Have most Western countries mostly given up on supply side policies for housing price stablisation as an option ? Odd given how much construction tech has improved.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/real-estate/high-housing-co...
However it's not politically viable to advocate that as a policy solution without a stopgap policy to make progress in the interim.
If you really want to drive down the cost of housing figure out cheap windows or start convincing people they don’t need nearly as many of them.
Don’t believe me? Compare the cost of a large 2 story prefab shed ~10-20$/sf without amenities like plumbing vs a house of similar size.
But my point was more that price savings are easy to slip into the new construction pipeline for a wide range of homes. Similarly Argon helps r with insulation on day 1, but only lasts ~20 years on a window that may be in use for 100.
Become communist (or communist lite) and reserve land ownership to the state, lock land price to its productive capacity (as assessed by the state), mediate sales and usage taxes based on the same. Prevent resale/sublet between individuals. Allow transfer of control only from individual -> state -> individual.
Or use a regulatory approach where only the state can set the price of land, and the price is based on well-defined factory (productivity, proximity to population centers, population density, etc).
All value in an economy arises from real estate. Real estate (and the related businesses, including banking and lending) drive all economic activity in the world.
Since land belongs to everybody and to no one, perhaps we should let the government decide what to do with it. Or at least promote more co-op housing and land trusts.