The root cause is the system that is geared to keep houses always appreciating via supply constraints: aggressive zoning, discretionary permitting, NIMBYism. Y

The root cause is the system that is geared to keep houses always appreciating via supply constraints: aggressive zoning, discretionary permitting, NIMBYism. You can believe that if you want to. Any level-headed analysis of the situation, however, points to multiple factors at play, here -- dark actors with huge pools of dark money to park somewhere (that just so happens to be mildly appreciating on average) being one of them. A system which promotes and protects de-facto anonymization of luxury assets at scale being another. Truncating the root cause analysis simply to "supply" is simplistic at best. Until we liberalize zoning, legalize building, and reject the idea that houses have to be appreciating assets, the issue will continue. As much as one may want to believe that this is the right fix in the long term -- even under the best of conditions, it will take years, more like decades to pan out. Meanwhile the housing market needs relief now.