[Retric]

This is caused in large part because the disposable income excluding housing increases far more than 30% and you don't need a car. Add in a culture of people willing to have roommates and a limited housing market due to rent control and you are going to see huge price increases.

[jseliger]

The biggest issue, as Edward Glaeser points out: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/taller-building... involves the many restrictions on new buildings. Until very recently, most buildings in the 1990s -- when real estate became not just expensive, but absurdly expensive -- were smaller than their predecessors: "Market forces pushed for taller structures, but structures got shorter, at least until the Bloomberg years, because of a regulatory environment that made construction increasingly more difficult."