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The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong
Antitrust critics say that homebuilding monopolies are the real culprit of America’s housing woes. I looked into some of their claims. They don’t hold up.
I could actually see the opposite argument from the monopoly guys, which is that larger homebuilders with easier access to capital” build more homes in the long run, thanks to the benefits of scale and large firms’ resiliency to market shocks. If you look for a proof or citation for this claim—beyond an obligatory reference to the Quintero working paper—you’ll find a footnote that asks you to "see text accompanying note 261.” Note 261 cites a Matt Stoller essay entitled"It’s the Land, Stupid: How the Homebuilder Cartel Drives High Housing Prices.” I checked to see if that essay offered any empirical research or evidence that larger homebuilders led to higher housing prices, beyond the assertion that both things—homebuilders growing, prices rising—are happening at the same time. In sum, a paper with no new original research on this question relies on an antitrust essay with no empirical findings, which references a Wall Street Journal squib with no reporting to back up its claim.
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