“Demographic collapse” is just more made up American copium to make themselves feel better. Countries go through transitions where an abistorically big cohort of women enter higher education and have kids at 27 instead of 17, resulting in particularly small cohorts of babies for a few years, and American “experts” take that chart and extrapolate it with a straight line for 50 years until the population goes to zero. It’s pretty silly.
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Women have been educated for 50,60 years in the US. And they also had kids. Now women are educated and not having kids. It’s not a blip. It’s a fundamental change in society.
Fertility rate for American women is at 1.63 right now. It’s the lowest number ever recorded. And it has been a straight line decline since the mid 2000s.
There’s no appeal it’s simple economics. Salaries can’t support sfr homes in most areas anymore
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And when/if standard of living rises then fertility rates will follow. As @23Chryslerpacifica said it’s never a straight line and there’s deviations. But burdening taxpayers to support non citizens isn’t going to work out well and is already a failure in cities that championed it. Again just simple math unless we allocate resources elsewhere or print more (inflation).
Housing should resolve itself as deaths outpace births sans other variables (immigration). Theres a reason there’s a legal process for it in every single country. Disregarding those laws can lead to humanitarian crisis
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I said the same thing earlier in this thread and was told this was not the case.
Seems like it is in my area.
Well yeah. When you’re young don’t know anything about the world, you go to big cities to meet new people and expose yourself to new ideas. When you’re old, you want space/family/etc and you leave in search of that, because it’s not affordable in the cities. You settle for Phoenix because you can’t afford to live in LA NY etc, otherwise you can buy a massive ranch in the middle of Arkansas.
Urbanization is not an American trend, it’s happened everywhere in Europe, which industrialized earlier, and now is happening in Asia/Africa, which has industrialized later. Humans are social creatures and cities are the ultimate social abode.
Either way, housing prices in major metropolitan areas won’t change until something severely affects either demand or supply. Demand reduction typically only occurs during wars/pandemics/economic crises, supply increase comes from more permits/more land/more desirable cities for people to choose from. Given these parameters, demand reduction looks to be more likely to occur right now.
We can all argue until we’re blue in the face and we all look like @iac avatar photo but at the end of the day, the best way to provide the max housing for the max people is to build as much housing as possible while making sure the market doesn’t collapse, preferably slowing the rate of appreciation to just above 0. Of course, almost no one outside of FTHB wants this so, it’s not happening.
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Yeah basically every problem can be solved by building more housing - cost of living, collapse in number of children born, reduced mobility of labor, difficulty retiring, it goes on and on. I’m so glad I bought my house 10 years ago.
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As an owner of many properties I want prices to stay sky high. I know, I’m a horrible person. 
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It’s weird how so many people refuse to believe what’s happening around them. But man keep living in a 1983 mindset where all the action is in Chicago and NY if you insist. Here’s the real world…
The Dallas metropolitan area saw the most growth, adding more than 152,000 residents, bringing its total population to more than 8 million. Metro Houston gained nearly as many, with 140,000 more people, including nearly 54,000 in Harris County alone. Metro Atlanta grew by 68,000, making it the nation’s sixth-largest metro, with 6.3 million people.
Population declines continued in the nation’s three largest metros — New York, Los Angeles and Chicago — but their losses were lower than in previous years. New York City lost 78,000 residents last year. City officials challenged the numbers, saying the Census Bureau had undercounted asylum seekers and people in homeless shelters. Still, the city’s total population loss since the April 2020 census count is nearly 550,000.
So people moved from cities… to other cities. Let’s put it this way, they didn’t move away because they preferred other places. It’s because they can’t afford to stay. That’s how most people who starts off in a city leave.
You are certainly seeing other cities become alternative locations aka additional supply, but the demand is not falling. Those who can afford to stay will, and there’s simply not enough units being built to accommodate those who want to stay in cities.
On an investment basis tho I agree there’s a lot of opportunities elsewhere! Simply that a lot of people think prices are too high in those markets, I think they only come with big layoffs or some sort of demand destruction.
So the only reason people are escaping NYC Chicago and LA is price? If you say so.
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As an owner of many properties I want prices to stay sky high. I know, I’m a horrible person
I honestly DGAF either way. Higher prices means more money and lower prices means expansion of my RE assets.
So the only reason people are escaping NYC Chicago and LA is price? If you say so.
I can’t say for others but for NYC? Price and lack of inventory is a major issue. Median home price is $1.6MM in NYC and median income? 55k. Plus household sizes are getting smaller while pet ownership is getting higher. (Meaning that more people want to live by themselves with a large yard for their pets while having less household income) It’s ridiculous to where you can see the new yorkers are coming to NJ and watching home prices go up county by county the farther you go away from NYC.
Let’s perform a thought experiment. Assume you’ve got a floorplan for 3 bedrooms, 2000 sqft apartment, modern and exactly to your desires, and you could have it built anywhere in the US. A builder would then build it exactly to your spec, wherever you’d like to place it, and it would then become yours. You pay a flat $150k fee to the builder.
Where would you place this apartment?
Where would LH place it?
Where do you think most Americans would place it?
But that’s always been the case. Something changed since 2020. People figured out they don’t need to put up with the bullshit anymore.
Dallas, Atlanta, Denver etc were growing like crazy already. Now with WFH that’s accelerated. As have smaller cities like Bend, Boise, Santa Fe, etc.
There’s no reason to be in NYC or San Francisco anymore. Trust me I wish it weren’t so anymore. I wish all the assholes from California who moved to my city in the past 10 years would go back. But sadly they’re not. In fact all their friends and relatives are joining them. Blegh. But at least I make money renting to them. 
LH is a place where eveyone drives EVs. Not exactly a representation of the country. I find it amazing that people like you think everyone thinks like you. It’s really fascinating.
I’ve shown you data I’ve given you my reasons for it happening x you refuse to entertain any of it. All good. You want to live in NYC. Go for it. Have a blast.
I did it for a few years, it was fun but I had no intention of staying long term. It wasn’t money issue. Living with 8 million people on a small island isn’t my idea of long term happiness. And like I said earlier, I know a ton of people who did the same. It was a necessary evil to do some time in NYC, or SF or LA. And as soon as it was no longer a necessity everyone bugged out to nicer places, not because they couldn’t afford NYC but because they didn’t want to be there.
And now with WFH that first few years isn’t a necessity anymore. Hence why NYc lost 1/2 a million people.
And to answer your question? Put that $150k house (not apartment since nobody wants those ) next to Alta ski resort. I’ll even give you an extra $50k.
Heh, personally I prefer my apartments over houses. There’s no need for all that space and all the useless junk the typical American family piles into it.
Ultimately prices reflect demand, it’s not that I think the world sees NY the way I do, but rather both rents and prices do. If people truly hated NY and no one wanted to go, prices would be falling a lot faster. But they aren’t - few people can get mortgages in Manhattan, so buyers are simply resorting to all cash deals. Would love residential prices in Manhattan to fall further and pickup a multifamily, but they are extremely resilient during this commercial collapse.
Alta is a good pick, but in the US, I find it hard to beat Steamboat or Vail. My SO’s side is from the Alps though, so housing quality there kind of trumps almost anything you can get from American ski towns. The value you can get in Europe, especially Austria and Italy, is insane.
Newport. A boy can dream!
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And this is the crux of our different views on the matter. You view a good standard of living with space as a bug, I view it as a feature.
I mean if your idea of good living is a cramped apartment, have at it. But again, you’re in a very small minority.
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