As a retired realtor, I feel that the housing shortage has been created by investors purchasing homes and condos to use as VRBOs, and by REITs purchasing thousands of homes, hang on them, even keep them vacant so they can flip them for a profit. Also, foreign investors purchasing homes for their non-citizen young children. In the Seattle there are neighborhoods with no one living in homes. There needs to be some kind of legislation preventing home hoarders.
The foreign investor problem is huge in Hawaii. Chinese investors swoop in and buy as many as 5 properties in a weekend. They are offshoring their wealth and our governments and laws allow it. Stop foreign home hoarding and restrict the VRBOs and REITS and I think that would help quite a bit. But, new housing is also desperately needed.
It wasn't. A tiny slice of housing is owned by investors. The vast majority is owner-occupied. Javadi is right -- we just didn't build enough housing and a big reason for that is that we made a lot of housing types illegal or incredibly onerous to build. There's only one real way out of this -- build enough housing. It's weird how this one one of those big problems where the obvious answer is actually right, but nobody seems to want to believe it.
I think we are going through an economic reset, which has been a long time coming. The government can’t keep handing out free money so things have to start falling back. In the end our wages will begin to purchase more and all will prosper from these changes. There might still be some rough road ahead as the blue states like Oregon will fight the change but in the end wears a nation will be better off.
Have you seen what the Socialists on Portland City Council are proposing? They seem hellbent on driving landlords out of Portland….less rentals means higher rents…
Yep, I saw it. Only in Portland do they fight high rents by driving out landlords. If there’s price-fixing, go after it—but banning tools across the board just shrinks supply and pushes rents even higher. It’s ideology over common sense.
There have been cities - even in your district - who have been working diligently to streamline the process and enable more housing, including more density, and supporting a range of tools. We appreciate your support for our efforts!
But we must also recognize that it's not just fees and taxes that make building expensive. The cost of materials has also risen, and continue to rise.
The recent book, "Abundance" addresses this issue very well. We, and particularly blue states, have become bound by "procedural priorities". Our policies guarantee scarcity rather than abundance. We call it zoning, but it makes our neighborhoods more expensive and shoves people who we now call "homeless" to the side.
Houston, Texas has no zoning and is able to build many more houses per capita than we do and have a much smaller per capita homeless population. A lot of people can only afford apartments, but they do have homes.
I would not go so far as to go the Houston route. There is a good reason to keep weed dispensaries and strip clubs more than 1000 feet from elementary schools. Somewhere in between Houston and Oregon lies a solution.
As a retired realtor, I feel that the housing shortage has been created by investors purchasing homes and condos to use as VRBOs, and by REITs purchasing thousands of homes, hang on them, even keep them vacant so they can flip them for a profit. Also, foreign investors purchasing homes for their non-citizen young children. In the Seattle there are neighborhoods with no one living in homes. There needs to be some kind of legislation preventing home hoarders.
The foreign investor problem is huge in Hawaii. Chinese investors swoop in and buy as many as 5 properties in a weekend. They are offshoring their wealth and our governments and laws allow it. Stop foreign home hoarding and restrict the VRBOs and REITS and I think that would help quite a bit. But, new housing is also desperately needed.
It wasn't. A tiny slice of housing is owned by investors. The vast majority is owner-occupied. Javadi is right -- we just didn't build enough housing and a big reason for that is that we made a lot of housing types illegal or incredibly onerous to build. There's only one real way out of this -- build enough housing. It's weird how this one one of those big problems where the obvious answer is actually right, but nobody seems to want to believe it.
I think we are going through an economic reset, which has been a long time coming. The government can’t keep handing out free money so things have to start falling back. In the end our wages will begin to purchase more and all will prosper from these changes. There might still be some rough road ahead as the blue states like Oregon will fight the change but in the end wears a nation will be better off.
Have you seen what the Socialists on Portland City Council are proposing? They seem hellbent on driving landlords out of Portland….less rentals means higher rents…
https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2025/03/24/councils-first-policy-ordinance-could-ban-ai-software-to-set-rents/
Yep, I saw it. Only in Portland do they fight high rents by driving out landlords. If there’s price-fixing, go after it—but banning tools across the board just shrinks supply and pushes rents even higher. It’s ideology over common sense.
I've seen your name on a lot of great housing bills this session, thank you!
There have been cities - even in your district - who have been working diligently to streamline the process and enable more housing, including more density, and supporting a range of tools. We appreciate your support for our efforts!
But we must also recognize that it's not just fees and taxes that make building expensive. The cost of materials has also risen, and continue to rise.
I have said if there would be a time I would come somewhere with land use planning from my county and show you how they say no in a thousand ways
The recent book, "Abundance" addresses this issue very well. We, and particularly blue states, have become bound by "procedural priorities". Our policies guarantee scarcity rather than abundance. We call it zoning, but it makes our neighborhoods more expensive and shoves people who we now call "homeless" to the side.
Houston, Texas has no zoning and is able to build many more houses per capita than we do and have a much smaller per capita homeless population. A lot of people can only afford apartments, but they do have homes.
I would not go so far as to go the Houston route. There is a good reason to keep weed dispensaries and strip clubs more than 1000 feet from elementary schools. Somewhere in between Houston and Oregon lies a solution.
Agreed, but probably a lot closer to Texas than where we are right now. So embarrassing how much more housing Texas builds than Oregon per capita.