[Gibbon1]

If you look at other countries you see that unsustainable housing price increases are happening everywhere. So yeah your local assholes at the permit and planning department are probably a symptom of the deeper finance driven problem.

We got rid of capital controls and stopped putting limits on what fiat money loans could be used for and a global housing shortage is the result. 50 years ago you couldn't directly borrow from the fed to invest London commercial real estate. More like you could borrow money from a local bank to build an apartment complex in the same city the bank was located in. And if you wanted to build an apartment complex in a different state you'd need to use a different bank.