Supply would absolutely help with the problem, but it's not sufficient.

To discourage speculation, governments should impose land value tax, but not property tax, to encourage efficient use of land. You'll also need to pair with other reform, like changing how zoning should be done, how transportation is planned, and so forth.

Land value tax has some issues as well. The zoning reform might be able to dix them, but only with some micromanaging I think. If we want walkable areas, that means multi-use zoning. Not all land uses have the same roi, so if you set the land value relative to the value that comes from using it for the highest roi case, say case A, then no one will use land for case B or C. So to take it to hyperbole, you'd end up with blocks of liquor stores and no housing, or all housing and no grocers. It is a complicated problem, and the solution will also be complicated.

Could you elaborate on how building apartments specifically for low income residents would do this? My county has started buying old hotels and whatnot to convert for their uses.

> The real estate market is driven by speculation no?

No, it's driven by supply and demand.

It's really not.

Well, it is a demand, but not a supply and demand balance of housing supply, but a supply and demand balance of speculation. In other words, there’s a high demand for speculation (profit) in the housing market.

How do you figure?

If more houses are built, prices will go down.

This is clearly not true if you observe actual real estate and rental prices and as long as we continue to allow corporations to own a majority of development projects, it should be obvious this won't work. The profit incentive doesn't work this way, and they are better off just letting a home sit empty than to dilute the value of their portfolio by selling or renting low to compete against themselves.

I disagree with this notion. Rental values are often controlled algorithmically. Given the low inventory of housing for sale, it’s possible for the monopolists to purchase the new homes and use vacancy in order to maintain higher levels of pricing for the portfolio by artificially controlling the supply levels.

If property taxes were evaluated the same way for the landlords as for everyone else, that wouldn't be feasible would it? And home maintenance and insurance for unoccupied homes is typically very high. There is also the risk of squatting or the cost of people to prevent that.

Has anyone done some math on the housing density that is most economical? My guess would be that the height limit would be close to five or six stories before the engineering to go higher was excessive, but that is just a wild guess. Courtyards down to ground level so people can have an external view seem wasteful from a heating and cooling perspective, most people don't want to live with no windows.

Yeah this fairy tale that we dont build enough because of regulation is told everywhere. Even in countries with rapidly declining population and long reign of right wing anti regulation governments.

The real solution would be to fight the speculation and accept acces to a home as a human right. So prohibit/tax unrented rentals, progressively taxes owning multiple homes.

I live in a poorer EU country where foreign money bought everything they could. They dont even bother renting it out because increase of the value of the properties is where the money is. If they started to rent the evaulations would fall.

The plural of "the monopolists" is an interesting concept :)

I think the word is "cartel".

"Oligopoly" if you're an economist.

There is not perfect price elasticity in the housing market. The demand for housing right now is pretty much infinite because of the speculation. In other words, the housing price is not based on supply, but it’s based on the demand. And the demand is being driven by speculators.

The answer is to remove housing as an investment vehicle. Also prohibiting the ownership of multiple houses by a single individual or institution.

> The real estate market is driven by speculation no?

When two things happen concurrently, it can be hard to tell cause and effect apart.

In reality, real estate speculation is driven by the simple fact that prices always go up, making it one of the best investments there is for those with enough cash.

If you legalize massive housing construction, housing prices will start going down, and the speculation money will have to go elsewhere.

Which leads to the real problem. People have been treating real estate like an investment for decades now. You're essentially going to wipe out the wealth of all the middle class by doing so, so you're up against an immovable wall of political incentive for the current system to persist.