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Comment by BenFranklin100 | Hacker News Reader

Your’e confused about this specific conversation and the US housing market in general. I read your post several times, and can’t make heads or tails of what you’re trying to say. Sorry.

I will make one point: in the US, it’s never been the government’s job to build homes. That’s always been left primarily to the private sector. Right now however, governments won’t allow the private sector to build enough homes. They’ve made it illegal, especially apartments.

It’s like if the government banned the production of new cars. In a few years time, a 1995 Honda accord would be worth $20,000.

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The US obviously has its own problems, and I absolutely don't know the US market well enough. My comments are based around canada banning foreigners from buying homes and my knowledge on similar issues in NZ/AU.

The US however is a huge plot of land with varying housing prices across the country, even if you had foreigners buying properties, it doesn't have the same impact on the country as it does in NZ/AU/Canada.

Populations:

Canada: 38m

Australia: 25m

New Zealand: 5m

US: 332m

The impact hurts us more than the US.

Yes, I agree that NZ’s much smaller size makes it a more challenging case. NZ will be more affected in the short term by large swings in demand from foreign buyers.

> I will make one point: in the US, it’s never been the government’s job to build homes.

That might be technically correct on the build part, but the US government used to subsidize home ownership through loans as described in [1], e.g.

> GI Bill benefits that guarantied home loans helped many Americans buy houses and move into the suburbs.

[1] https://www.exploros.com/summary/The-Growth-of-Suburbia

I think you are more right than you realize. The US Federal government still to this day subsidizes and promotes home ownership. The mortgage tax deduction, the Home Sales Tax exclusion, and even the fixed rate 30 year mortgage itself - without which most of us could never buy a home in the first place - subsidizes home ownership.

But the actual building of homes is left to the private sector, which is frequently banned from building new homes by local governments.

It’s a strange situation: the Feds promote home ownership, while local governments make home ownership difficult by limiting the number of homes that can be built. It’s little wonder the housing market is so dysfunctional.

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