[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.

[TulliusCicero]

I think they could be, but a place where demand is high for housing but it's easy to build a lot more housing, that doesn't really seem to exist anymore.

[9rx]

I suppose that goes without saying. If it were cheap and easy to build, there wouldn't be high demand.

Would it really be that cheap, though? Hell, even a single wide trailer built in a factory, which is about as ideal as it gets from a cost perspective, is still a home largely out of reach of the average Joe.

It remains unclear who is going to buy all these new houses unless they are sold at a loss — but who is going to build a home with a plan to sell it at a loss? You?