[shuckles]

This is lazy analysis.

1. Lots of industrial inputs are priced based on value they provide the consumer. That’s not what makes land special, and there are many mechanisms to have non-developers capture the value of land (cf. LVT, inclusionary zoning, impact fees).

2. Focus on developers is misplaced. There is no reason developers are structurally incapable of making their profits by building lots of units at low margins instead of a few units at high margins. The fact that 100% subsidized nonprofit developers deliver projects at nearly the same costs as for profit developers suggests that the drivers of costs are not developers themselves.

3. San Francisco is majority renter yet makes no local policy changes to alleviate the supply crisis. The incentives at play have a lot less to do with greedy developers than you describe.

4. Low interest rates can either manifest as lots of units offered at cost or high multiples on ownership vs rentals. Which one you get is a policy choice. I don’t know what you mean by “artificially low” and how that’s even relevant.

[imtringued]

Greedy developers don't want to drive the value of their existing properties up, they want to build more properties because that is an easy way to double or triple their money.

Greedy owners of single family housing want to drive the value of their house up because they can't easily invest into a second home. A lot of them also love the idea of halting progress at all costs, even if it harms them or their children in the long run.

[jeffbee]

Housing developers aren't out there with 50-70% margins. Their net margins are usually well under 10%.

The only people doubling and tripling their money are Boomers who bought houses with 1-2 years of saving ordinary wages, spent 40 years shouting down new construction in their towns, and now are sitting on millions of dollars of unearned returns.