[quote=Rich Toscano][quote=The-Shoveler]I am not saying that home prices are not silly right now but I will say they are not and have not been building near enough homes.
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Inventory is indeed low, but that’s a function of how many people want to sell and how many want to buy at any given time, not necessarily of how much new building is taking place, or of overall housing supply. For example, inventory was very low during the bubble, despite lots of new construction/rapid expansion of housing supply, and then it was very high in the bust despite zero new construction.
It may be true that new building isn’t keeping up with population growth (I don’t know one way or the other, offhand), but current level of inventory for sale isn’t really a good indicator of that, is my point. To determine this you’d have to look at population growth compared to housing supply… SANDAG probably has that info. Might be interesting to look into.
Summary: yeah, they seem kind of silly, but it’s hard to get an exact read on that, and they were a lot sillier during the bubble.[/quote]
There’s no law mandating builders “keep up with population growth” in any particular jurisdiction. In fact, the opposite is true in many west coast jurisdictions within the states of CA and WA. Many (coastal) cities and counties in these states have disallowed permits for tract subdivision for at least the last 30 years or even as far back as since the city was formed.
Those cities are among the best-planned in the nation and have among the best quality of life for their residents today.
More residents does NOT EQUAL better, folks.
Obviously, SD County was not one of the above jurisdictions (whose leaders were more astute and concerned for impacts to their local environment). SD County’s (and a good portion of its brethren cities’) elected officials have consistently sold their constituents’ quality of life out to Big Development since 1986/87 at every available opportunity.
