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It is a lot of baumol effect. There is simply not much more productivity to be squeezed out of the trades if we insist on high quality stand alone housing. People have been trying for decades with manufactured housing or building off site. Nothing seems to bring costs down. Housing, the way people want it, is too bespoke and every single housing lot is different and has different challenges. Building a nice modern house requires a dozen specialized trades to all work in concert in the same space and at specific times. Or one very dedicated person building their own home over years and years. The non-labor inputs are also vastly more expensive than they used to be. A high quality gallon of paint is 80 bucks at the local ACE hardware store.
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