Housing in the West due to insufficient development is effectively a zero-sum game. So once people have their share, they do everything they can to maintain it's value.
Great HN comment on a recent thread with regards to land and rent-seeking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32961554
While Japan don't get everything right, I think this is one area in which their attitudes/policies are more aligned with the wellbeing of the masses. There, houses are more like cars in that they start deprecating the moment they're moved into and if anything are seen as a value subtract past a certain age, because it's expected that when you buy a plot of land the house on it will be demolished and a new one will be built in its place. Houses are more tied to families that live in them than they are the land they're built on.
This might seem wasteful, but it's kept living costs in the residential outskirts of Japan's urban areas a lot more affordable than they would've been otherwise and also means that housing on average is more up to code, and it drives costs of building down since building is routine instead of something unusual.
I would love to see this come to the US, and I say this despite standing to gain from the present system.
At the end of the day this is all just capitalism and voting for your own interests. We optimize for this.