this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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This is good, but if we address this at a systemic level, we don't need to put people in tiny low-density homes unconnected to anything for it to be affordable.
China addresses it by looking at how much labor and materials is required and ensuring the price of concrete, steel, glass, etc is sufficiently low for the number of homes they need constructed, and that there is enough of each type of skilled labor that goes into building a home.
Presumably local governments have some mechanism for when they know a house costs X materials and Y labor, and they see new construction costing significantly more than that.
The result is detached homes@avg 75USD/sqft and apartments@55/sqft. With current interest rates of 6.768%, you'd get ~400 sqft homes with a $200/mo 30 year mortgage at those prices, 600sqft if interest rates were 3%.
Detached house construction in the US costs are closer to $150/SF.