this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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The rarest of occurrences?
Ubiquitous government meddling (in the form of, among other things, rules like “no more than one dwelling per half acre”) in the real estate market has resulted in this housing crisis we all face. People are dying of stress related illnesses and self inflicted gunshot wounds, and the survivors are dealing with enormous amounts of anxiety and hopelessness, because rents keep rising and rising,
Supply is artificially, heavily suppressed and people wonder why prices skyrocket.
Everyone attributes it to “landlord greed” but provider greed is regulated by market competition when supply is allowed to follow market forces.
A person having to spend $1500/mo just to sleep when they’re trying to run a business, when they’re perfectly willing to crash on a couch in their office, means the threshold for going into business for oneself is artificially raised.
I could rant about other markets too but there’s plenty of government-created horror to be found in real estate alone.
Also the notion that the government “gave them everything they have” is ridiculous. The government gave us the Drug War and a nuclear-armed Israel. Other governments gave us The Holocaust, the Rape of Nanking, the Trail of Tears, and other unimaginably horrific acts of human savagery.
Humans’ ability to negotiate and make deals to trade resources and cooperate on projects — willingly — is what gave us what we have today.
Landlords being allowed to permanently take rentals off the market (by pretending to do construction work on them forever) to artificially reduce supply and drive up prices is a major problem. This practice used to be blocked by inspection laws that were removed.
Not allowing foreign investment is reducing capital for construction. Living in Canada this is not helping like you think.
What economic reality results in more houses being built with less investment.
We have a lack of houses. Lowering the price will not make houses materialize or do you think some magic will happen?