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brillow t1_j8emw4d wrote

Price of housing has little to do with construction prices I'm afraid, though this is still an important tech.

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villagewinery t1_j8jfm1g wrote

There was just a piece in The Economist (I think) about how productivity has not improved in construction in the last 30 years.

Basically labor saving devices and technologies have been more than offset by more paperwork, permitting, safety standards, environmental constraints, not to mention limited land supply, local zoning, NIMBYism, and many many other factors.

So yeah, one or two or 10 "cheap building techniques" aren't going to offset all the other factors.

So the answer to the headline is "No."

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RedCascadian t1_j8lcvdx wrote

First thing that needs to change is zoning in cities, particularly west coast cities like I'm Washington and California.

I live in WA and hope the state zoning bill and Seattle housing bill both get passed.

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not-on-a-boat t1_j8pox3a wrote

I think productivity has improved. Those gains might not be reflected in housing costs, but that's not the same. I saw two guys put up a whole house of windows in one day a couple years ago. When my parents built a house in the 90s, that took a week. Concrete pours are faster, electrical is faster and cheaper, roofing is more efficient. There are lots of efficiency gains.

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CrashSlow t1_j8w66tg wrote

Kitchens come flat packed and are hung on the wall. Massive improvement on how it was done before. Laser measuring, CAD software, precision cutting tables.

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kerbalsdownunder t1_j8if1c0 wrote

If they can start pumping out houses quicker, supply would finally reach demand and prices will decrease.

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leyline t1_j8iidhh wrote

Yeah, that's not how it works...In the housing industry.

They aren't selling houses... they are selling the dream of sucking you for 30 years on a mortgage.

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Squeakygear t1_j8ij9wb wrote

What you wrote has nothing to do with economics. If supply increases, prices will decrease. Homes are not an inelastic commodity.

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leyline t1_j8invcg wrote

Like others have said, they've being putting out these "3d printed homes" things for years and years. We've had pre fabricated materials and whole pre-fab homes. Many pre-fab homes are amazing and better than what I live in now.

Prices have not been coming down.

There are thousands of abandoned / empty houses.

When it comes to the price of homes / housing, the problems are not supply, it's financing; and in places where there is bountiful supply of housing, crime, and employment often deter people.

The op Article was about housing, and not about "basic economics"

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SeaExisting2304 t1_j8v8mak wrote

housing is a human right that shouldn’t be controlled by economy

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LoveArguingPolitics t1_j8j4ilj wrote

I mean if that were true there'd be double wides on every empty lot in America but there's not..

This offers little improvement over existing prefab tech like SIPS

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brillow t1_j8jsc8u wrote

There are more empty houses than homeless people.

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DynamicHunter t1_j8krjbv wrote

Orrrr if we built dense urban housing instead of cookie-cutter suburban sprawl that literally doubles the size of metros over a few decades and comes with a litany of other issues.

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