Stories like this make me the most mad at the Landlords/NIMBY's (sometimes the same people).
An $80,000 "investment" into a one person startup should take you much much much farther than this, but it is completely gobbled up by literal rent-seekers.
BAcK iN mY dAy a room in a house would cost $400-$500/mo in most places in the Montreal-Waterloo corridor. Now runways have basically been halved (0.3x'd?) as an extra allowance to the landed gentry.
Impossible to estimate the amount of damage the runaway real estate market has done to competitiveness, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the interest of funnelling more free money to entitled landlords sitting on their asses cashing rent checks
Oh they're not sitting on their asses doing nothing. They're reinvesting the rent into buying, renting and/or flipping more property faster, screwing up things further for everyone.
Is this a shot at zoning? This particular problem would be and has been solved by known better regulation. The macro housing market demonstrates that most people don’t want to live in an imaginary Randian empire.
Yes, restrictions are a problem where they’re a problem. YIMBY can help.
They’re not the problem. You could not only ban all zoning/building restrictions but make it legal to shoot people who suggest or support them you’d barely begin to touch the problem.
Incentives regarding what to build (or when or if) are as big a piece of the puzzle. And the fact that the very simple and hugely microeconomic concept of marginal returns rarely (if ever) makes an appearance in this conversation is a serious indictment of the economic seriousness of its players when it comes to how supply gets built. Cost disease also matters in construction. There are lots of moving pieces.
Even when supplying isn’t socially restricted, there are market forces that contribute to rising costs.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of the recent tech boom happen to be the owners of land and buildings in and around the cities that tech companies prefer to be around.
Also a strong argument for remote-first companies.
BAcK iN mY dAy a room in a house would cost $400-$500/mo in most places in the Montreal-Waterloo corridor. Now runways have basically been halved (0.3x'd?) as an extra allowance to the landed gentry.