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this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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i guess therein lies part of the problem. since each house is a bit different, there's no economies of scale, and that's a large part of the reason why housing is so expensive.
i'm in favor of the city building a million homes and renting them out at non-profit rates. people joke and say it looks ugly, but ask homeless people: would you rather be homeless or live in a soviet-style building? i haven't done the experiment but i suggest that 90% of homeless people would rather not be homeless.
just as a rough idea: i saw a documentary about eastern germany (back when it was still sovjet) the other day and it casually mentioned that rent was around $60 per month (in 2019 dollars) (yes, you read that right). rent was incredibly cheap. though i'm not sure whether it was only the economies of scale or also some subsidies through the government.
Unfortunately it's not a simple problem.
Real estate is non-commoditized for a number of reasons. A big part is that people have wildly different needs when it comes to housing. They don't just prioritize different things, they often care about completely different factors. In many cases a feature to one person is a bug to an other.
People have tried to build large housing blocks in the past with mixed success. It's certainly better than being homeless. Particularly in areas where all the previous housing had been bombed to rubble, the prospect of any shelter is incredibly attractive.
The DDR economy isn't exactly one we want to model here. Remember that the overall system was so bad that people risked getting shot just to get out. Yes, there were many factors to why their economy was terrible but part of it was a Soviet era belief that the government could make major economic policy decisions without having to think too hard about the individual level details.
I wouldn't read too much into prices in a command economy. Energy was famously cheap because the USSR overproduced energy. It was so cheap that many public buildings didn't have light switches, they just left them on. That was money that could have been spent on more productive things. I also remember visiting the USSR during "Glasnost". They were opening up but they still had the old price controls. Bread and Vodka prices were in single digit Kopecks. 100 Kopeck to the Ruble. The official exchange rate was something like 2 USD per Ruble. If you paid more than 1 USD for 5 Rubles on the street, you were getting ripped off. If you were savvy, 1 USD could get you up to 20 Rubles.
I do like your idea of the government building lots of housing. I'd just modify it a bit. The government builds houses all over the place. Each one is put up for auction with the minimum bid being break-even. If there's every a time when those auctions don't get bids, pause new construction in that area until it does.
That algorithm prevents over production of housing, allows for housing in the correct locations (as determined by the residents), automatically adjusts as demand increases, and allows for varied housing to meet the varied needs of a diverse set of residents. It's also largely immune to speculation. If some hedge fund tries to buy all those houses, they'll just be left holding the bag when the government pumps out cheaper alternatives.
It would crush real estate as an investment vehicle. Real estate won't just stop going up in value, we'd be actively working to plateau or even reduce those values. I see that as a feature rather than a bug.
In the economy, every middleman eats a part of the gains. If you have private landlords buying up houses constructed by the city, that then rent them out to poor people, you make up completely unnecessary middlemen. cutting them out saves a lot of the cost, i predict. especially in cities, where people typically rent. maybe it wouldn't work in rural areas.
I assume you're responding specifically to my modified proposal.
Middle men do take a cut but they also provide a service. I own my home and it's a huge PITA dealing with maintenance. It's not just the cost, I need to do the research on regulations, incentives, materials, contractors. I also take on a ton of liquidity risk; when I rented I could leave on 1 months notice, there's no way I could sell my house that fast unless I wanted to sell at a huge discount. Look at any homeowner forum and you'll see that everyone is surprised at the extra work and costs that they never had to think about as renters.
Of course, there's the question of if that cut is worth the benefit.
I proffer 2 claims:
i think you're giving too much credit to the efficiency of the free market.
essentially, once people rent their homes from private landlords, they'll be comfortable and have a tendency to stay, even if they could get cheaper rates elsewhere. landlords use that fact to systematically overcharge.