Morgan Housel

There's plenty of demand.

almost all the way down, it's a zoning issue.

Whereas in most cities in America, where people want homes to be, it's illegal to build them.

You can't get it properly zoned or it takes too long for most developers to put up with it.

And so it's purely, it's a choice.

It's a choice to be in the situation that could end tomorrow if people understood the problem enough.

Talk to a real estate developer in Los Angeles who owns a plot of land that wants to build 100 homes on it.

And it'll tell you it'll take you – if you're lucky and good and spend a fortune, it'll take you three to five years to get it permitted.

And by that time, you'll probably just give up and move somewhere else.

It should be the biggest problem.

There's several books that have been written about it recently.

Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson is a good one.

There's another book called Stuck that is about the history of zoning rules.

People who already have houses don't want other homes built around them.

The other thing, I think the most dangerous thing that we've done in America in the last 50 years is convince people that rising home prices are a good thing.

And now if you own your house, you think, oh, I bought this house for 200 grand and now it's worth 600.

I just made $400,000.

I've never seen so much money in my life.

A, no, you didn't.

Because if you sold that house for 600 grand, you have to buy another house that is also inflated in value.