[zamfi]

> there is a highly lucrative business in simply buying low-density zoned land and going through the entitlements to turn it into a high-density zone

Sure, but this is only a lucrative business because despite the land getting more expensive, the housing units are less expensive—otherwise who in their right mind would pay as much for one unit in a duplex/triplex/etc. as they'd have paid for a single-family home in the same location?

[llamaimperative]

Huh? Not sure I'm following.

The $/sqft of housing tends to go up as density increases... for the same reason as the article is suggesting: incomes are higher, so people can eat higher prices.

[zamfi]

> The $/sqft of housing tends to go up as density increases

This is only true generally, not within a specific neighborhood, and it's because of correlations between demand and density.

If you look at a neighborhood with mixed SFH and condos, the condo $/sqft is lower than the SFH $/sqft. (To be clear: that's $/sqft of housing space not of land).

Having a diversity of density enables home pricing at different points. Looking only at SFH (as this article does) is missing the forest for the trees, IMO.