In your simple proposal, you are concentrating too much on the "brick and mortar" and not enough on the wider economic context. One of the reasons why so much

In your simple proposal, you are concentrating too much on the "brick and mortar" and not enough on the wider economic context. One of the reasons why so much money pours into real estate is civilizational pessimism. People suspect that the recent inflationary episode wasn't the last one and don't want to hold much value in currency. The stock market has cooled too, even the Silicon Valley is going through the downward part of the cycle. Plus, the newly rich Chinese want to get their money out of reach of Beijing at almost any cost. So where does all the superfluous money go? Into brick and mortar, because those do not lose their value anywhere as quickly as cash does, especially in highly coveted places. (Real estate is by no means expensive everywhere in the West. You can buy an entire house in a depopulated Italian village for 1 euro. Real estate is expensive in attractive places.) If you somehow block the influx of money searching preservation into brick and mortar, there will be consequences somewhere else, much like blocking a massive flow of water will cause it to divert, not disappear or stop.