A Tale of Two Cities Breakdown: #DENvsLV
September 30, 2022
Week 4 is here, and Denver pulled off a squeaker of a win against SF. Let’s go to a conference matchup and see how Denver stacks up against a long-time rival.
Week 4 is here, and Denver pulled off a squeaker of a win against SF. Let’s go to a conference matchup and see how Denver stacks up against a long-time rival. #DENvsLV
https://twitter.com/Broncos/status/1573134555892047872
The Fundamentals
How do these cities stack up against each other? How's their housing production? Do they play a successful defense against NIMBYs? Are they meeting the affordability needs of everyone?
Production
As always, let’s look at the record for building housing. Las Vegas built a lot of homes in the 2000's, but the homes were far from the jobs. Where and how you build matters.
Ownership
Home prices? It's a coin toss.
We can look in more detail though. Are home prices going up because there's demand for high-end housing? Is affordable housing no longer affordable?
Both Denver and Las Vegas have seen the most affordable housing increase in price the most. That's a recipe for displacement and a sure sign neither city is allowing enough housing.
How We Got Here
The camel hump of the subprime crisis was particularly painful for Las Vegas. Why though?
Cities are engines of opportunity. Opportunity in Las Vegas means fun, and having homes built far away from the fun makes it particularly sensitive to boom and bust.
Denver's long been a boom-and-bust town. "Lord, Grant Me One More Boom and I Promise Not to Screw it Up" might be a slogan from Texas, but it sure sounds like it could have been us in the 70's or 80's.
However, Denver's economy has diversified over the past couple of decades. There's more opportunity, and more types of opportunity.
The Wildcards
Water. We share the resource, and everyone's talking about it.
We can make homes for people.
