alt Hacker News> In some places, anti-densification rules continue to raise property values, and in these places we should expect the Downzoning to be as politically robust as it has been for the last century: it really does give property owners something they want.
I have to wonder to what extent that's actually true. To begin with, if you have a single family home in an area with high demand, upzoning could make someone willing to pay you even more than the house is currently worth because they could still turn a profit when turning it into ten or twenty times as much housing on the same lot. In other words, the value of the house may go down but the value of the land goes up when you can build more housing on it.
On top of that, higher housing prices don't necessarily equate to a better life or even more money. If your house is worth more but you still need a place to live then you can't sell it, unless you are planning to sell it soon in which case upzoning gets you more money because developers start bidding on your house before the new housing the upzoning allows to be built is on the market yet.
If not, it's not just your house that costs more. The other ones do too, which increases cost of living. Local shops have to pay higher rents and pass on that cost to you, or can't find local workers because young people can't afford local rent, so they have to close down. Then you get higher local unemployment and more crime and homelessness. You might even lose your own job because your employer moved out. What do you think drives offshoring? High domestic costs.
And if people are only thinking about the first order effect then they might imagine downzoning is to their advantage when it isn't. Which makes them support it but only until someone shows them the math.
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Even if you need your home to live in, you can still borrow against your property value, essentially "eating the bricks".
Alternatively, you can use the value of your house as an emergency fund: If you desperately need money, you can move into something smaller, or more distant from the city, and cash out.
If you do neither of these things, your children will inherit the value of your house. Either way, the money you gain are real money, and you actually gain them.
It can go both ways. If a developer wants your house for the land you want big. But if you stay as a house and your neighbour becomes the high rise and you cant then you lose out.
I tend to agree. There might be a big window for someone motivated to get a course "how to maximise the value of your house purchase" into schools to cover all that. If people are going to be greedy and selfish at least they shouldn't be stupid about it, land and housing policy is one of the more consequential things society deals with.
> I have to wonder to what extent that's actually true.
It’s fairly easy to do the exercise in many real estate markets. For example, look at recent sales on your favorite real estate platform and find neighborhoods with very different property sizes but otherwise similar features. An easy one is Atherton vs the areas of Menlo Park directly adjacent to it. Effectively identical commutes, literally the same schools, etc. Menlo Park is quite down-zoned by any reasonable standard, but Atherton is very down-zoned and has huge lots. The houses in Atherton look more expensive, but they’re actually dramatically less valuable per unit property size. If you owned property in Atherton and wanted to increase your property value, the best thing you could do is to magically teleport your property a single block away out of Atherton.