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PaperclipPerfector  30d ago (text post)   26845 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024

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What do you mean by “not well understood”. Do you mean economists do not understand why or the average guy doesn’t understand why.

I think economists would easily cite things like land restrictions, failure to build infrastructure, zone restrictions etc as the cause of high home prices.

The average person blames things like foreign buyers, investors, and AirBnb which have almost no effect on property values, instead of high labour costs and regulations that restrict housing supply.

Yup it is rampant on all my local news pages and subs. It is also high material prices. They have almost all doubled or more in the last 5 years.

One issue that I've heard from friends and relatives who have had to hire contractors lately for construction and renovation work is that they are extremely unreliable. They will just drop a job at the last minute even though they agreed to do it and the rest of the project depends on them doing it. This has caused people to have to scramble at the last minute and go around begging people to help them out or it has delayed projects by months.

Part of it is the nature of the work. Contractors need to juggle multiple jobs to remain employed full time, often for the very reason you just mentioned, other contractors not showing up. This creates a cycle of delays and cascade failure states that need to be resolved on every single jobsite.

Average people don’t understand why housing costs are high.

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