[thayne]

Maybe one reason. But I think the biggest reason is that technology and globalization have caused more and more jobs to move to big cities, and in particular to cities on the east and west coast (in the US), which results in housing scarcity due to demand exceeding supply. This is the case in the city where I live. Due to a booming tech industry, the influx of people moving to the city exceeds the amount of housing that can be built (along with other infrastructure, like roads).

And it isn't a problem in all cities either. From what I hear costs are going down in many industrial cities as residents leave to seek more abundent jobs elsewhere.

[wpietri]

Sure, but the question is: why hasn't housing supply kept up? I'd say it's because there are strong political incentives to avoid doing anything that might cause prices to go down. So we end up with very restrictive zoning and a ton of inertia. This is very obvious in all the Silicon Valley suburbs, where everybody loves job growth but housing growth barely happens.

As to the latter point, I'd be interested to see your data. The Case-Shiller metro indexes are all up over the last 5 years. [1] The metro area with the least inflation is New York, which doesn't match.

[1] https://us.spindices.com/additional-reports/all-returns/inde...