Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake

Yeah, man. My friend lived in Capital Hill back in the early 2000s and was able to keep ahead of the rent on his comically small apartment just working part time

Nowadays, though, Seattle residents not making obscene tech money have to either live in a submarine-esque cramped environment or spend 2-4 hours commuting every day

I don't think that necessarily is a a bad thing. Just because someone can theoretically afford a mortgage payment now its pretty difficult to predict say 5+ years out whether or not that steady job will hold, especially if they're young and have a short credit history. The down payment adds a cushion for that risk. There's less inherent risk to renting, you're looking at a commitment of 6 months to a max of maybe 2 years for most least terms.

Being too risky with handing out mortgages is partly what lead to the housing bubble in 2008 afterall.

If they're really certain their job will be stable long term PMIs shouldn't really be a deterrent, most PMI can be terminated after meeting 20% in equity.

The problem is zoning and regulation and animal agriculture, imho.

Hear me out.

Just 1% of habitable land is urban and built-up land (1.5 mil km2). Buy a land (native Americans didn't believe that anyone can own the land, that land belongs to everybody - maybe there was something true about that) and try to build a house on it.

So many regulations - where you can build, what you can build, how it would look, what materials are acceptable, etc.

Try to build a house from hempcrete, for example. A material used for several thousand years in Europe, but now it's much harder to build and to certify such house (due to regulations and approval processes), that everybody builds with bricks and wraps their house in mountains of polystyrene instead. That doesn't make sense .. you have to build a house from a material with abysmal insulation properties, and then wrap it in several layers (10 maybe) of additional materials just to have a working shell. Then stuff it with plastic stuff inside - that for example lowered time the buildings are fire resistant from 15 minutes to mere 2-3 minutes now (IIRC).

Or try to build something with earth pressed blocks. Also pretty common historical method from the area where I'm from, very comfortable living, breathable, low-cost, ecologic. That's something almost never used now, although it has a lot of pluses compared to the "modern" ways of building.

Try to purchase a land and build a block of flats on it. No, the building office will say, no such houses in the area, just single family homes here, single floor, minimum land 800m2. No way to build small flats or houses with those minimum area requirements.

We don't have enough place to build new homes, you say? We use just 1% of all habitable land for buildings and stuff. What about those 37 mil. km2 we use for "livestock" [0]? I for one can't wait for the times when the majority will switch to plant based diets. This is just one of the many things that would solve ...

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

I've been making this argument for many, many years and it's interesting to see the tide turning from "What are you, an idiot? Some kind of communist?!" to "" to "You may have a point".

One tipping point, sadly because as the article points out there are many more valid criticisms, seems to be foreign ownership. Enough foreign ownership in certain markets finally brought this to the forefront as locals were priced out en masse and people looked for someone to blame. At least the issue is being discussed because it has been a serious problem for a long time.

The whole point of interest is supposed to account for that risk.

People buy cars all the time that cost a decent fraction of what a house does, and nobody bats an eye when they finance 100% (or more) of the value. And a car depreciates and moves. The bank knows where to find the collateral for a mortgage, and the value generally appreciates.