"I hope you're not referring to the perfect competition supply/demand curve, because that's irrelevant here." No kidding. That's exactly what I said: homes ar

"I hope you're not referring to the perfect competition supply/demand curve, because that's irrelevant here." No kidding. That's exactly what I said: homes aren't commodities, the market isn't anywhere near "perfectly competitive", the demand is inelastic, and the supply is primarily constrained by the availability of land. Thus "building skyscrapers" is not an axiomatic solution to any of this: it costs more to build upward, which exacerbates the non-commodity nature of the good; landowners have even more competitive power in the market; availability is still constrained by an extremely limited natural resource (land). What happens is that prices go up, landowners build upward until prices stagnate, then landowners stop building. When prices go up again, landowners build upward again. All building happens in response to rising prices, so it's never a force for downward pressure on prices unless demand declines unexpectedly.