It’s the Land, Stupid: How the Homebuilder Cartel Drives High Housing Prices
18th October 2025
Prices for housing are already at a record high, because of a pervasive long-term structural housing shortage in America. Since 2022, interest rates have increased, so homeowners with a locked in low mortgage rate don’t want to sell their homes and move, the result being fewer existing homes on the market. One would think that the response would simply be to build more housing, especially on the cheap end. And yet, that’s not happening. The traditional “starter home” for a young family just doesn’t exist anymore.
Technology exacerbates many problems. Just as in the current age all hot-looking girls leave their hometowns to move Las Vegas, Los Angeles, or Miami, local housing markets are being more and more subsumed into regional or even national markets, as this article relates.