alt Hacker News What about wealth inequality as the root cause of housing shortage?
Eventually there are more houses than people who want to be in them, regardless of whether or not they're being rented or owned.
When that happens you'll see the prices fall. After all, if nobody wants to rent your house, you'll either rent it for lower or sell it.
If nobody wants to buy it, you'll lower the price.
Ad nauseum.
Replies
dandanua • 08/01/2025
This will not work if there is an exponential wealth inequality in a society, which is where everything is heading.
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tsimionescu • 08/01/2025
This only works if all those houses are on the market. Nothing is stopping today's rich people from buying up all new housing, and only letting a handful be on the market so as to not flood the market and not let prices go down.
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China did that on a large scale, at one point using more concrete in three years than the US in the entire 20th century.
There's reportedly enough housing stock to house the population twice over, yet prices still only increased.
Where there's sufficient inequality, the country will run out of eligible land before the wealthy run out of money.