But much of that boom has been tearing down multifamily apartment complexes and replacing them with luxury townhouses and condos instead. Almost nobody is actually moving into those places. They're 90% being purchased by investors, mostly out of state investors, to be used as Airbnbs. There is a significant categorical difference between investment property today and investment property before Airbnb. Before Airbnb, you rented via long-term leases, or you bought hotels and apartments in really shitty neighborhoods to use as weekly or even daily rentals for homeless people with jobs. Now you can buy as little as a single unit and the infrastructure to rent it out daily as a hotel room to much wealthier travelers exists without you needing to do anything extra.
With predictable results. Even in neighorhoods with little to no zoning restrictions, with virtually nonstop construction of new housing, almost nobody lives here, the neighborhood is completely hollowed out, and all of these new luxury homes are mostly party houses used by rich college students and bachelorette parties.
The only downside for buyers of the past? It was a poor neighborhood. All of those multifamily apartment complexes being torn down were full of poor people, mostly dark-skinned, many of them non-English speaking. Now that their landlords spent the past 15 years doing zero maintenance until they could get the buildings condemned and force all of the tenants out without needing to have grounds for eviction, they can sell the land, and it doesn't make any difference if the experience of actually living here gets shitty because of all the parties and not having any neighbors. The buyers don't care because the buyers don't actually live here. The single-night renters don't care because they don't live here, either.