A lot of people have a big chunk of their net worth tied up into home equity because it's sort of the "ordained" path to building wealth for the middle class - condos don't see similar appreciation, get hit harder in downturns and are one of the last types of properties to recover in value afterwards.

Start incentivizing treating housing as, you know, a place to live rather than a financial instrument and you'll see plenty more condos.

Lots of FUD in this thread, but I guess it depends on where one lives? My experience with things mentioned here:

My condo is noiseless. The codes in my country are strict on this. I got families with children all around me, only hear them when sitting on my balcony during summer. And codes in general makes sure that buying a modern condo is safe. Here it's 5 years where the builder has to fix stuff that's not as it should. (Just avoid buying from small shell companies, but that goes for houses as well)

Not having to care for anything but the inside is nice. Pay a small amount each month that takes care of everything. No crazy HOA stories, actually never heard of things like that here. Being 100 families in this block, actually gives us lots of power when it comes to negotiation, the fixed start-up costs for repairs etc are split over so many. My parents spend at least 10x the amount of money I do caring for their house, while I don't even have to think about it.

Price of condos here has increased much more than houses, as it's central and not possible to build that many more. Can't see why a condo inherently should appreciate less than a house? If there is demand there is demand.

I'm in the process of moving to Boston and it's utter insanity. Housing here is like something out of Kafka novel. Now I empathize with my friends who lived in SF pre-covid. Build, Build, Build!!

I do think it's important now more than ever with remote work to build more duplex / 3 bedroom condos. I'm 33 and I have no desire to move out to the burbs, but marrying and starting a family in a 2 bedroom condo isn't totally appealing to me.

Any housing you purchase but has a HOA is suboptimal, in my opinion.

Once you have an HOA you don’t own your home in the way you would otherwise.

At that point I would start doing the math carefully about buying versus rent + investing.

Renting has the huge luxury of being able to leave with minimal hassle, and not deal with any maintenance.

Condos have all the downsides of apartments and home ownership combined. They're the trolley of homes. Where the trolley has the downsides of the train and the bus combined.

With a condo I pay to own it, but also pay a monthly HOA fee forever, and I can only do approved modifications, but I'm also responsible for anything that breaks.

If I own property I should be allowed to install a giant mailbox on a whim, or break a whole in the wall because I dreamt there was treasure in it.

If I have to pay monthly and follow someone else's rules, I shouldn't have to finance and organize maintenance on my own.

As for the trolley analogy, it gives up the capacity of the train, but can't drive around an accident like a bus.

The housing market needs to deregulate zoning and let the free market decide what gets built

Not everyone wants to chose between a 2000sqft McMansion or a 500sqft shoebox in the sky

In my country (with a birth rate approaching 1.00), we have allowed an excess of immigrants to make up for the difference. As a result, we have a deficit of an estimated 1.2 million homes. The price of housing ain't going anywhere, especially since most Western democracies seem to have lost total control of their economies, in terms of supply chains and inflation.

The housing market needs to ban investment properties and heavily tax multiple homes. It's a place to live, not a ponzi scheme!

No, it doesn’t. Or at least it depends on where. What the Bay Area needs is more genuine family housing, not small 2BR condos. If the condos were majority 3+ BR I’d have a different opinion. But they aren’t: it’s very hard to find good quality condo housing suitable for a 2-child family that isn’t roughly the same as or more than my 7-figure net worth in cost.

Eh, maybe I’d do a townhouse, but I’m pretty burned out on condos. They’re just apartments with a bunch of extra liabilities attached.

The housing market also needs more row houses. Those have fewer of the disadvantages of condos but unfortunately they're illegal to build in most (almost all?) parts of the US.

The article gets into some technical rules consequences that are fresh and interesting relative to the usual zoning and NIMBYism discussions. I think they would apply to markets where developer interest, rather than a planning commission, is the limiting factor.

- Condo projects are uniquely sensitive to credit availability for first time buyers. Shifting credit towards established buyers naturally shifts housing starts towards SFHs since that is what established buyers want. I would imagine this would also be at play in the disappearance of starter houses.

- Developer warranty encourages HOAs to become involved in litigation right as the building starts to be occupied. You can’t get a mortgage in a building with ongoing HOA litigation. Once the developer has sold enough units to generate a lawsuit but not enough units to cover his costs, he gets stuck in limbo squatting on inventory until the lawsuit settles. You could imagine ways of fulfilling both intents without such an unfortunate interaction.

Condos have wired risks like you can’t rent them out due to hoa so in in down markets you can’t move or are forced to liquidate. You can get assessed large amounts when stuff breaks and you can get hit with huge hoa dues if your neighbors aren’t paying.

I recall when a younger person wouldn’t be caught dead having to pay ‘The Man’ every month.

Sounds like the real estate developers are making the rational choice here--we could make these deregulations that the Urban Institute are pushing for but they never stop to entertain the possibility that this is probably a symptom of the American wealth inequality curve.

While it would be nice if more people could get a first foothold in real estate ownership & wealth-building by buying a share of a condo building, they just aren't quite there yet on the wealth curve.

Because people don’t Like condos?

Plenty of condos here in SoCal and they do just fine with appreciating.

And they have a ton of costly defects that builders don’t want to cover

I am going to buy 100 acres and close myself off from the world. Bye bye! You can keep your dense living.