Housing TrapPatrick Killelea
Housing Trap
by Patrick Killelea · first published 2012
5mentions
1recommended by
4HN commenters
2014–2025first – last mentioned
25% recommend75% neutral
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…restrictions on building (making it more expensive or impossible to build) have increased the cost of home ownership over the past 60 years. Anyone who's seriously considering purchasing a home should read The Housing Trap by Patrick Killelea, it's a short, amazing overview of how we arrived in the situation we're in as well as a practical guide for when to buy vs rent housing. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1479156213/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awdb_Ki...
on “How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?” ↗…really good understanding of why housing is so much more expensive today (as a percentage of avg annual income) than it was 50-60 years ago. For that I recommend a short, but extremely useful book, The Housing Trap: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-cal...
on “Australia's Housing Frenzy” ↗…someone else pointed out, there are some FAQs there that provide a useful counter to the conventional wisdom. Also it looks like Patrick now has a book out you can buy on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Housing-Trap-Buyers-Captured-Yourself/... Put another way, even if there's an 0.9 probability that the advice there is wrong, buying a house is nevertheless the most significant purchase of your life for most people.…
on “Finding the perfect house using open data” ↗This is all based on a long and relatively technical book they published last year: Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Town Response to the Housing Crisis. https://www.housingtrap.org/
on “What happens when housing prices go down?” ↗…(expectation of future) profit, so less housing will be built. Right? Yes, article is too wordy and lacks focus. Typical for us progressives. OC prescribes "bottom-up" something something. I haven't read Housing Trap, so can't comment. My prescription would be for policy makers to work with investors & developers, figure out how to make profits more stable and predictable, figure out how to institute those reforms.…
on “What happens when housing prices go down?” ↗