Supply matters, actually
The free market delivers a "community benefit."
I'm going to be hanging around YIMBYtown today. Please consider joining me and other housing and transit lovers for a drink at Crown & Anchor Pub at 8 pm. If you're a subscriber I haven't met before, I'll buy you a beer.
They said it couldn't be done: housing supply lowers rents
This is actually old news but frankly I haven't given it the attention it deserves and YIMBYtown is a good excuse to revisit it.
The chart above, made by Axios, is based on an analysis of the Austin metro area apartment market compiled by CoStar, a company that tracks real estate data. In the previous year, rents fell 5.6% for high-end units and 4.4% for mid-tier units.
The headline Axios ran with was, "Softer rents for the rich," but actually another analysis focused on "Class C" apartments suggests rents have dropped most dramatically for the cheapest housing. According to RealPage Market Analysis, in the previous year, rents on low-end apartments dropped 9.3%.
Why is this happening?
Is it because people are leaving Austin by the droves? Are we in the midst of a sever economic crisis? Have we been experiencing rapid deflation, where the prices of good are falling across the board?
