See Detroit mid-2010s for why massive overbuilding isn't a good strategy here.
If you want a valid example look at Austin Texas or Japan. Housing inventory growth in a robust economy leads to….wait for it….rent decreases.
> Now, Austin is one of the only major U.S. cities where rents are falling.
> Austin rents have tumbled for 19 straight months, data from Zillow show. The typical asking rent in the capital city sat at $1,645 as of December, according to Zillow — above where rents stood prior to the pandemic but below where they peaked amid the region’s red-hot growth.
> The chief reason behind Austin’s falling rents, real estate experts and housing advocates said, is a massive apartment building boom unmatched by any other major city in Texas or in the rest of the country. Apartment builders in the Austin area kicked into overdrive during the pandemic, resulting in tens of thousands of new apartments hitting the market.
There has been massive public investment and popular support to cause a revival of sorts in the city and is a success story.
Go look at some photos from like 2010-2014.
People often point to foreign competition for the downfall of urban Detroit but the writing was on the wall and decay starting well before foreign imports made a big splash. Between 1945 and 1957, GM, Ford, and Chrysler built 25 brand-new auto plants in the Detroit metro area. Not a single one was built inside the city limits. They weren't building these factories overseas (yet), they were building them in cheaper parts of the US. Detroit lost hundreds of thousands of well-paying factory jobs well before Volkswagen and Toyota started selling things in real numbers in the 1960s.
There are lots of factors but broadly characterizing them as globalization is generally fair. Some included: The rise of japanese cars added competition but they were held at bay by import restrictions and the American preference for massive cars until the gas shortages in the 70s, the trend towards efficient capital meant most industrial firms switched to prioritizing their more profitable financing arms, Reagan liberalized international trade that let foreign imports into the US market, NAFTA moving manufacturing to mexico and canada, companies moving manufacturing to non union states in the south, then moving the parts supply chain abroad.
We're still grappling with the consequences. We should've invested in transitioning those workers to comparable or better jobs but the ball got completely dropped on that.
It was just a mistake to allow ourselves to be ruled by the financial sector.
No.
Average Americans are poorer now than they were before they could buy everything at Walmart. As long as housing continues to be a "Line must go up" investment, Americans will continue to become poorer as more and more of their income has to be directed to housing.
The price didn't even fall that much. One look at Temu and friends should disabuse you of the notion that we are actually getting things for "Cheap". Usually it just means product quality was drastically reduced thanks to millions spent on "value engineering", so that your new products don't last long enough to put you out of business.
Sure is great that GE can now reliably predict the lifespan of parts in their washing machines so they never make the mistake of gasp overspeccing a component so it lasts a lifetime!
I'll see if I can find a source i saw recently that showed that thinks like appliances, TVs, computer, toys, clothes etc that were outsourceable have dropped in price a lot but health care, education, insurance, housing and basically every domestic has increased at rates well beyond inflation and incomes.
And part of the problem is systematic under investment in the public sector. We haven't built enough schools, hospitals or required universities to expand in proportion to the population.