[skewart]

The big problem is that land value tends to fill any void created by lower construction costs. If buyers are willing to pay $100 for a home in a given location, then land will typically sell at 100 minus the cost of construction (and a small risk/profit premium). So even if you lower construction costs you’ll just increase what people are willing to pay for land.

That said, that kind of balancing takes time in practice, so if you did find a way to deliver a lot of housing at a much lower cost you could exploit the delay and build a lot of housing quickly, which would increase supply, which would lower what buyers are willing to pay. Basically you’d have to flood the market with so much cheap housing that buyers willingness to pay goes down.

I think a better approach to fighting high housing prices is to make more different cities and towns appealing places to live. There already is a ton of housing in this country but it’s in places where not many people want to live.