> I'd thought that real-estate developers were that scarcity in the housing value chain, but this article suggests that they struggle to break even. Who is it?

> I'd thought that real-estate developers were that scarcity in the housing value chain, but this article suggests that they struggle to break even. Who is it? The real-estate developers are still the scarcity in the chain. They make the money -- and lots of it. They just don't make that money on affordable housing for the poorest of people without government subsidy. Which is why that stuff almost never gets built. But they make a good chunk of cash on government subsidized housing (anything with Brownfield credits, for instance) and they make a lot of cash on luxury units. I'm in a small city in the Midwest, and condos here are selling for $300k - $600k despite way-below-average land and labor costs. There's 20-40% profit margins in those units, no one is loosing any money there.