On the map

At the centre A house is built by trades that barely coordinate with each other, which is what makes housing cheap to design and almost impossible to redesign. Holds BPBrian Potter Read this korrent →

• Same subject: housing Affordability is not a property of a building; it is a price set in a transaction, so there is no such thing as affordable housing, only affordable prices. Holds DHDaniel Herriges
• Same subject: housing Building a lot of housing in an expensive city will not lower rents there; it lowers them in the cheaper places that were absorbing its spillover demand. Holds DHDaniel Herriges
• Same subject: housing Building materials are already about as cheap as civilisation knows how to make them, so cheaper materials are not where housing savings will come from. Holds BPBrian Potter
• Same subject: housing Building more housing in a city raises its local prices, because density is what people are moving there for. No longer holds SAScott Alexander
• Same subject: housing Chinese factory workers are more motivated than American ones because what they want has been getting cheaper against their wages while American housing has not. Holds MHMolson Hart
• Same subject: housing Cutting development costs does not cut housing prices, because prices are set by what buyers will pay and the saving is capitalised into land value. Holds JHJonathan Hopkins
• Same subject: housing Data centres mostly take farmland, of which America has too much, rather than housing land, of which it has too little. Holds AMAndy Masley
• Same subject: housing Deregulating enough to make housing broadly affordable would mean legalising housing of the quality nobody is willing to defend. Holds JHJonathan Hopkins