Does Increasing Housing Supply Cut Housing Costs? Does YIMBYism & Getting Rid of Zoning Increase Housing Supply?
YES! HOW MANY TIMES DO I NEED TO SAY THIS? YES! Is Zoning Reform Alone Sufficient? WHAT ARE YOU ON? NO, JUST GOD NO!
I think it’s over a year now that I have been summarizing and writing about the research around housing. I think I need to make a *few* things clear before I start a few bigger projects. Not to mention, I am seeing a slowdown in papers being produced about the questions around housing supply.
You know what? I am going to be taking this down time (with housing studies at least) to answer questions that keep being asked over and over and over again. Let’s start with the issue of housing supply.
Does Increasing Housing Supply Cut Housing Costs? - OH MY GOD YES!
Does YIMBYism & Getting Rid of Zoning Increase Housing Supply? - NO, IT’S THE TOOTH FAIRY! OF COURSE YES!
Is Zoning Reform Alone Sufficient? - NO, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?
Almost all of the studies that I read and reported on more or less keep to the same point: Relaxing restrictive land use regulations can reduce construction time and significantly increase housing supply. Faster production + more supply = falling housing costs (in relation to median income). However, the studies also highlight that zoning reform alone cannot get our housing costs to where I want them to be, Home Price to Median Household Income Ratio of 4 or less without causing a recession. We need more complementary policies addressing construction capacity, market dynamics, and critically, market concentration in the homebuilding industry, are needed.
Key Points
Supply Does Lower Prices – Multiple studies confirm that increasing housing supply reduces costs, with Auckland's zoning reforms showing the most dramatic impact (rents 28-54% lower than without reform).
Market Monopolies Restrict Building – Industry consolidation severely limits production: when markets go from six to five major builders, housing units drop by 11% and the U.S. loses 150,000 potential new homes annually.
Construction Capacity Matters – The 2008 crash decimated the construction workforce, creating persistent labor shortages that limit housing production by 3-5.7% despite strong demand.
Housing Costs Shape Society – Affordability directly impacts birth rates, homelessness (increased 9-12% by restrictive zoning), and family formation, making housing supply a broader social issue.
The Evidence: Zoning Reforms Do Reduce Housing Costs? AGAIN YES!
Local Housing Production Increases Affordability Beyond Luxury Segments
Critics often claim that new housing construction, especially market-rate or "luxury" development, fails to improve affordability for existing residents. However, several studies challenge this assertion.
In New York City, Xiaodi Li's 2020 research, "Do New Housing Units Next Door Raise Your Rents?", examined the impact of new high-rise developments on surrounding neighborhoods. The study found that for every 10% increase in housing supply from new market-rate construction, rents in nearby buildings (within 500 feet) fell by approximately 1%. While seemingly modest, this effect demonstrates that increased supply does filter through the market, contradicting claims that new development only serves high-income households. The study also found that sales prices of condos within 500 feet fell by 1% for every 10% increase in condo supply, with the effects most pronounced for high-end and mid-range apartments.
More definitive evidence comes from Germany, where Andreas Mense's 2025 study, "The Impact of New Housing Supply on the Distribution of Rents," used weather-related construction delays as a natural experiment to isolate the causal impact of new housing supply. The research found that a 1% increase in housing supply reduces average rents by 0.19% across all quality levels of housing—not just luxury units. The study reveals that each new housing unit triggers about four moves within the rental market, creating a beneficial chain reaction that extends affordability benefits throughout the housing ecosystem. The research discovered that only 5.2% of rental units are new construction, while 94.8% are "second-hand," highlighting how new supply primarily affects the market through this "filtering" process.
Regulatory Streamlining Accelerates Production
Beyond simply allowing denser development, research indicates that streamlining regulatory processes can substantially increase housing production. In Los Angeles, Michael Manville, Paavo Monkkone, Nolan Gray, and Shane Phillips' 2023 study, "Does Discretion Delay Development?", found that projects approved "by-right" (without discretionary review) were completed 28% faster than those requiring discretionary approval, even after controlling for project size, affordability, location, and other characteristics.
The researchers leveraged L.A.'s Transit-Oriented Communities (TOC) program, which allows qualifying projects over 49 units to be approved by-right if they provide affordable units. By-right approval also had less variance in timelines, suggesting more predictability—the standard deviation was 213 days for by-right TOC projects versus 407 days for discretionary non-TOC projects. This natural experiment showed that reducing procedural barriers, not just changing what can be built, significantly accelerates housing delivery.
The Impact of Restrictive Zoning on Vulnerable Populations
Perhaps the most sobering evidence comes from Casey Dawkins' 2025 study, "Homelessness and housing supply," which used data from 315 local housing assistance providers across the United States between 2015 and 2019. The research established that restrictive land use regulations directly increase homelessness rates by 9-12%, with urban growth boundaries linked to a 12% increase and geographic constraints like water bodies and steep slopes increasing homelessness by 16-17%. This relationship persists even after controlling for demographic, economic, and housing market variables—suggesting that zoning reform could be an essential component of homelessness reduction strategies.
Additionally, Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, Magda Maaoui, and Sophia Wedeen's 2025 study, "Rental deserts, segregation, and zoning," identified "rental deserts"—neighborhoods where less than 20% of housing is available for rent—covering 35.1% of U.S. census tracts and about two-thirds of America's land area. Their analysis linked these rental-scarce areas directly to specific zoning restrictions, with growth control restrictions associated with a 3-percentage-point lower rental share, large minimum lot size requirements linked to an 8-percentage-point reduction, low-density requirements associated with a 6-percentage-point reduction, and minimum parking requirements also linked to a 6-percentage-point decrease in rental housing.
Large-Scale Reforms Show Large-Scale Benefits
The strongest evidence for zoning reform effectiveness comes from New Zealand, where large-scale regulatory changes have been rigorously evaluated. Auckland's 2016 Unitary Plan, which enabled denser development across approximately 75% of the city's residential land, offers perhaps the most compelling case study.
Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy's 2023 study, "Can Zoning Reform Reduce Housing Costs? Evidence from Rents in Auckland," found that Auckland's reforms led to approximately 43,500 additional housing units within six years—representing about 9% of the city's total housing stock. Most crucially, the research determined that rents were 28-54% lower than they would have been without these reforms. For three-bedroom homes specifically, the reforms reduced rents by 22-35% compared to what would have occurred without intervention, with effects statistically significant at the 5% level.
These findings were further reinforced by Stuart Donovan and Matthew Maltman's 2025 study, "Dispelling myths: Reviewing the evidence on zoning reforms in Auckland," which found that despite vocal critics and implementation challenges, the Auckland reforms delivered on their housing promises. Their rigorous statistical analysis debunked various methodological criticisms, confirming that the reforms genuinely increased housing production and improved affordability, with roughly 21,808 additional consents after five years, representing about 4% of Auckland's housing stock.
Similar results emerged from Lower Hutt, a mid-sized New Zealand city that implemented aggressive zoning changes between 2016 and 2023. Research by Matthew Maltman and Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy (2025), "Going it alone: The impact of upzoning on housing construction in Lower Hutt," demonstrated that these reforms tripled housing construction compared to similar cities and reduced rents by 21% below what they would have been otherwise. The reforms, which allowed medium and high-density housing on 80% of residential land, generated approximately 3,000 additional housing units over 6 years (61.8% of total permits) and increased the city's share of regional housing construction from 13% to 36%. The success in Lower Hutt is particularly notable because it shows that supply-oriented reforms can work even in smaller jurisdictions, not just major metropolitan areas.
Understanding Common Barriers and Limits of Zoning Reform
Regulatory Complexity: The Interconnected Web of Barriers
Sara C. Bronin's 2023 study, "Zoning by a Thousand Cuts," in Connecticut provides a comprehensive framework for understanding how multiple regulatory constraints interact and compound. After cataloging over 100 housing-related regulations across more than 2,600 zoning districts, Bronin found that simply changing the number of permitted units is insufficient when numerous other barriers remain interconnected.
This research is particularly valuable because it demonstrates how seemingly separate regulations function as an integrated system of constraints. The study revealed that Connecticut devotes 90.6% of its zoned land to as-of-right single-family housing and just 2.2% to as-of-right multi-family housing—illustrating how the cumulative effect of multiple regulations creates a far more restrictive environment than any single regulation might suggest. This holistic mapping approach provides a crucial context for why isolated zoning reforms sometimes fail to deliver expected results.
Economic History and Construction Capacity: The Long Shadow of Recession
Thao Le's 2025 study, "The scarring of the Great Recession on construction labor and housing supply," provides a critical link between macroeconomic history, labor markets, and housing production capacity. This research bridges economic policy, workforce development, and housing supply by demonstrating how past economic shocks continue to constrain current housing production.
The study revealed that regions heavily impacted by the 2008 housing crash continue to experience 17-20% reductions in construction employment, limiting housing production by 3-5.7% despite strong demand. This persistent labor shortage accounts for 20-40% of the post-recession decline in building permits, highlighting how economic history creates long-term structural constraints on housing markets.
By connecting these domains, Le's research demonstrates that effective housing policy must address not just current regulatory barriers but also the lingering effects of past economic shocks on construction capacity—an often overlooked dimension in housing supply discussions.
Similarly, in Ireland, Maximilian Günnewig-Mönert and Ronan C. Lyons' study, "Housing prices, costs, and policy: The housing supply equation in Ireland since 1970," found that housing supply is more responsive to construction costs than to housing prices. In their baseline model using planning permits from the 1970s, a 1% increase in housing prices led to a 0.9% boost in supply, but a 1% rise in construction costs caused a 1.9% drop in permits. This surprising result indicates that addressing supply-side constraints—like labor availability, material costs, and construction efficiency—may be as important as relaxing zoning restrictions.
Bridging Multiple Constraints: The Interplay of Regulation, Geography, and Market Power
Michael Ball, Paul Cheshire, Christian A.L. Hilber, and Xiaolun Yu's landmark research, "Why delay? Understanding the construction lag, aka the build out rate," in England demonstrates how multiple constraints interact to slow housing delivery. Their study provides a crucial framework that connects regulatory barriers, physical limitations, and market concentration.
The researchers found that positive demand shocks increase housing construction rates less in areas with stricter supply constraints or where developers have greater market power. The research estimated that the 2015 construction duration in the average local authority could have been 24% faster without supply constraints or developer market power, with reducing constraints by one standard deviation potentially accelerating construction by 10% for regulatory factors, 7% for physical factors, and 8% for developer power.
This study is particularly significant because it quantifies how these three factors—regulatory barriers, physical limitations, and market concentration—work together to constrain housing production, highlighting that addressing just one factor in isolation may yield limited results.
In "When Smaller Local Governments Permit More Housing: Reassessing the Effect of Local Control on Land Use Policy," Martin Vinæs Larsen and Laura Kettel found that when municipalities in Denmark consolidated, they built 50% less housing than when they were separate entities. Merged municipalities saw dramatic increases in size, from approximately 150 to 600 square kilometers on average, with population roughly doubling to 53,000 residents. Contrary to conventional wisdom, smaller municipalities had stronger incentives to permit housing due to greater vulnerability to economic shocks and more effective competition with neighboring jurisdictions.
Policy Mechanisms and Housing Supply Responsiveness
Tea Lönnroth, Pauliina Krigsholm, Heidi Falkenbach, and Elias Oikarinen's comprehensive framework study, "Advancing understanding of the linkages between local land policy interventions and the responsiveness of housing supply," offers a systematic approach to understanding the full spectrum of policy levers affecting housing production.
Their research identified and categorized 23 specific land policy "indicators" into seven key intervention mechanisms that collectively determine housing supply responsiveness:
Municipal land reserve building
Planning delays
Delays in availability of buildable land
Plan implementation delays
Impacts on development costs and profit margins
Market competition effects
Builders' costs of delaying development
This framework is particularly valuable because it bridges regulatory, economic, and market structural dimensions, providing policymakers with a comprehensive map of intervention points. Rather than focusing on a single aspect of housing policy, this research demonstrates how multiple policy levers interact within an integrated system.
Context Matters: The Same Policies Yield Different Outcomes
Karen Chapple and Taesoo Song's 2025 research, "Can New Housing Supply Mitigate Displacement and Exclusion?", offers a crucial bridge between housing supply policies and their varied contextual outcomes. Their comparative analysis of Los Angeles and San Francisco demonstrates that identical policy interventions can yield dramatically different results depending on local market conditions.
This research is particularly valuable for connecting supply-side policies with equity concerns. In Los Angeles, market-rate development reduced displacement by 2% and increased housing access by 10%, with strongest effects in affluent areas (24% less displacement). However, in San Francisco's exceptionally tight market, the same type of development increased displacement by 14% while also increasing access by 15%, with benefits fading after 5 years.
By revealing these contextual differences, the study provides a critical framework for understanding when and where specific housing interventions will be most effective, demonstrating that successful housing policy must be tailored to local conditions rather than applied uniformly.
Kevin Patrick Boge, Malte Rieth, and Konstantin Kholodilin's study, "The unequal impacts of monetary policies on regional housing markets," demonstrates how economic policies affect housing markets differently across regions and housing segments. In Germany, land prices showed the strongest response to monetary policy changes, followed by property prices, then rents. The research found that a 1% interest rate hike hits small-town house prices three times harder than big-city equivalents, with rural areas bearing the brunt compared to urban centers. This regional variation highlights how broader economic forces interact with local housing markets in complex ways.
Unintended Consequences of Well-Intentioned Policies
The Pittsburgh study by Jack Billings and David Vatz (2024), "The Effects of Inclusionary Zoning on New Housing Construction in Pittsburgh," offers a cautionary tale about potential pitfalls in housing policy design. Their analysis found that inclusionary zoning requirements—mandating that 10% of units in 20+ unit developments be affordable—reduced new housing construction in Lawrenceville by 32% (from 97 to 66 units/year) while construction increased in comparable neighborhoods without these requirements. The Strip District saw a 36% increase (from 112 to 152 units/year) and South Side Flats experienced an 18% increase (from 85 to 100 units/year) during the same period. This highlights how policies intended to create affordable housing can sometimes backfire by deterring overall development.
Market Concentration: A Multi-Industry Constraint on Supply
Market Concentration in Homebuilding
Beyond regulatory barriers, market concentration in the homebuilding industry has emerged as a significant constraint on housing supply and affordability. The top 100 builders nationally now account for approximately half of all new single-family home sales, up from about one-third twenty years ago, with D.R. Horton and Lennar driving two-thirds of this concentration, according to an Harvard study (Concentration in the Homebuilding Industry: Trends, Strategies, and Prospects by Ahluwalia, Baker, and Colton)
At the local level, Concentration of larger builders means less new or affordable housing by Quintero found that by 2015, approximately 60% of local housing markets met the Department of Justice's definition of "highly concentrated." This concentration followed the 2008 housing crash, which reduced the number of residential developers by 65% from 2007 levels, while strategic mergers and acquisitions further reshaped the industry.
Quintero's research provides compelling evidence that market concentration reduces housing supply and increases price volatility:
A decrease from six firms to five firms producing 90% of housing in a market leads to a 15% reduction in housing value produced, a 16% reduction in square footage, and an 11% reduction in housing units.
If market concentration had remained at 2006 levels, the U.S. would have produced approximately $106 billion more housing annually and an additional 150,000 housing units per year.
Large builders maintain their dominant positions through several advantages:
Superior access to capital markets and land inventories
Economies of scale in purchasing and operations
Strategic timing of production to maximize profits
Cross-Industry Patterns: The RealPage Case and Oil Industry Parallels
The pattern of strategic supply constraint despite high prices extends beyond homebuilding into other sectors critical to housing affordability.
Algorithmic Rent-Setting and Rental Market Coordination
Recent litigation against RealPage and major landlords reveals how technology can enable coordinated pricing behavior in rental markets:
While RealPage claims its software influences only 10% of rental units, a 2024 White House report suggests the figure may be closer to 25% nationally, with higher penetration in major markets.
Research cited in DOJ litigation estimates that algorithmic pricing costs renters approximately $70 more per month (4% of rent) on average, with a total added cost to renters of $3.8 billion in 2023.
Federal prosecutors allege the software collects non-public pricing information from multiple property managers and generates "optimal" rent recommendations, effectively enabling coordination among competitors who collectively manage over 1.3 million apartments.
The system allegedly coordinates both pricing and vacancy management (getting a bunch of members from a richer and older land owning demographic to meetup and talk about increasing rental profits should ring all the alarm bells), potentially restricting supply to maintain higher prices.
Oil Industry: Explicit Production Restraint
The oil industry demonstrates even more explicitly how consolidated producers can strategically restrict supply despite price incentives, as revealed in a 2022 Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas survey:
29% of oil executives stated their expansion plans weren't dependent on price, while another 9% wouldn't increase production even at prices above $120 per barrel—far above the $23-$38 needed to profitably drill new wells.
Nearly 60% cited "investor pressure to maintain capital discipline" as the primary reason for not increasing production despite high prices.
Industry leaders publicly committed to production restraint, with Pioneer Natural Resources' CEO stating: "Whether it's $150 oil, $200 oil or $100 oil, we're not going to change our growth plans."
Rather than reinvesting profits into increased production, companies directed capital to shareholder returns, with major firms sending $50 billion in dividends while buying back $38 billion in stock.
Implications for Housing Policy
These cross-industry examples reveal consistent patterns with direct implications for housing policy:
Profit Maximization Through Supply Constraint: In concentrated markets, dominant firms often find it more profitable to restrict supply and maintain higher prices rather than compete through increased production.
Broken Price Signals: The normal market mechanism where high prices stimulate increased supply breaks down in concentrated markets across multiple industries.
Coordination Mechanisms: Whether through investor pressure in homebuilding and oil or algorithmic systems in rental markets, consolidated industries develop mechanisms to coordinate supply decisions without explicit collusion.
Compounding Effects: Housing affordability is affected by concentration at multiple levels—from homebuilding to rental markets to materials—creating effects that zoning reform alone cannot address.
Addressing housing affordability therefore requires policies that foster competition throughout the housing ecosystem:
Enhanced antitrust enforcement in homebuilding, property management, and construction materials
Targeted support for smaller homebuilders to counterbalance advantages of large national firms
Regulatory frameworks that address how technologies can facilitate anticompetitive coordination
Recognition that while zoning reform remains necessary, We need efforts to foster more competitive markets else we are going to hit a brick wall
Why does Housing Costs Matter? Why should I give a damn?
Housing costs affect far more than just household budgets. Research from multiple countries shows that housing affordability influences fundamental societal outcomes including fertility rates, family formation, public health, and economic stability. These broader impacts demonstrate why addressing housing costs should be a priority even for those not directly affected by housing insecurity.
Impact on Fertility and Family Formation
Multiple studies across different countries reveal a consistent pattern: higher housing costs contribute to declining birth rates and delayed family formation:
Evidence from South Korea: Women residing in the same municipality as their workplace had 21.6% higher odds of childbirth compared to those living in a different province. This suggests that housing location and commute distances directly impact family planning decisions.
Singapore's Experience: Kidjie Saguin's study, "No flat, no child in Singapore," documented how each unit increase in resale prices of public housing reduced the total fertility rate by 0.0036, demonstrating a direct numerical relationship between housing costs and birth rates.
China's Housing Market: Research by Liu and Zhang found that a 10% exogenous increase in urban house prices reduced birth rates by 0.88%, with housing price increases accounting for 10.4% of the birth rate decline—translating to approximately 2.46 million fewer births.
South Korea's Record-Low Fertility: Choi, Lee, and Park's study identified housing prices and education costs as major factors driving South Korea's fertility rate to a world-record low of 0.78 births per woman in 2022.
Historical Evidence: Housing Policy and the Baby Boom
Dettling and Kearney's 2025 NBER paper revealed the opposite effect when housing becomes more accessible:
Government-backed FHA and VA mortgage programs that transformed homeownership patterns led to approximately 3 million additional births
Every 1,000 mortgages resulted in about 309 more births
Young adult homeownership jumped from 20% to 50% between 1940-1960, accounting for ~10% of "excess" baby boom births
This historical evidence suggests that reducing housing cost barriers directly contributes to population growth—a critical consideration for countries facing demographic decline.
The Housing-Energy-Eviction Nexus
Housing costs aren’t just monthly rent or mortgage payments to include other household costs that affect stability:
Hatch and Graff's research found that for every 1% increase in a neighborhood's average energy cost burden, eviction filing rates rose by 2.3% (even after controlling for rent burdens) On that note, making it easier to build out energy infrastructure would decrease the costs, and thus the burden.
Energy costs mediate 5.4% of the relationship between neighborhood poverty and eviction filing rates
This demonstrates how housing policy intersects with energy policy and poverty reduction efforts
These findings highlight that effective housing affordability strategies must consider the full spectrum of household costs, not just the direct cost of shelter.
Societal Implications
The research collectively points to several broad societal impacts of housing costs:
Demographic Sustainability: In an era of declining birth rates across developed economies, housing affordability directly affects population stability and growth.
Workforce Productivity: When housing costs force workers to live far from employment centers, the resulting commutes reduce productivity and quality of life.
Social Mobility: Affordable housing in opportunity-rich areas enables greater economic mobility across generations.
Community Stability: Lower eviction rates from improved housing affordability lead to more stable communities, schools, and social networks.
These broader impacts demonstrate why housing costs should matter even to those not directly facing housing insecurity themselves. The ripple effects of housing affordability touch fundamental aspects of society including population growth, economic productivity, and community stability—making housing policy a matter of broad public interest rather than just a concern for those struggling to pay rent.
Housing Hydra: Zoning Reform, Breaking Up Housing Monopolies, and Everything Else
The evidence is compelling on both fronts: zoning reform works, with New Zealand's reforms cutting rents by 22-54%, while market concentration has slashed housing production by $106 billion annually. The most successful YIMBY reforms—like ADU liberalization—work precisely because they enable small-scale, often self-financed development that bypasses both restrictive zoning and consolidated builders. While other efforts fail due to a number of different issues like dishonest collation partners (*cough* Newsom *cough*), unable to consider all the ways different groups can toss a wrench in the plans (Process Charting might be able to help with that!), and what not. The ADUs because they are more easily able to avoid all of these factors work the best.
The apparent conflict between YIMBY and anti-monopoly advocates serves no one (well except for oligarch austerity loving MAGA NIMBYs who hate the FTC and the CFPB like Marc Andreessen, so I don’t think said oligarchs are going to save us or even help us in the long run. Especially as a vivid example is how a bunch of oligarchs and upper income folks were trying to protect a parking lot they were squatting in by saying it’s a special place with a special name “Elizabeth Street Garden”). While regulatory barriers remain the primary obstacle in many markets, market concentration can significantly amplify these problems. These movements should be natural allies despite tensions between some organizations (and mostly Twitter personalities because the base seems to take my position, which is we want both!).
It's worth emphasizing that YIMBY activists and antitrust advocates rarely cross paths in their daily work – 95-99% of the time they operate in completely different spheres. This reality underscores why different advocates can and should maintain their focus areas; they shouldn't advocate for what doesn't align with their expertise or passion. Each group should fight the fight they know best – YIMBYs tackling zoning boards and planning commissions while antitrust advocates challenge market concentration and algorithmic pricing.
Despite this natural separation, I would like for these groups to get together and play nice, perhaps developing a Project 2025-style document where process charting helps everyone understand who handles which part of the housing supply challenge without creating unnecessary friction. They share mostly the same base of support whether they like it or not, even if leadership and online discourse participants dig in their heels and refuse to simmer things down.
We've seen this collaborative approach work in other contexts – Progressive Pepper Master Elizabeth Warren (who supports YIMBYism) fought to deregulate hearing aids as part to break the hearing aid cartels, demonstrating how regulatory reform and market competition naturally complement each other. It's not an 'either/or' proposition, and yes, people will step on each other's toes and get on each other's nerves. I mean, the team that invented insulin for diabetics famously *loathed* each other but still achieved a breakthrough that saved millions of lives. The occasional tensions between housing reform camps shouldn't prevent us from acknowledging how our separate efforts combine to create comprehensive solutions to the housing crisis.
The Harris campaign's most effective housing ad fused YIMBY reforms with anti-gouging measures. YIMBYs and antitrust advocates share the same base of support, especially among younger (and less established) people. As we're seeing with the Trump administration's results in the oil and gas industry, one approach without the other is a bad idea in the long run. A comprehensive strategy that acknowledges the complementary nature of these movements—even with their occasional conflicts—offers the best path toward getting housing costs in relation to median income to where we (well I) want it.
Questions For The Audience
We seen research showing zoning reform reduced rents by 22-54% in New Zealand. How do these findings align with housing outcomes you've observed personally, and what explains any discrepancies between the research and real-world experiences?
If zoning restrictions were eliminated overnight, what other barriers (construction workforce, materials, financing) would prevent housing supply from meeting demand in your region? How should policy address these constraints?
Large builders strategically limit supply despite high prices according to multiple studies. How should policymakers balance encouraging development while preventing consolidated firms from manipulating the market for higher profits?
How have rising housing costs directly affected demographic trends (fertility, family formation, population distribution) in your community, and what specific housing policies might reverse these impacts?
Always a thoughtful newsletter, thanks.
Coming from a community that has eliminated most barriers to housing development (where there is infrastructure to support it) and still seen prices relentlessly rise (partly because we did that, expanding housing choice in a way that neighboring communities did not, although they are catching up), I can only comment that every market is different and that I am planning on addressing the "abundance" approach to housing in my own newsletter sometime soon. But I do have one answer for your question about what is needed if zoning barriers are mostly gone. And its not one that's on your list.
It would take me about 4 minutes to stroll from here to a 7-acre parcel that has been held for speculation for decades. It has all utilities and excellent (improving, even) access. It is level and well drained. It is not in the town's designated growth center, so its current yield would be 35 new dwellings, with a possible 40% bonus for making 20% of those perpetually affordable, potentially 49 dwellings. ADUs would be allowed with single family homes, but townhomes or something similar are more likely. Given the evolution of this neighborhood, it would not be hard to upzone this parcel (which faces an arterial and has low-intensity commercial neighbors), but even 35-49 new units would be a valuable addition to the housing stock and profitable. So, why hasn't it developed?
Because, despite a lot of whining about taxes, its cheap to hold land. What we need to get this parcel in play (and there are others) is a Land Value Tax that makes the costs of holding land that ought to be developed prohibitive, while taking part of the tax burden off of building. That would make more difference here than anything that could happen here except possibly a return to reasonable interest rates.