Research
Housing Policy Topics
Six pillars covering the causes of American housing costs. Each hub answers the head question directly, presents the data, and links to every piece of analysis in its cluster.
- Zoning & Land Use Zoning decides what may be built, where, and how much of it. In most of the United States the answer is: not much, not here, and not soon. This is the evidence on what that costs. 19 articles
- Monetary Policy & Housing Housing is the most interest-rate-sensitive asset most households will ever own. A decade of near-zero policy rates and $8 trillion of asset purchases did not leave it untouched. 8 articles
- Price Controls Price controls are the most-studied intervention in housing economics, and among the most consistent in their findings. This is what fifty years of evidence says. 4 articles
- Subsidies & Tax Policy The federal government spends heavily to make housing affordable. Most of that money reaches the demand side of a market that cannot expand supply. That is the definition of an inflationary subsidy. 13 articles
- Construction Costs Materials, labor and land are the obvious inputs. The less obvious ones are statutory, and they compound: each is defensible alone, and together they price out the buyer at the margin. 5 articles
- Market Data & Indicators Most housing commentary argues about a handful of numbers without agreeing on what they measure. This is what the main indicators are, how they are built, and where they mislead. 8 articles
Full index
Every article, by topic
Zoning & Land Use
- The Zoning Tax: How Land-Use Regulations Silently Add $94,000 to Every New Home
- The Hidden Tax on Housing: How Government Regulation Adds $93,870 to the Price of Every New Home
- Why America Can't Build Enough Homes: The Regulatory Bottleneck
- Single-Family Zoning: The Invisible Wall Blocking Affordable Housing
- The Missing Middle: How America Banned Its Most Efficient Affordable Housing
- The Hidden Cost of "Free" Parking: How Mandatory Minimums Price Americans Out of Housing
- Frozen in Place: How Historic Preservation Zoning Locks America's Priciest Neighborhoods in Permanent Housing Scarcity
- The Urban Growth Boundary Trap: How Planning Lines Price Americans Out of Homeownership
- The Market Solution They Won't Allow: How Regulations Suppress Manufactured Housing
- The Permitting Labyrinth: How Bureaucratic Delays Are Pricing Americans Out of New Homes
- CEQA at 54: How California's Environmental Law Became the Nation's Most Powerful Anti-Housing Weapon
- The NIMBY Veto: How Local Opposition Prices Americans Out of Housing
- Houston's Housing Lesson: What America's Largest Unzoned City Reveals About Supply, Prices, and Central Planning
- How New Luxury Apartments Create Affordable Housing: The Market Mechanism Regulators Keep Blocking
- The States That Said No to Local Veto Power: How Zoning Preemption Is Unlocking America's Missing Housing Supply
- The Backyard Revolution: How ADU Deregulation Unlocked a Hidden Housing Supply
- The ROAD to Housing: Supply-Side Policy Finally Takes Center Stage
- The ROAD to Housing Act: What Congress Got Right — and What It Got Wrong
- The Airbnb Scapegoat: Why Short-Term Rental Bans Cannot Fix America's Housing Affordability Crisis
Monetary Policy & Housing
- How the Federal Reserve Created the Housing Affordability Crisis
- Cheap Money, Expensive Homes: How Low Interest Rates Priced Out a Generation
- Quantitative Easing and Home Prices: The $8 Trillion Experiment
- The Payment Shock Pipeline: How Zero-Rate Policy Pulled Housing Demand Forward and Locked Out Today’s Buyers
- The Inflation Tax: How Money Creation Silently Destroyed Housing Affordability
- The Two-Sided Housing Squeeze: Zoning Friction and 6% Mortgages in 2026
- The Fed's Rate Trap: How Zero-Interest Policy Locked Millions Out of the Housing Market
- $700 Billion in Housing Wealth Just Evaporated — and Buyers Still Can't Afford a Home
Price Controls
- The Economics of Rent Control: What 50 Years of Research Exposed
- How Rent Control Reshaped San Francisco's Housing Market
- The Inclusionary Zoning Paradox: How "Affordable Housing" Mandates Make Housing Less Affordable
- The Invisible Housing Tax: How Government Rate Suppression Created America's Home Insurance Crisis
Subsidies & Tax Policy
- The Demand Trap: How Down Payment Subsidies Inflate the Housing Prices They Promise to Fight
- The Mortgage Interest Deduction: A $30 Billion Subsidy That Benefits the Wealthy
- The SALT Subsidy: How Federal Tax Policy Entrenches the States That Have Made Housing Unaffordable
- The LIHTC Illusion: How America's $13.5 Billion "Affordable Housing" Subsidy Builds Homes No Poor Family Can Afford
- The Section 8 Paradox: How Housing Vouchers Inflate the Rents They're Meant to Subsidize
- Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac: How Government Mortgage Guarantees Inflate Home Prices
- The Federal Home Loan Bank System: America's Hidden $1 Trillion Housing Finance Subsidy
- The Conforming-Loan Ratchet: Why Higher Federal Loan Limits Cannot Fix Housing Affordability on Their Own
- The 30-Year Fixed Mortgage: How Government Engineered America's Housing Finance System — and Why It Failed
- The Property Tax Lock-In: How Assessment Caps Freeze Housing Supply
- The Moving Tax: How Real Estate Transfer Levies Freeze Housing Supply and Hit Working Families Hardest
- Taxing Land, Not Buildings: Milton Friedman's Radical Fix for America's Housing Crisis
- The Wall Street Landlord Myth: How Misidentifying the Villain Prolongs the Housing Crisis
Construction Costs
- The Tariff Tax on Housing: How Trade Protectionism Inflates the Cost of Every New Home
- Built to Cost More: How the Davis-Bacon Wage Mandate Prices Affordable Housing Out of Reach
- The Green Code Tax: How Federal Energy Mandates Are Pricing First-Time Buyers Out of New Homes
- The Lawsuit Tax on Starter Homes: How Construction Defect Liability Laws Gutted the Condo Market
- The Impact Fee Trap: How Local Government Levies Are Pricing First-Time Buyers Out of New Homes
Market Data & Indicators
- Housing Market 2026: Key Metrics Every Buyer Should Watch
- The Housing Affordability Index: What It Is and Why It's at Historic Lows
- The Housing Inflation Trap: How Shelter CPI's Grip on the Numbers Is Keeping the Fed's Hands Tied
- The Price Inversion: Why New Homes Are Now Cheaper Than Used Ones — and What It Reveals About the Housing Market
- Friday Market Recap — March 28, 2026: Rates Surge to 6.38%, the Spring Market Window Slams Shut
- Friday Market Recap — March 21, 2026: Fed Holds, Rates Climb to 6.22%, and the Spring Market Stalls
- Friday Market Recap — March 13, 2026: Rates Rebound, Tariffs Hit, and the Spring Market Faces a Dual Squeeze
- Friday Market Recap: February 28, 2026