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Comment by randomdata | Hacker News Reader

> comes from lack of developments

Not really. People would be jumping all over building new housing to solve their housing woes if that were the problem. That isn't really happening because new houses cost even more!

Realistically, the root issue is prolonged high employment coupled with our failure to bring much automation to home building. If people were desperate to accept any work that they can find, the cost of construction would be decimated, but so long as construction remains relatively unattractive work to a workforce full of choice it needs to pay a lot to convince anyone to do it; a cost that gets passed on to home buyers, and eventually renters by association.

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So the problem is that people aren't being paid slave wages? Estimates are that labor is 35-40% of the cost, while materials are 50% of the cost. That seems a little high but not unreasonable

> That isn't really happening because new houses cost even more!

Could it also be a factor that wealth is extremely concentrated at the top, and the people at the top own a vast outsized share of the land. 25% of the properties in Australia is held by the top 1%. People who own a lot of property are getting fabulously wealthy when the median home price is $950,000AU, just not people who need to put a roof over their head.

Remember that materials are also largely labor cost, just the labor of all people who harvested refined and transported the materials. This work it largely similar to construction and is subject to the same growth in expenses.

> So the problem is that people aren't being paid slave wages?

As before, the problem is that people in need of housing can't afford them. If they could afford them, they'd just build a house already and the whole housing problem would be solved. But when new houses cost even more than the used houses they already can't afford...

if you keep building more house it can't be that people keep buying them as investment with no one to rent it to. Cost of construction can be fixed with policies but it's a secondary factor after supply/demand

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