> Why would those who do own houses want to see their assets depreciate because of increased supply etc. Which is a perfectly understandable reaction on the su

> Why would those who do own houses want to see their assets depreciate because of increased supply etc. Which is a perfectly understandable reaction on the surface, but it ignores the long-term impacts of such a situation. Granted, we humans are terrible at thinking about the very long term. An example I think many of us that live in places like the SF Bay Area, Seattle, Boston..etc have seen is that at some point, high housing prices start damaging other parts of the local economy. Younger people can't afford to move to the area, so the demographics start slumping towards older people; eventually that will lead to the collapse of some pay-it-forward kinds of social services. Businesses have to pay extremely high wages to be able to find workers that want to work there and are able to afford to live within a reasonable distance; Some of this is solvable via automation/remote work, but I don't think you're going to have your mechanic or your cleaners doing telework. A lot of businesses cannot sustain those sorts of wages without severely increasing prices, but then you get people complaining that their local coffee shop has to charge $15 for a cup of plain black coffee. I think we just haven't yet seen the fallout from the housing affordability problem fully unfold yet. Unless something changes, we'll be seeing more and more effects from this in the coming years.