Considering how crazy expensive accommodations have become the last couple of years, concentrated in the hands of greedy corporations, landlords and how little politicians seem to care about this problem, do you think we will ever experience a real estate market crash that would bring those exorbitant prices back to Earth?
No, at least not in countries (e.g., the USA) that rely on the state to micromanage every aspect of zoning, and which therefore allow NIMBYs to derail progress at every possible step.
In a better world we would draft new laws to throw out our entire zoning system, and start over with something much more flexible at the state or national level- ideally based on the approach Japan uses, which defaults to mixed-use for every building and makes NIMBYism structurally impossible.
I think zoning is a related and secondary issue, but so long as the housing market is a market, and a few people have almost all the money, all zoning changes can do for housing prices is temporarily alleviate the problem. People with money are always looking for places to park their capital and collect rent. There’s no better vessel for that than real estate.
Obviously, we need to gut literally every aspect of American urban planning for a million other reasons too, but on this specific issue, I think it’s second order.
Absolutely the case. A lot of your single digit millionaires became such because they’re home owners and landlords.