Please stop saying this - house prices in Australia have recorded record growth in the same year as record low immigration due to covid restrictions. The primary driver is low interest rates enabling cheap debt, not "supply".
The demand side of capital is underrated because it’s hard to see. Normal folks don’t realize that managers of large funds are doing previously impractical things like buying suburban subdivision homes because they have access to unlimited capital and can offload/distribute risk.
"Zoning" to me seems to be a modern version of "kulaks" for neoliberal types that just can't grok that there is something fundamentally rotten in the entire system. And have no real practical solutions to fix it.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-08/zoning-regulations-ad...
It's not surprising that every major urban centre has inflated property prices. Restrictive zoning laws such as the ones studied above are more common than not. San Fran, London, Australia, Berlin, what have you. NIMBYism is the default. Homeowners aren't going to willingly vote away their profits.
Not only is there solid empirical evidence, but it makes evident sense. There is no cap on supply due to the ability to build vertically. Rapidly inflating prices significantly above cost over a multi decade time frame makes zero sense in a market economy without an artificial cap on supply. Gold would be cheap (at cost) if more supply could be invented/constructed, irrespective of how many people wanted to invest.
I also recoded a lot of their compliance CRM for them when these now-discarded consumer protection laws first came into effect.. and was shaking my head in disgust at Frydenberg... no wonder Hayne would not shake that man's hand...
https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2019/feb/01/awkward...
This is of course already priced in today