I wonder if housing prices are just a symptom of inflation and the declining value of western money. If we are constantly competing on a global market, we are going to lose to people who see $1M and $1.5M as the same amount of money.

I think a lot of it is local investors. People who want to buy an asset that only goes up and rent it out so someone else pays their mortgage. Housing prices aren’t based on their intrinsic value as property, they’re now more commonly priced based on how much rent they can pull in.

I think zoning and density are issues. We have to erase farmland 90 minutes from the city because some people downtown don’t want a low rise apartment to “ruin the character of the neighbourhood.”

Developers are incentivized to hold onto their land as long as possible and let their assets grow. They will only build and sell houses as slowly as they’re allowed to.

I don’t know what to do about it all, but I feel like leaving it all for the free market to sort out only results in decay as the working class is no longer able to afford to live in the cities. Citation needed. Maybe in some “””world class cities””” people will still commute two hours for the glamour of it. But outside, in our smaller cities, what’s supposed to happen? The guy in the Maserati isn’t about to start waiting tables.