At least in Australia where I live, the problem isn't really the number of houses (despite the Murdochian headlines harping otherwise.) We have ungodly numbers

At least in Australia where I live, the problem isn't really the number of houses (despite the Murdochian headlines harping otherwise.) We have ungodly numbers of vacant dwellings. New houses aren't the solution, new incentives are. This is where the pushing down of prices is important. If companies don't want to build new places, fine, let them rot. In the mean time the multinationals and leveraged-to-the-teeth speculators will be forced to make those empty homes available to the market.