Comment on So many expensive homes
ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world 1 year agoPart of the problem is it’s still more profitable to build an expensive property and wait a couple years to find a buyer who can afford it than to build an affordable property which will sell right away.
RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world 1 year ago
True, there is a “frictional” effect on occupancy rate, that causes property to be idle for some time. I’m about to buy a house that was built by somebody else, but they decided they couldn’t afford it, and backed out, so it’s been sitting there new & idle for a couple of months.
When there is a lot of economic dislocation, or major demographic changes, that frictional rate of idle property may spike up (e.g. in the wake of the 2008 recession/real estate bubble, when some owners decided they would rather wait for recovery than find a buyer at a huge discount), but it’s a transient effect.