patrick.net

Problem is for the next 20-odd years we're going to have Gens X, Y, and the baby boom all trying to maintain homesteads.

Gen Y (the echo boom) is just entering their teens and 20s now. Boomers haven't begun to die off yet.

This is pushing demand ever upwards and supply is very constrained in all desirable areas by NIMBYism.

Darrell In Phoenix says

Right now there is an estimated 20-30 million excess empty houses in the US today.

Not really. Just another of your made-up bullshit stories.

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0982.pdf

~7M million, maybe, and many if not most of those are in destroyed condition.

There's certainly some off-market supply still, but not 30 fucking million houses.

Get a grip, dude. That's like 1 out of 3 houses in this country being empty.

Maybe in your "reality", LOL.

Darrell In Phoenix says

And worse yet, population growth is the lowest in US history.

But this is not Japan, LOL.

Household formation is not going down any time soon.

Quite the opposite, we have more single-person households.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/livalone.html

30 is the new 20. People are putting off "major" life choices (marriage, childeren, first home) to "be established" which in this day and age includes a college degree - bachelors for most, masters for some, and in a few select fields, PhD.

Darrell In Phoenix says

Household formation is at multi-decade lows

any more lies today, Darrell?

Growth is growth, LOL

peak boomer birth year was 1957, so the front half of the baby boom established households by the late 1970s.

(the baby boom on the whole "moved out" from 1966-1984)

per my above chart, the baby boom echo peak is just turning 20 now.

growth is baked into the cake, like I said above, "Household formation is not going down any time soon."

(also, analyzing growth as a percentage is deceptive, since we're growing on a bigger base. Absolute numbers are necessary to understand the supply/demand imbalance.)

The funny thing is that as a Japanese-speaker I'm entirely hopeful Japan's population decline will make Japan's real estate (especially Tokyo's) much less unaffordable to me.

But the US has nothing like Japan's demographic profile. Our baby boom was massive and they fully replaced themselves in the echo (plus we've had 1M/yr net immigration for a while).

Taking the above two graphs means households are forming at a slower rate and therefore more births = more people per household versus the past. Think about kids moving back in with parents; kids not even moving out; roommates and friends shacking up longer; etc., etc. I've seen it anecdotally.

Darrell In Phoenix says

Bellingham Bill says

"Household formation is not going down any time soon."

It's already down.... down to multi-decade lows. And the boomer cohort is 3x the size than subsequent cohorts.

Nice try though.

And worse yet..... population growth is at all time record lows per 2010 Census.

Are you as bad at building houses as you are at understanding graphs? Confusing a decline in the rate of growth with a decline in absolute value is such a laughable mistake that I wonder if you even took highschool level statistics.

Darrell In Phoenix says

Bellingham Bill says

Not really. Just another of your made-up bullshit stories.

It's reality my friend.

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0984.pdf

Where in that table does it say there a 30m houses that are primed to flood the market?

Darrell In Phoenix says

Where in that table doesn't it say there are 20-30 million excess empty houses?

In the table - the numbers they've typed into it don't add up to 30m excess houses.

Darrell In Phoenix says

20-30 MILLION excess empty houses is a reality. READ the table.

I did. It's YOUR "reality" not the one in the table.

It seems that everyone has a different interpretation of what the 2010 census table 982 means.

Please explain your reasoning.

justme says

It seems that everyone has a different interpretation of what the 2010 census table 982 means.

Please explain your reasoning.

There are the numbers stated in the table... and then Darrell's bullshit.

Bigsby, that was not helpful, I'm afraid. You may be right, but that does not logically follow from just denigrating the opposing view as "bullshit".

Let me give an example: I was hoping for example that someone would critique the use of the the terminology "excess empty houses". What is the difference between an empty house and an "excess" empty house? Also, neither of the terms appear in the table.

Another example: Why is "for rent" a subset of "Year-round vacant"? It seems that people have major quibbles about what the entries in the table mean. But nobody has been willing to state what the difference of opinion IS.

Please be specific.

Darrel,

Please explain the terminology "excess empty houses" and how it corresponds to data in the table.

justme says

Bigsby, that was not helpful, I'm afraid. You may be right, but that does not logically follow from just denigrating the opposing view as "bullshit".

It's not an opposing view. He's making up a bullshit figure of 30m because he's a troll. I don't care if you don't consider the remark helpful. It wasn't supposed to be helpful; it was just a statement of fact. The table he references only goes up to 2010, so who knows what the figures are now. It states 18.739m vacant homes (not 30m) and then subdivides them, making it clear what is and what isn't available for purchase. That in no way, shape or form constitutes '30m excess empty homes' however you want to parse that comment.

That's better. Stating the correct numbers is helpful. That was easy. The main disagreement of this thread can be summarized as

Darrel says 20-30M "excess empty houses"
Census says 18.739M vacant houses

Now readers can make an educated judegment.

Darrell In Phoenix says

Not really.
Right now there is an estimated 20-30 million excess empty houses in the US today.
Combine that with the additional 35 million houses that have just begun to empty as boomers head to the funeral home.
And worse yet, population growth is the lowest in US history.

Why would anyone buy into this bullshit, and let a troll take over another thread?

The troll even provided you the Census data, which we have all been over a hundred times, to show you how full of shit he, or she is.

You guys continued to engage.

You don't need to ignore, or befriend the person, just stop engaging.

robertoaribas says

big difference between 19 million vacant homes

Darrel threw out a random number then posted the Census data which proved him, or her, wrong once again.

The comments Darrel has made nothing to do with the post it's just ramdom comments.

You seem to buy into these comments by Darrel the most, they never go anywhere, and of course you are always right.

Darrel is making comments to see who will respond, and engage. You engage him so you become his likely target.

So why engage him, or her?