> Really the most concerning aspect is that the cost to build new housing has drastically gone up.

Any idea why? This is a life plan for my wife and I, we're currently looking for the right spot of land (~10 acres) and then we hope to start building in ~5 years after significant saving and planning.

We're in the initial stages of planning out our floor plan/etc, and costs are high, but we haven't really noticed a huge difference between building and buying. .. but i suppose we also aren't far enough long that we're getting real price estimates either.

Here is the link to a very interesting reddit post about the various reasons for the increase in the price of wood: https://old.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/stwrnr/ive_docum...

While the post is worth a read, the TLDR is that there are multiple issues, each of which could seemingly independently be the source of the increase.

From what I heard, from an architect friend, the difference in price between a builder and custom home is 10% premium. Because whatever economy of scale saved by the build is taken up in profit. To the buyer prices are just about the same. And conveniently, the commission for an architect is also 10%. So if you can design and self certify you also save a bit.

There's a large gradient between "custom" and custom. Modifying an already designed home is so much cheaper than something from the ground up. As in, thousands vs tens of thousands. Depending on where you live and what you're building, that's a decent % of the total cost of a house.

Lumber, materials, labor. Homebuilding needs to be disrupted with more automation, use of cheaper, sustainable materials (3D printed concrete, for example).

Nah its a monetary problem.

Basically, from a finance perspective:

Cost to borrow money (for an institutional investor) and buy a house with that money generates a return. Meaning they can buy these homes up all day long and make a profit.

Single family home are poor long term investments for institutions, outside of maybe California. Prices tend to follow inflation while property taxes and maintenance eat growth. States without income taxes tends to make up revenue through higher property taxes.

Because of these facts, I don't see this trend of investors gobbling up SFHs to be sustainable. I suspect most of them are in this for a quick buck, and will quickly dump these homes the minute it becomes obvious that this was a dumb idea.

They buy them with leverage though. A 3% yearly return with 5x leverage is 15% a year