is conservative towns? Bay Area is the probably the most liberal yet has very restrictive zoning laws.

It terms of population, liberal towns seem to be the culprit.

This is easier said than done. NIMBYs and other interest groups will intentionally get in the way to ensure homes are not built.

What in the world are you talking about?

Lumber prices are back to pre-pandemic levels (wholesale).

There's never been a higher amount of immigrant labor available in the US (for construction as well).

Lumber prices are cheaper than they were during their pandemic highs, sure, but they're still roughly double the price of what they were on average pre-pandemic.

While immigration has increased, it hasn't increased at a rate to replace Americans leaving the labor market. Overall, the amount of labor in the United States has decreased. That dramatically impacts labor-intensive industries, such as construction.

So, we're still faced with a high cost of materials and a shortage of labor.