All the economic research I’ve read says repealing zoning laws induced no meaningful decrease in home price. That makes sense - home builders build to maximize profit and aren’t in the business of devaluing property they buy to develop. They develop it in a way that appreciates prices to improve their margins. But like this piece there seems to be some view that market forces are shaped by immoral behavior on someone’s part, rather than simply that’s how things work in a world of scarcity.

We will see how things go in California! Maybe the anti NIMBY dream of style sky high SRO arcologies will come true and everyone will be living in communal peace in their bleak windowless cement efficiency. My bet is prices continue to rise for as long as people move into the region and developers don’t buy into the egalitarian view of affordable housing any more than they ever have.

In virtually the whole of Canada and the United States, dense, walkable neighborhoods are illegal. Even if you get rid of one type of zoning, other types remain. For example, one of the Texas cities has no zoning laws, but it does have mandatory parking minimums, mandatory street setbacks, etc. Basically the city must be car oriented and low density, even if you can add commercial stuff in residential zones.

Japan is the one place in the world that freely allows density, and Tokyo has not seen rising prices. Note that though Japan's population is shrinking, Tokyo's is rising. Unlike North America, new housing production has kept up with population growth.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-housing-crisis-in-japan-ho...

Square what you just said with the data:

https://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/how-much-does-an-apar...

Utopia!

A longer time chart is more instructive: https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OG-CM820_JHOUSI_4...

Thanks for pointing out that prices are rising, I may have misspoke. But the key point is that relative to other major cities Tokyo's prices are not rising anywhere near as fast. The chart from 2000 to 2019 was basically flat, and even from the lowest point maybe a ~15% rise

I expect even the current rise is dwarfed by rises in comparable cities

> They develop it in a way that appreciates prices to improve their margins

What way would that be?

All producers of goods and services maximize profit. That doesn't explain the unique housing sector price developments.

What’s unique? I see nothing unique about high prices in high demand markets.