Curious if you think there is a way to slice and dice the VRBO effect. Not thinking about the No Corporate House ownership, more just wondering how those types of units might be counted. Is it zero adults or one and if it is one, how is an owner of multiple houses counted?
Short term rentals would generally be counted as “occasional use” vacant homes, I think. I benchmark the neutral vacancy rate to the 2000s range when rent inflation briefly moderated. STR was much smaller then. So it probably means that my estimate of the shortage of vacant units is low, since STR probably means that a neutral market would have more vacant units than it would have 20-30 years ago.
Is the composition of the household also a factor here? You have more single heads of household than ever before. We've been sold since the post-war boom, the idea of a single-family house as the desired property to have and that more space is always better but I'm not sure it's led to the best outcomes.
Before 2008, I'd say there was a compositional mismatch. There probably would have been 15-20 million more apartments and fewer single-family homes without zoning, etc.
Since 2008, there is a shortage of 15-20 million single-family homes, relative to the baseline condition.
So, if we do nothing, we'll probably eventually have 15-20 million single-family rentals. If we fix mortgages, we'll get 15-20 million owned single-family homes. If we fix zoning, we'll get 15-20 million apartments. If we fix condo law, a decent portion of those might be condos.
Curious if you think there is a way to slice and dice the VRBO effect. Not thinking about the No Corporate House ownership, more just wondering how those types of units might be counted. Is it zero adults or one and if it is one, how is an owner of multiple houses counted?
Short term rentals would generally be counted as “occasional use” vacant homes, I think. I benchmark the neutral vacancy rate to the 2000s range when rent inflation briefly moderated. STR was much smaller then. So it probably means that my estimate of the shortage of vacant units is low, since STR probably means that a neutral market would have more vacant units than it would have 20-30 years ago.
Is the composition of the household also a factor here? You have more single heads of household than ever before. We've been sold since the post-war boom, the idea of a single-family house as the desired property to have and that more space is always better but I'm not sure it's led to the best outcomes.
Before 2008, I'd say there was a compositional mismatch. There probably would have been 15-20 million more apartments and fewer single-family homes without zoning, etc.
Since 2008, there is a shortage of 15-20 million single-family homes, relative to the baseline condition.
So, if we do nothing, we'll probably eventually have 15-20 million single-family rentals. If we fix mortgages, we'll get 15-20 million owned single-family homes. If we fix zoning, we'll get 15-20 million apartments. If we fix condo law, a decent portion of those might be condos.