How private equity is changing housing

>this sounds nice, but neglects the fact that (1) materials cost has gone up

That's a red herring because most of the price increase comes from increase in land prices.

https://www.aei.org/housing/land-price-indicators/

can you please explain how these graphics are supposed to support your argument? it's not clear to me and i'm trying to understand the georgist POV.

nonetheless, materials and the cost of labor are the most significant costs for new buildings. not land, taxes, or zoning regulations. here is one example where this is a fact: www.vermontpublic.org/local-news/2024-05-23/uvm-halts-student-housing-project-construction-costs-workforce-shortage

Switch from "national level" tab to "metro level", and select los angeles for an extreme example. Look at the the figures right of the map, that says "share of SFD units build before 1980 with a land share of" and compare the figures between 2012 and 2024. Just by eyeballing the percentages, it looks like the land share went from 50-60% to 70-80%. This is confirmed if you sum up the figures in a spreadsheet, you go from an average share of 51% to 72%.

You can compare this to overall housing prices in the LA area[1], prices in 2024 is 262.7% of 2012 prices. Suppose you have a $100k house in 2012, that will worth $262k in 2024, an appreciation of $162k. Using the land value percentages above, the land value of the houses are $51k and $188k respectively, an appreciation of $137k. That means 85% of the appreciation was in land, not because building materials got more expensive or whatever.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LXXRSA

interesting. what about a timeframe that doesn't occur with a period of extremely low interest rates like your 2012 - 2024 time range?