• grue@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Look, if you want to do something about the investors because of inequality or unfairness or whatever, have at it. I’m just saying that if your goal is to fix housing prices, zoning reform would be vastly more effective as a strategy.

    I did the math in another comment. The TL;DR is that the maximum benefit you could have by eliminating investors is limited to the amount they’re participating in the market in the first place (which is much less than 100%). Meanwhile, simple zoning reforms are capable of doubling, 10x-ing, or more the amount of supply.

    • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      You didn’t do any math, and your assertion that the change in pricing is proportional to the market share is completely wrong. That’s not how pricing in markets works.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        your assertion that the change in pricing is proportional to the market share is completely wrong

        That’s not at all what I said. If you’re going to claim that I’m wrong at least have the decency to not misrepresent my argument.

        • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          How else am I supposed to understand this quote?

          The TL;DR is that the maximum benefit you could have by eliminating investors is limited to the amount they’re participating in the market in the first place (which is much less than 100%).

          Since we were talking about the price, I assumed that the “maximum benefit” was referring to that. Otherwise you’d be ignoring my point, so I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.

          • grue@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            The maximum it can increase the supply of housing is much less than 100%.

            (Also, I realize now that’s not quite right because of the way percentages work: e.g. if the investor owned all the houses and left them vacant, then eliminating the investor and putting them back on the market would technically increase the supply ∞%. The more correct way would be to say it could increase back to 100% of what it was originally.)

            The point is, the amount of housing that could be made available has an upper bound of the amount that the investors are keeping vacant, which is only some fraction of the total that currently exists. Meanwhile, allowing higher density could allow orders of magnitude more housing to be created.

            • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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              20 hours ago

              Are you incapable of understanding that there is more to this discussion than just the supply of housing? Why do you keep ignoring my point?

                • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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                  16 hours ago

                  I’m not! I keep explicitly telling you that your point is wrong: banning property hoarders changes more than just increasing the housing supply by the amount they’ve hoarded, it also reduces the price of housing - and your response to that is to repeat your point.

                  When presented with a counterargument you should respond to it, instead of just repeating your point over and over.

                  • grue@lemmy.world
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                    15 hours ago

                    The effect on the price by banning property hoarders (which, as I’ve said multiple times in this thread, cannot exist in the long run anyway so the problem will eventually solve itself) is so much smaller than the effect of zoning reform increasing the supply as to be damn near negligible in comparison.

                    Y’all keep talking about marginal gains; I’m talking about transformative ones.