The two primary causes of housing inventory scarcity are both financial: 1. Old empty nesters are not giving up their large single family homes to young growin

The two primary causes of housing inventory scarcity are both financial: 1. Old empty nesters are not giving up their large single family homes to young growing families. 2. A significant portion of single family residences are now owned by commercial entities instead of the resident. You can fix both problems with higher taxes. If property tax was based on a combination of building square footage and land size and the rate of tax was graduated based upon square footage size all the old pensioners would sell their larger houses for smaller houses. If you want to increase housing availability then squeeze out the commercial owners by taxing them disproportionately compared to people residing on the property. That will force commercial home owners to release inventory except where exclusivity sufficiently allows for a large enough lease rate to compensate for the difference. Why do California houses cost so much compared to Texas houses even though demand is so much higher in Texas? Its because they have inverted property tax policies.