The single biggest barrier in the housing market is that most neighbourhoods are legally forbidden to add any housing at all.

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• 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. BPBrian Potter2 Apr 2024housing
• 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. DHDaniel Herriges4 Jan 2023housing
• 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. DHDaniel Herriges29 May 2024housing
• 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. BPBrian Potter2 Apr 2024housing
• Building more housing in a city raises its local prices, because density is what people are moving there for. SAScott Alexander1 May 2023housing

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