I want to emphasize that Norway is not a panacea. I do have harsh criticisms of how housing is heavily incentivized on as a tax advantaged financial asset. Policy makers keep making the same mistakes around pushing home prices upward by encouraging debt and sacrificing their currency in the process.

I just… How do you have a conversation with someone like that? Either they are extremely stupid (unlikely) or they are just a malicious actor.

i heard a head planner say he doesnt like cookie cutter housing and i said in the group “but you live in a cookie cutter house. those bungalows are out of a catalog and it helped speed up housing delivery. i like cookies and so does everyone else. a cookie cutter seems like a useful tool”

Utterly adorable

I cannot speak to Montana’s land use regulatory pattern(s), just that the prices have escalated dramatically.

Friends wanted to move back to their hometown of Missoula, start a family, but the home prices there are now higher than the coastal city they are in today.

Then there are stories of Californians selling their homes to buy whole apartment buildings in Montana and dramatically raising the rent.

I’m not surprised. Enormous amount of migration into those states. The highest construction rate, per capita, in the United States is in Idaho, but they could not keep up with demand.

Montana has also been gobbled up by folks from high housing cost states.

Amen.

This hits the nail on the head for both the tax problems, the correct replacement (LVT), and that it is going to require some bold courageous politicking.

And also for systematically eroding non-Republican apportionment for the House of Representatives, and thereby also handing the Republicans more electoral college votes.

Demographics are turning out to be destiny, but for the R's.

The housing theory-of-everything continues to play out.

Bakery crawls: coffee and baked goods, then the gym.

Your first post, and you choose: