Keeping in mind that all real estate markets are local …
The first it true if and only if the second is true … the hourly rate for plumbers and electricians is hardly nothing in places where these folks have to be licensed, bonded and insured …
Pick up a house for $100,000 … that’s about $3,600 a year in depreciation alone, or $300 per month … that’s $300 per month just to pay off the original purchase price … now add in taxes, insurance and repairs …
Apartments take advantage of economies of scale … and we only need 5 foot clearance from the property lines and adequate parking slots (if required by law) … and after 27.5 years the house is all but uninsurable … commercial policies are far more restrictive than homeowner policies …
Land use zoning laws prevent someone from building a steel mill in a residential neighborhood … or a dynamite factory next to a high school …
[quote=“SamuelA, post:81, topic:572505”]
[snip] … Here’s an example of a country where national laws properly set up residential zoning. Note that all higher density zones are mixed use. Note that neighbors get no say about demolish/rebuilds - very little of this ‘historically significant, changes the character of the neighborhood’ bullshit.
[/QUOTE]
This is pretty much exactly what my nearby Big City is doing … infill rather than annexation … there’s no Federal or State regulations about this, it’s strictly left up to the individual communities … what’s perfect in Japan maybe doesn’t work in Wyoming …
Supply and demand are solidly established principles of economics. So no, whatever works in Japan that works by fixing the supply of housing will work in demand. Your argument is as valid as saying “these new fangled electric motors may work in england, but they don’t work here in Wyoming”.
If you want to disprove how increasing supply leads to a lower market price, I wish you luck. The specific policies in Japan : mixed used zoning, use of high density zoning with appropriate rules, the guidelines being national and thus not subject to local corruption, and the inability of your neighbors to stop you demolishing : will increase supply anywhere it’s done. And that will result in lower market prices. The only place this wouldn’t lower prices is if the city were already following those rules.
Funny you mention licensed tradesman : the fact that those licenses are done on a state by state level, and issued in a very obstructionist way (various plumber and electricians unions strictly control supply) also act to impede the availability of tradesman services. Otherwise, electricians wouldn’t make almost as much as electrical engineers.
Actually, English motors run off 50 Hz electricity, Wyoming runs on 60 Hz … but I see your point … with a little tweeking these zoning ideas work wonderfully for communities who want to revamp their downtown areas … instead of burning fossil fuels to get to the commercial stores, just take the stairs down to ground level … plenty of examples of this in the USA …
The rest of your post seems to ignore liability insurance … that 50-year-old wiring catches fire and sends a couple people to the ICU for a few months and years of medical treatment afterward … who pays? … the roofer’s hammer slips out of his hand, slides down and bonks someone in the head … ax head first … who pays the medical bills? …
Congress wrote the tax code … do we really want them to writing the zoning and insurance codes? …
In the case of high demand, low supply … a landlord isn’t going to demo a house that can be rented … he’s going to re-wire it and rent it out again …
Do we even want zoning laws … and this gets us back to the OP … do we want to keep residential separate from commercial, industrial, agricultural and (where I live) forestry … is it a waste to require 5 acres of land minimum single family residential lot size in some places … you might find ourselves with a 400 unit low income apartment complex 30 miles from the closest fire, police or ambulance services … 25 miles school bus trip for all the kids … there’s a lot of good reasons for the community to say no …
Modesto, California … zoning done wrong …
ETA: 400 unit low income apartment complex on a septic tank system … ewwwwww …
Japan’s solution still zones based on density. So rural areas wouldn’t be allowed that level of density. What Japan’s solution does allow is :
a. Very, very high density
b. Neighbors can’t stop you demolishing and rebuilding. This means that since the cost of a house is cheap compared to the land it sits on, in actuality, to offer real estate on the market at a competitive price, you need to demolish older structures and replace them.
c. Mixed use, so the shops are just a few blocks or stairs away.
All this is what’s done here … all under State law … the problem is if we don’t allow high density in rural areas then there’s a hard limit on housing supply … ours is an infamously draconian zoning law … it takes up to twenty years to annex agricultural land into city limits … and these zoning laws are specifically designed to keep urban growth limited … it’s a great place to live and everybody wants to move here, but if everybody moves here then it won’t be such a great place to live …
Mixed use it a good idea but only as long as we restrict living in these retail commercial shops … if we let people set up housekeeping in the shops then the whole point of mixed use is gone … it’s all residential now …
I know of (Friend of a friend) someone who did that for a few years. He had an exotic bird shop. Slept on a cot n the back. He had previously been a wannabe rock-n-roll musician, was was used to pinching every penny. The birds had always been a serious hobby, and he decided to run with it.
He saved enough to build an “earth ship” (you can google) where he raised African Grey parrots for a few years…last I heard he was into Tucans, but was looking toward retirement.