"We've been blaming America's 'new housing crisis' on the wrong thing all along"
July 25, 2016
What's the "right" thing? Take a guess. Go ahead, guess.
The unresponsiveness of housing supply to demand and price changes is blamed in part on restrictive zoning laws.
Economists measure this responsiveness as elasticity; in markets with higher elasticity, homebuilding responds to higher demand and prices at a relatively faster pace compared with places that are more inelastic.
A Trulia study published on Tuesday found that while zoning laws are a real burden for homebuilders, the bigger culprit is local government bureaucracy, measured by building-approval delays.