As Prices Flash Crisis, Here’s 2 Paths To Building More Affordably

50%

The handwriting is already on the brick wall that I’m afraid the housing industry is going to run into before long.

It says: HOUSING PRICES ARE OUT OF CONTROL.

Let me put that more fulsomely by explaining the 50% “headline” that introduces this column. In the last year housing prices have increased by a little more than 20%. At the same time rates on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage have increased by more than 2 full percentage points. Taken together that means that the monthly principal and interest payment to buy a median-priced home has increased by about 50% compared to the same time last year.

That 50% increase might explain this very troubling number: 30%. That’s the percentage of Americans who says it’s a good time to buy a house.

Nobody is saying that all regulation is unnecessary, but maybe it is time for a hard-edged cost/benefit analysis of which regulations should stay (or maybe even be made more stringent) or go (or made less onerous).

And maybe it’s time for builders and dealers and building product manufacturers to stop doing battle with so-called NIMBYs and instead become supporters and allies with an emerging group of consumers called YIMBYs (Yes In My Back Yard) who see development not as a necessary evil but as an essential, positive part of making all communities more inclusive and more vibrant and more affordable. It’s time to tear down the brick walls that make home ownership more costly than it need be.

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