[llamaimperative]

Well, they are buying land because housing exists on land. As discussed elsewhere in the thread, if you make the housing upon that land more elastic (e.g. by loosening zoning restrictions), that elasticity pretty much immediately gets baked into the price of land itself.

This is so significant an effect that there is a highly lucrative business in simply buying low-density zoned land and going through the entitlements to turn it into a high-density zone. This does not just generate a free lunch for a developer to build more units on the same plot of land at the same price, it makes the land instantly more expensive.

[zamfi]

> there is a highly lucrative business in simply buying low-density zoned land and going through the entitlements to turn it into a high-density zone

Sure, but this is only a lucrative business because despite the land getting more expensive, the housing units are less expensive—otherwise who in their right mind would pay as much for one unit in a duplex/triplex/etc. as they'd have paid for a single-family home in the same location?

[llamaimperative]

Huh? Not sure I'm following.

The $/sqft of housing tends to go up as density increases... for the same reason as the article is suggesting: incomes are higher, so people can eat higher prices.