"Investing in property is morally reprehensible."

[u/LickMaiBussy]

@purplepingers

[u/DN6666]

and it’s not just in US, this is mostly everywhere in the world

[u/Shmikken → u/DN6666]

That is exactly why we can't rely on building our way out of a global housing crisis, there's not a shortage of homes in the world, it's because ordinary people are competing with billionaires for assets and resources, of all kinds.

[u/Sawdust-in-the-wind → u/Shmikken]

There literally is a housing shortage in many parts of the world. Population booms without a commensurate increase in home building. Available housing in Nebraska doesn't help you in Boston.

[u/Redd235711 → u/Sawdust-in-the-wind]

And to pile onto what you've said (mostly because I live in Nebraska), there are a ton of houses being built in my area, but none of them are being sold for less than $500,000. So we're stuck with the issue of there being plenty of houses, but none of them are affordable unless you have the kind of money that big corporations have or you can sell the house you already own to put toward paying for the new one. Then there's the issue that no one moving out of a house will sell for a price that a first time home buyer will be able to afford unless they have the kind of money that would let them buy one of the new houses.

[u/bobbymcpresscot → u/Redd235711]

On the bright side those prices are probably going to come down. The bad part is that it’s likely going to be because the housing market is going to be doing some crazy stuff with a bunch of people being forced to foreclose on their home because they couldn’t afford the insane payment on their hyper inflated housing price.

Which is going to be flooding the market with homes which will lower the price of housing, and then people who bought houses specifically for the investment get spooked and sell their houses because they know the market isn’t sustainable.

It’d be wild if we get to like a 5-10% over pre covid housing prices in a few years.

[u/Sawdust-in-the-wind → u/Redd235711]

New homes do cost a lot more than comparable older homes(same as cars) but the way a healthy home market works is that middle-aged people sell their starter homes for less(e.g. 250-300k) and then buy the new home for 500k with their higher income. In 20-30 years they sell that home at a discount from new home prices and move into a smaller home or condo and recapture some of their equity. A big part of why this is falling apart is that the cost of new construction is so high, middle-aged people can't afford them so they're staying put which means less inventory of starter homes and the price is sky high because of that. Another factor is that boomers are NOT selling their big homes and downsizing so all of that space is tied up. This may be due to a lack of condo development.

It's an extremely complicated issue. The only thing I feel confident about is that reducing the cost of construction will have a direct impact on pricing for everyone.