> A better current solution that likely has wide-spread support would be to limit the demand rather than throw more money into the demand side.

black markets spring up to serve demand when there's law and regulation that tries to prohibit such demand. I don't see how making the real estate market this way is gonna get it better.

The only way to make prices drop is to increase supply. trying to tax a fringe group, or to penalize investors etc, is not going to do well at all. And doing so will also dry up investment for growing supply.

> help alleviate some acute symptoms.

A short term symptom abatement, if it even does abate anything, is not going to make any difference tbh. Concentrate on solving the fundamental issue - lack of supply due to various interest groups resisting supply growth.

I'm not so sure it's not possible. There are large numbers of people getting priced out, and YIMBY groups are springing up all over. Here in Oregon, we passed HB2001, which re-legalizes up to 4-plexes in our cities. One of the city councilors where I live is a huge YIMBY.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2022/03/31/where-p...

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-yimbys-are-starting-to...

Yeah, you'd never get it done on a local level, but when people are forced to think about the issue holistically -- that is, when they can get outside of their immediate neighborhood and think about the fact that it's illegal to build enough housing on a state or even national level -- it looks like they can actually be swayed. These changes have to be made at the state/province level.