Part of the problem is when regulation and incentives push to make it so only Bentleys are profitable to make.
My friends owns a house on five acres in a city in Montana. They wanted to carve out an acre or two for their adult kid to build on. They must put in a road, sidewalks, connect to sewer, and city water even though they are on a well and septic. Light poles, geologic surveys, and wildly expensive permits. They were not prepared for over $200k of development and fees before even laying down the house foundation. Now the land stays empty. The land itself is sellable apparently for several hundred thousand dollars. A developer would be insane to buy and develop the land and sell a house for anything under a cool million.
Originally they thought they could spend about $70k and let their kid build. Nope.
> Part of the problem is when regulation and incentives push to make it so only Bentleys are profitable to make.
I’ll second this. Almost everywhere you go in the US are mandates that dramatically increase the cost of developing your own property (i.e. as a taxpaying individual, not as an incorporated developer). I own property and want to develop it for elderly low-income family members to enjoy, incidentally creating low-income housing consistent with the area, but permits and fees are roughly 40% of my costs. The building permit costs extra because the materials used (mostly dirt!!!) are non-flammable ! The square footage is based on the perimeter of the structure but I’m building with stabilized adobe (AKA DIRT!!!!) thus building code requires a wall thickness of 14”, resulting in substantial percentage of unusable square footage contributing to the permit cost and later property tax. Flood control district required mitigations are founded on an incorrect hazard map which results in extra expense and extra permitting costs. And so on, e.g. road access fees for roads which are never built in 25 years of fee collection, new fees for water service maintenance supposedly covered in past bills but audits kept confidential for security, legal costs to sue the county to follow it’s own rules...
(edit: wow, my knee really jerked on this one. So infuriated)
I think a lot of this is intended well. Like, a house with no road (and therefore emergency vehicle access), built on unsurveyed geology, could be a disaster waiting to happen. Requiring septic probably means the town invested heavily in the sewer system (a worthwhile investment as a former septic user) and allowing individuals to opt out breaks the financial picture.
"The American Dream" has also slippery sloped itself from a house with a white picket fence in a safe suburban neighborhood to if I don't become Elon Musk then there is no American Dream.
In other news, I'll probably never be able to afford a Bentley, so I guess I have no prospects of ever owning a car.