Comment 52069

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted November 23, 2010 at 14:26:26

Saying "that's what consumers want" is such a cop-out. "That's what consumers buy when that's all developers build" might be more accurate. The financial incentives to build sprawl are massive, because the land costs are so cheap, and the homes are cheap and mass-produced. Unless we stop helping this process along with massive subsidies, we'll only see more of it, and more costs in the long run.

Housing costs have risen substantially in the past few decades, but actual building costs haven't. While many homes are bigger, they aren't better built. "Non-structure" fees used to make up less than 10% of the price of a home before 1970, and now often makes up over 40%. We're all paying massive (and growing) fees for real estate bureaucracy and that's taking a very serious toll, both on us and on our built environment.

http://www.nber.org/digest/sep05/w11129....

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