There's some endogeneity though (sorry for the big word). Wood houses are cheaper because the lobbying got the other cheap ways to build housing made illegal.

There's some endogeneity though (sorry for the big word). Wood houses are cheaper because the lobbying got the other cheap ways to build housing made illegal. For instance, if you can't build anything more than one story, can't make an apartment, or can't run a corner store out of your house, then it's not productive enough to pay for the construction costs of anything else. Fire codes are also a lot of it. That's the kind of thing that seems reasonable, then you go back and look at old speeches and they're just saying stuff like "we must make up expensive safety laws for apartments or else black people will move in".