this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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Futurology
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The modern housing crisis isn't a consequence of construction labor shortages or even construction labor costs. The primary hindrance to affordable housing is proximate real estate available for development.
Unless you can find a way to print more soil or to automate the pipping and road infrastructure that connects units, these tools will mostly benefit developers in the position to speculate on real estate bought decades in advance of new municipal infrastructure.
Where do you put the $1000 unit once you've built it? On a $300k lot?
I mean, where I live, there's definitely a construction labour bottleneck.
I'm watching big chunks of my neighborhood go from one-story ranch houses on half-acre lots to three-story units on postage stamp lots. But I'm also watching the cost of this housing skyrocket, because the units are kept independent and free-standing rather than being built as connected blocks with shared insulation, electric, plumbing, and AC.
Consequently, a street that used to sell in the $100k-250k range is putting houses on the market for $600k-$800k. The issue isn't rate of construction, its the availability of vacant real estate. The solution isn't to maximize efficiency of land use, its to build luxury properties that can be flipped to rental companies and speculators.
Well, I don't know where you are, but I actually know of plenty of lots for sale near me. I'm sure that's not our issue.
In many cities (thinking of Toledo OH) you can snag free lots.
They are zoned for single family houses only, which would cost $100k-200k to build, with a market value of maybe $50k
And nobody wants to change the zoning to allow 3d printed shanty towns.
You can also snag a lot of cheap vacant units.
Developers would love to print disposable housing that needs to be abandoned and rebuilt every 20 years or so. The trick is that they want to sell these things for a big markup. They don't want to flip a $1000 unit at cost.