[AnimalMuppet]

If I build 4 houses, and someone speculatively buys 1 house, I've still added 3 to the housing supply.

As a solution to the housing shortage, building new is 25% inefficient? Great, it's 75% efficient. That's not bad for a solution. So let's do it, in volume, and actually make a dent in the problem.

And for the builders, they don't care. A speculator bought that house? It payed me just the same. But even better, the demand is still there, so I should build another one.

[stego-tech]

Again, ON PAPER your math works because you’ve narrowed down the problem to a conveniently limited set of variables that, in a controlled experiment, would produce ideal outcomes. And just like physicists keep learning time and time again of late, just because the math works on paper doesn’t mean the thing is real.

Yours (and every other detractor trying to eSplain Econ101 and market forces to me) ignores the complex realities of the marketplace. It ignores tax structures that benefit demographic groups over others in homebuying and wealth accumulation, incentives to hoard property for passive income through rent in lieu of releasing the property onto the market for sale, tax savings for owning secondary properties or rolling over capital gains, regulations that make teardowns harder until the structure is condemned and thus constrict supply, of homeowners who will go to extreme lengths to preserve paper valuations instead of building more housing.

Taken as a whole, with all the variables, and it’s readily apparent that it’s not “simply” a supply and demand issue.

[epistasis]

There's theory and there's data, and both agree that building more housing lowers prices.

Sure, take care of all that other stuff too, but the data does lot match your theory, and it does match what you call "Econ 101." And I would point out that you haven't even attempted to show that these other things come close to cancelling out Econ 101 effects, you merely have hand waving on the theory without any substance.

[sagarm]

> hoard property for passive income through rent in lieu of releasing the property onto the market for sale

If the properties are being rented, they are providing shelter. They haven't been "removed" from the housing market.

Your point was not immediately clear, so forgive me if I misunderstood.