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Dave Stuhlsatz's avatar

My gut reaction is to agree that the "sadistic electorate" will react negatively to more housing construction, but as usual I think this will continue to be a regionally specific phenomenon. As Nolan Grey puts it: "Red states build, blue states don't" and I think this trend will persist even if deportations mess up labor markets in Southern boom cities.

Although not the major focus of your post, I appreciated your paragraph debunking the "density is too expensive" argument that crops up in NIMBY camps. While it's true that life/safety building codes and construction physics make large buildings marginally more costly to construct, the major impediment is local regulations that drive up planning time and soft costs. Multi-unit builders could make money anywhere if they were given the opportunity to build at scale in response to market demand.

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Addison Amsdell's avatar

Are you saying that smart developers with a long term focus should find a way to construct multi-family or single family over build-to-rent, since build-to-rent only has adequate demand currently due to regulation and lack of mortgage access restricting multi and single family building?

In other words, when demand dynamics return to "normal", will build-to-rent still make sense to develop?

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