The "private equity is buying up all the houses" argument is both wrong and an excuse for deferring zoning reform.

Added to korrents 29 Aug 2026 · How quotes work · Something wrong? Tell us

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  Housing affordability is almost the direct inverse of how many new homes are built, so the answer is to build more houses.

  Calling the private-equity story an excuse for deferring zoning reform only lands if supply is what actually sets affordability. That is the premise Smith and Levels state directly, and it is the one doing the work in the argument about landlords.

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• 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. MHMolson Hart25 Dec 2025Americahousing
• Data centres mostly take farmland, of which America has too much, rather than housing land, of which it has too little. AMAndy Masley2 May 2026Americahousing
• Europe's housing shortages are worse than America's, and Europeans do not discuss zoning as their cause at all. SHSamuel Hughes16 Jun 2026Americahousing
• For most American housing the largest cost is putting up the physical building, not the land it sits on or the rules attached to that land. BPBrian Potter2 Apr 2024Americahousing
• Most apparent trends in American housing are the Bay Area in disguise: a handful of outlier metros drive the correlations people quote. BPBrian Potter11 May 2022Americahousing

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