In the US at least I think as a policy matter there is still a commitment to building out of it in the medium to long term.

However it's not politically viable to advocate that as a policy solution without a stopgap policy to make progress in the interim.

Housing prices won't ever stabilize as long as land is a tradeable commodity that 'stores' value. If people can make money with man-in-the-middle techniques and cheap money (low interest rates), then they will, and this will drive the real-estate boom-bust cycle we have that runs on ~18 year cycle (last bust was late 2008, early 2009, prior bust was around 1990)

Become communist (or communist lite) and reserve land ownership to the state, lock land price to its productive capacity (as assessed by the state), mediate sales and usage taxes based on the same. Prevent resale/sublet between individuals. Allow transfer of control only from individual -> state -> individual.

Or use a regulatory approach where only the state can set the price of land, and the price is based on well-defined factory (productivity, proximity to population centers, population density, etc).

All value in an economy arises from real estate. Real estate (and the related businesses, including banking and lending) drive all economic activity in the world.

May be in an AGI world, basic housing might actually be a part of UBI with some strict conditions, though not sure who will take the first step.

I'm getting AGI will not be benevolent. Humans aren't, and the things we create mirror that reality.

Some cities in Europe have famously tried to place a ceiling on the price of a square meter, to varying degrees of success. The German federal government has notoriously reversed Berlin's decision to do so.

Since land belongs to everybody and to no one, perhaps we should let the government decide what to do with it. Or at least promote more co-op housing and land trusts.

You mean building more housing? NIMBYs won't allow housing prices to go down.

We could build strong, very energy efficient houses incredibly fast using Structural Insulated Panels.

The walls of a house are already cheap to build with a low skill barrier etc. Land, foundation, windows, doors, roof, plumbing, appliances, yadda yadda add up, but everyone seems to focus on walls.

If you really want to drive down the cost of housing figure out cheap windows or start convincing people they don’t need nearly as many of them.

Don’t believe me? Compare the cost of a large 2 story prefab shed ~10-20$/sf without amenities like plumbing vs a house of similar size.

This is pretty cheap for windows https://www.menards.com/main/doors-windows-millwork/windows/...

Even that could run you near 2,000$ on a modest new home ignoring the rebate.

But my point was more that price savings are easy to slip into the new construction pipeline for a wide range of homes. Similarly Argon helps r with insulation on day 1, but only lasts ~20 years on a window that may be in use for 100.

If you mean building more housing in order to lower prices, it has worked in Minneapolis:

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/real-estate/high-housing-co...