Let me tell you about Spain. It appears to be a relatively low density country, but if you look at where people live, an extremely high percentage of the population lives in an apartment. Your average Spaniard lives in a square km that is about as dense as NY's upper east side. Therefore, based on your argument, you'd expect a lot of renters, right?

As it happens, While about a third of Americans rent, only about a fifth of Spaniards do: 78% of households live in an apartment they own. That's because regulation is set up in ways that make renting a pretty bad deal. I live in some midwestern suburb, and half of my street rents, as companies have outbid individual sellers when the people that originally bought their houses died or downsized. They are owned by Delaware companies, and good luck figuring out who is really behind them.

So while it might be a good idea to minimize renters, the tie between rentals and apartments in urban living is just regulatory. Suburbs are in no way immune to being purchased by investors: It's just that investors try to aim for properties that are expected to grow up in value the fastest, and it just happens that those tend to be in urban centers and in suburbs that are very close to said centers.

So really, limiting building dense housing is, if anything, going to make the problem worse, as it limits housing supply. If you want to prevent renting, make it a worse deal, tax wise, for companies to own and manage rental property. Again, the very dense Spanish cities do a better job at this than the US does.

Anecdote but dated a Spanish person who claimed that housing is very static for them and that the idea of young people moving out and buying their own place is extremely uncommon

This is a good post, but it's really wasted on the audience.

An increase in housing supply can only put downward pressure on prices, even if the majority go to rentals. There's no magic solution to high demand for limited land, the best we can do is build up.

Why is home ownership important? It’s a serious question. It’s currently important within the context of houses as a form of appreciating wealth that can be passed on to future generations, but a big part of the reason we have a housing crisis is due to conflating housing and investment.

We need to step back from the notion that houses should be significant stores of wealth and concentrate fully on creating enough housing so that everyone can comfortably afford a roof over their head. Using the scarcity of housing to build wealth is just short-sighted and will always lead housing shortages because the housing value above construction cost is only maintained by way of scarcity. If there’s enough housing for everybody, which should be our goal, home values will go down and the importance of owning a house goes away.

I agree with everything except that the importance of ownership would go away. There is a lot you can't do while renting, things that would improve your day to day life in ways you prefer. You can also just be moved on at any point, say the house sells or the landlord changes heart. Of course there are protections but renting is never as stable as ownership. It's a necessarily transient arrangement.

You can be invested in your home in more than just a financial sense. If you don't own it, you have no incentive (or even much ability) to improve it. The owner who doesn't live in it is also incentivized to do the bare minimum to keep it rentable. If you you're going to live somewhere long term, it's nice to own your surroundings so that you can improve them for yourself, and to have neighbors that are similarly motivated and incentivized. Society works better when everyone's self-interests are aligned.

There are two parts to buy house. One is hedge for rising rents. You pay the same mortgage and then don’t pay anything. Decades ago and still in unpopular areas, house prices rose with inflation and weren’t really investment.

Two is investment. Land prices in popular areas started rising because of demand. Housing turned into way to make money and build wealth. But it is really land speculation.

There's a perception of "renter mentality" being synonymous with indifference and lack of personal investment into the neighborhoods. E.g. ownership communities tend to have cleaner streets, less crime and fewer annoyances (like loud parties or improper parking) due to owners acting upon such infractions faster.

I.d argue it is confusing long and short term investments. If you will live in the same place for at least 40 years a house is a great investment because you live there rent free after it is paid off. This only works if you pay it off, and continue to live there.

Wow, it’s pretty simple. Owning a home means you don’t pay rent. You pay a mortgage and in such a case you earn equity. When you pay rent, your money is gone every month. You may pay it off and then live without paying the mortgage but just up-keep and property taxes or you may sell the house even before mortgage is paid off and possibly even earn a profit but certainly recoup much of your mortgage payments at the least. Your point about it just being about passing wealth to future generations seems to indicate you are just seeing home ownership through some extreme leftist lens. You may not even choose pass on anything and it is still financially beneficial. Why is earning an income important? That’s a “serious” question too. You say we “conflate” housing and investment, housing is investment, we don’t have to conflate these things, they are intrinsically intertwined because we live in a world in which scarcity exists, despite what the left might tell you. The rest of what you are saying is just very naive.

An underrated problem is that many suburbs use zoning to make small houses impossible to build. Urban YIMBYs don’t talk about it because they hate suburbs but forcing everyone to have a huge lot makes home ownership far more exclusionary, which of course was the intent.

More supply of housing will drive the price of housing down, not up.

Condos? Townhomes?

You can own a duplex or a unit in one