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Comment by allendoerfer | Hacker News Reader

Quick googling showed, that the average salary in Kenya is about 1/10 of that in the US. So the prices are the same to the respective people living there. Technology doesn‘t matter much here, economics are the reason why prices have to be different.

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The typical reason why the price is whatever people are able or willing to pay for an item, is a lack of competition.

Right. If you want to buy a house in a desirable place, you’ll have to compete with other people who want it.

Yes because the supply of new homes is artificially kept low by planning laws.

Supply of new homes is cebtral London is artificially kept low by laws of physics.

Not every market is like market of shoes, that allows infinite competition and substitution.

I didn't know the laws of physics was what kept the greenbelt around

you could replace one 2000m^2 mansion with a Singapore-style skyscraper and create 2000+ new 1-bedroom apartments ...

That’s true practically everywhere in the world. Can you name a place you’d like to live where it is not?

> That’s true practically everywhere in the world.

True.

It’s not about buying a house in a place. These are the construction costs if you already have the place.

Ever heard of trade? If only there was a simple way of moving shipping containers across oceans.. /s

I'll take it one step further: deploy your highly available container home in a Kubernetes cluster.

If only a startup could disrupt the housing market as easily as something that only requires bits, not atoms.

If airbnb is something to go by there's more money to be made making it worse than better

When robotic long-haul vehicles become reality, why wouldn't this be a viable biz model ? Every couple of months you contract a carrier to take your container home elsewhere. Connect a few connectors and Hey, presto! Same digs, new view.

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