[no_wizard]

>Sounds like the real solution to this problem is the same solution to the housing market: Too many laws preventing new entrants, which prevents natural competition from lowering prices.

I could buy this for many industries, but real estate has no functioning free market dynamics because there is no external pressures to facilitate maximal usage of land value (and therefore sale or productive usage like building more homes), in fact most of zoning laws do just the opposite - they encourage low yield development for the sake of holding existing land owners value higher.

A land value tax would flip this narrative, applying an actual market force to real estate market dynamics. This would incentivize maximal productive use of land to pay for the land value tax. Not to mention, land value taxes are easier to implement and assess value on. It also puts an actual value on what makes the land valuable - the community aspect, like being located near shopping centers - and returns money back into the community. Combined with upzoning, you would see more churn in the housing market and massive incentivizes to build more housing, because you would finally have a pricing pressure on the value of the land.

Changing zoning alone isn't going to make the same dent either, because it does nothing to incentivize the sale of land, same with changing any regulation around housing. You need something that facilitates land owners to actively make productive maximal use of land value, and an LVT will do that.