[9rx]

If you could build houses for free then obviously adding supply would eventually reduce the price.

But I have been looking at the cost to build a home, it costs even more to build than to buy a used one. Who, exactly, is going to be able to afford to buy the new houses while selling their current home at a lower price than it would currently fetch?

Maybe if AI replaces all the software developers they can flood the home construction market in their quest to find new work and push the price of labor down, thus reducing the cost to build a house, but otherwise...

[TulliusCicero]

Presumably it's cheaper to build a home when a developer is building a whole bunch at once in a neighborhood, as opposed to a single person or family ordering something custom built.

[potato3732842]

Developer is also a professional with experience/refinement so he knows the magic specs to make things, magic things to say in the emails to the bureaucrats, magic words to put on the applications to avoid getting fucked by a bunch of "you need a survey for this" and "you need an engineer for that" and "akshually since you've done this you need a new septic" type landmines that cost $1-20k individually the little guy is gonna run right into.

[9rx]

Cheaper, sure, but not cheap enough to satisfy anyone who already cannot afford a home. Like cars, the used market is always going to be a reflection of the new market. Used houses are expensive because new ones are even more expensive.

[TulliusCicero]

I think it probably could be cheap enough. Part of the issue is actually just that new home sizes keep getting bigger. Like yeah, new homes are more expensive now even in relatively cheaper parts of the countries compared to decades ago, but it's also true that the homes are much larger than they used to be.

A lot of the homes from the 50s and 60s that people talk about being very affordable at the time they are made, were very small things by today's standards.

[9rx]

That is quite true. Early Americans had absolutely no trouble living in their 300 sq. ft. log cabin with eight children under foot. You don't technically need the behemoths we see today (or even what we saw in the 50s, which were still huge by historical standards). But it remains, if it was cheap enough, people would already be doing it. The law sometimes gets in the way, sure, but that's another subject entirely.

[TulliusCicero]

The issue is that localities have mostly made adding new homes a big pain in the ass. If the new supply is constrained, obviously you're going to target the higher end of the market with whatever you do end up building.

[9rx]

The pain in the ass has a cost, certainly, but isn't anywhere close to being the large portion of the cost. Even if you eliminated that cost, the houses still wouldn't be affordable to the average Joe.

[tempestn]

The cost of building is one reason why supply is constrained. It doesn't follow from there that increased supply wouldn't reduce prices.

[9rx]

> It doesn't follow from there that increased supply wouldn't reduce prices.

Increasing the supply of labor, thus reducing the cost to build the home, was spoken to.

The average construction worker makes $30/hr. Get that down to minimum wage and the cost of a house will come down pretty quickly. You still might not be able to afford one on a minimum wage salary, perhaps, but the goal of reducing housing prices is met.

[Lord-Jobo]

I genuinely want to see a breakdown on what is increasing building costs so much. Houses are not more complicated than they were 15 years ago.

Normally if you make essentially the same product for 15 years, production costs fall.

[supertrope]

Factories lower unit costs. Construction is not automated. You can’t outsource an electrician or plumber. https://www.costtobuild.net/

[9rx]

> I genuinely want to see a breakdown on what is increasing building costs so much.

It is just general demand, really. Every step of the way can charge more, as compared to 15 years ago, because people are willing to pay more for their services.

Like the headline suggest, the solution is to increase supply. Except, not of houses, but the inputs that go into houses (materials, labor, etc.). Until supply is met there, the cost to build cannot come down, and until the cost to build can come down used homes cannot come down either. Alternatively, we could stop wanting so many houses, but that is likely less practical.

As mentioned, if you get all the software developers building houses instead the price would drop pretty quickly. But... good luck convincing them to do that. That is what has to be overcome.

[foobarian]

> As mentioned, if you get all the software developers building houses instead

Back in the day I would often run into people who would mention something like "oh yeah, my Dad built our house." Wonder what happened to that? Thinking on doing this right now in our neighborhood, I can see lasting 5 minutes before busybodies and town inspectors showed up with stop orders