I'm not sure this is true for urban multi-unit housing. A whole lot of shoddy work gets sold at a high price simply because the location is attractive. Single-f

I'm not sure this is true for urban multi-unit housing. A whole lot of shoddy work gets sold at a high price simply because the location is attractive. Single-family and luxury builds are more held to this dynamic. But the mechanism would be the contract itself. It comes with requirements. Make high quality and low cost among the requirements. Actually hold the contractors to them. Require open competition for the bids. So why does this not work? I'm in defense contracting, not building, but at least in that realm, there isn't meaningful competition and no credible bill comes in low for a variety of reasons, but the biggest I can think of is the security and compliance requirements are so high that they represent a minimum regulatory hurdle very few contractors can clear, no matter how good and/or cheap their work might be, and when smaller operations emerge that do a good job and threaten the entrenched incumbents, the existing oligopoly just buys them. What can be done about that is the FTC not approving so many mergers and acquisitions on the part of giant contractors, and automating and/or streamlining some of the security hurdles. I don't think removing them is an option, since critical defense systems will be under constant attack by nation state actors and need to hold up under conditions of persistent warfare.