Lot of factors at play.

Supply per se isn’t the issue as we had a building binge the last decade. More housing the merrier as it takes off overall pricing pressure (up to a point).

As an alternative scenario, consider our sexier twin sister California (comparable politics, congestion, per capita wages and wealth, etc.) where average anything to do with real estate is so much higher due to zoning-induced housing supply constraints.

Higher borrowing rates of late may have frozen buyers out of the market causing rents to spike (folks still need a place to live).

Another factor may be the dearth of building in the city during the last decade + covid making folks consider crossing the River and living here.

I don’t see an alternative to more supply but more even distribution of it would be a good start as land prices dictate unit price or rent. Lower land prices means cheaper housing.

Would probably work really

JC has some AirBnB regulations that won referendum vote, and ultimately upheld after appeal. Not sure how theyre enforced currently.

Well, the current approach has given us a waterfront that is mostly owned by a group of wealthy nonresident investors who dominate our politics, coordinate to increase rents, and expend the absolute minimum they can on repairs, upgrades, infrastructure, neighborhood stores and amenities, buildings outside desirable areas, etc. I think those are some ways the current approach hurts everyone else.

Curious if you have any resources on feasibility of building smaller multi-family units. I want to say I’ve come across a lot of material showing it’s very difficult to build smaller buildings without losing money.

This is the correct answer.

The best way to decrease rent prices is to remove the path train 😂

That's great that you want it. It's not happening ever.

Yeah they just keep focusing downtown. Neighborhoods like McGinley Sq have been ripe for gentrification but it’s happening way slower than it probably should. I like that the rent is cheap here but I wish there were more to do.

want heavy rail

Ban AirBnBs in Jersey City. Also, ban (or have a massive tax) for homes in JC that's not a primary residence. It also seems like increasing supply won't solve the problem since there's so much dark money looking to hide in NYC area real estate. So banning foreign or anonymous buyers needs to be enacted, otherwise just increasing supply won't do anything.

https://www.npr.org/local/305/2020/02/25/809315455/how-european-style-public-housing-could-help-solve-the-affordability-crisis

I do believe that relying on the transient population will come at a cost to JC. But I guess in this explanation it’s not clear to me how buildings taking advantage of these temporary residents hurts everyone else.

It's not just the idea of development to which people are objecting, but the type of building that is going on, and who pays for and owns it, and who it's being rented and marketed to.

In JC, wealthy real estate investors are building low-quality "luxury" apartment buildings along the shore and in a few key hubs and then using the buildings to extract ever-increasing amounts of cash from a transient class of professionals who commute to NYC from JC for a 5-10 year period in their lives.

You could certainly imagine different funding, different ownership, different occupants, and/or different types of buildings, and I think different people have different preferences in that regard.

Never but maybe light rail is possible

Sure, and at the same time we can tax people who own more than one property to encourage them to sell and add to the supply.

That is an actual "solution" people always bring up. "Fire your gun, that'll sure keep them away!"

These people have clearly never heard the countless stories of people making 100k+ in Brooklyn who are all like "yeah when I moved out here I heard gunshots all the time." If they can't afford the housing closer to their job they'll come here whether we like it or not, can either build new housing for them or let them take over existing housing.

You know the interest that the Fed sets has an effect on the mortgage rates, right? Very schlubby.

No clue what you're getting at. Housing supply should be increased regardless of who lobbies against it

So here's the thing: increasing housing supply IS the answer.

BUT

Development should be "out" and not "up". Building up only creates new housing at the same fucking price points. We need to encourage more stock in the cheaper areas. Some kind of density tax maybe?

Apparently, the 4% rent control on >30 year old buildings that's already in place isn't the solution, based on how they pretend it doesn't exist.

If we had a government that worked, we could make it illegal for corporations and foreign investment firms to buy up single-family homes.

We also need incentives/funding out there to just start mass developing single family homes in less urban areas. New York is pushing through orders that will force communities on the outskirts of urban sprawl to start developing more housing, which should hopefully help to offset this crunch in a few years.

Which is about the relation between the respective area median income

I lived in the same apartment in grad school for 3 years and my landlord never raised rent in that time. When I moved out they thanked me for being such a great tenant and gave me my deposit back on the spot. They told me they only raised rent between tenants to match the market but don't want to mess up a good relationship with a tenant they don't have to worry about.

It's ridiculous that this is now completely abnormal behavior.

> Mortgage interest is deductible and also how would they get fucked by interest in the first place? We've had rates at near zero for years now.

English is hard for you, huh?

In a conversation where everyone is speaking about mortgage interest rates, and following the very sentence when you call out mortgage interest rates. Colloquially, and properly in the English language, there is a correlation between sentences in one paragraph.

If that wasn't your intention, then you should work on your grammar.

Does all this thinking hurt your whittle brain?