[pj_mukh]

We all love the bipartisanship, but this is probably too little too late.

Partly because the federal governments leverage on local politics is very little but majorly because currently the interest rate and the labor/material costs is just too high especially on the coasts and none of that is regulatory burden. The Atlantic had a great breakdown [1].

Congress and/or state governments should work on a preferable interest rates for construction loans scheme and engineers need to bust through Moravecs paradox to get some productivity boosts in construction going, everything else is window dressing.

The ball has moved!

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/2026/03/california-housi...

[dlcarrier]

It's not that it's too little; there's no evidence it would do anything. Everyone wan'ts the house they sell to be worth more, and the house they buy to be cheaper. No one can make both happen, but politics have succeeded at making housing worth more, and have to settle for giving the appearance that they're doing something to make it cheaper, without actually doing anything. If they actually make building houses cheaper, they will have failed at their goal of making them more expensive.

It's like banning holding cell phones while driving. Talking on a cell phone while driving significantly increases the likelihood of getting in an accident, but it also makes people much more productive. There's no way to keep that productivity while driving, without hurting safety, and most people want to keep that productivity. The solution is to ban holding a cellphone while driving, while still allowing talking on a cell phone, which statistically makes no difference whatsoever. This allows politicians to do nothing, which lets people keep the productivity they desire, while also giving the appearance that they are doing something to increase safety. This kind of not-really-a-tradeoff security theater also exists in things like airport security, pandemic responses, banking identification standards, and forensics.

[pj_mukh]

The easiest way to get a higher valuation for your house is to sell to an apartment builder. I realize there are loads of cultural hangups around doing that (the driving force behind NIMBY-ism), but the mathematical truth is that there is a win-win solution here if "Everyone wan'ts the house they sell to be worth more" is the only problem.