eli5: Would making house’s cheaper fix the housing issue?
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No. Housing, as it stands today, is traded as a speculative investment asset. Creating more doesn’t prevent anyone from hoarding them as they already do today. The induced artificial scarcity we see today is what is driving up prices. [More than one in ten homes already sits empty](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/realestate/vacancy-rate-by-state.html). One of the easiest ways to lower prices is to increase supply. But if 10% is already being hoarded, what’s to stop it from being 30% or 40%? Given that the population is always growing and that we aren’t “creating” more habitable land (especially around job centers), the fix isn’t to make housing cheaper **solely** through increased construction because the demand floor will always exist. You have to prevent the hoarding in the first place through taxes and regulations. If this was done effectively tomorrow when you woke up, an increase of the housing supply by 10% would already drive prices down significantly.
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