[WalterBright]

I replied to some of those points in another reply here. I'll just point out that one factor in increased housing costs is government regulation.

Building codes require houses to be middle class houses. That means they cost more. If there are any left, take a look at homes in your area that were built before 1960. Quite a different. It would be illegal today to build the house I first bought, in almost every aspect. But it was a typical mass produced house built around 1970.

Secondly, at least in Seattle, the city government regularly heaps more and more expensive burdens on landlords. For example, recently they passed a law that the landlord is financially responsible for damage to an apartment caused by domestic violence. Regardless of your feelings about that, that causes rents to go up. Ever increasing restrictions on evictions causes rents to go up, again, regardless of whether those restrictions are justified or not.

[mywittyname]

This is neither here nor there. For the most part, new construction has always targeted the middle or upper class, with the less fortunate living in older, depreciated construction from decades past. It's why mature cities have mansions converted into apartments and newer, massive suburban enclaves on the parameter of the city.

It's not until the land is completely used that cities turn to revitalizing their core. But even then, new construction favors the upper class. If you're going to tear down a bunch of old bungalows, they need to be replaced with something pretty expensive to make the project economically viable.

[WalterBright]

Again, take a look at the remaining older homes in your area. It's not depreciation that makes them cheap. They are very small and poorly, cheaply built by modern standards. Saying they were originally targeted to the middle and upper class says a lot about how the standard of living has improved.

> they need to be replaced with something pretty expensive to make the project economically viable.

Which implicitly requires there being lots and lots and lots of people who can buy them.

[novok]

That is a very american pattern, offloading responsibilities that would be part of the government onto businesses themselves, probably because of government budget reasons.

One thing to note, what we often think of as luxury housing or new building regulations adding cost tends to be %10 of the cost of new housing. Expensive housing typically comes from expensive land and zoning bureaucracy delaying things.

I call it the lexus effect. A luxury lexus vs the camry it was based on is often a %10-%20 BOM difference vs. bigger margin it has when sold.