"house prices would not be increasing in areas of population decline" -> the causation could be running backwards: a family of 2 (maybe 2 retired people with accumulated wealth) can outcompete with a young family of 4 for the same unit, that drives prices up and population down. I'm not saying this is the case, but decreasing population not being associated with decreasing housing prices does not mean that increasing housing prices is not caused by housing scarcity
I think if you look closely at "population down, house prices up" you will find normal supply-and-demand stories like "population down, houses down even more" or "population down (downtown), prices up (suburbs)".
So often I see people complaining "people treat their home as an investment…". Because in fact it turns out it is?
Are we supposed to pass laws that fix the price of a home based on the square footage?
(I wonder if jewelers complain that the reason silver is so expensive is that people treat it as an investment.)
Is it even beneficial to have a house worth a lot of money? Think about places where property is expensive, it is also expensive to live there in general because housing costs so much. The cost of housing means employers have to pay their employees a lot to keep them there. This in turn means you are paying more for goods and services. If you're a homeowner, but NOT a high income person, this is very bad. It means you can't make payments towards maintenance of your house, going out becomes harder, etc. Your quality of life decreases.
People who inherit homes that are worth a lot, but aren't flush with cash end up having to sell frequently because there is no way for them to maintain it. It's also the plot of white lotus season 2 with the villas lol.
Probably not since silver is not a basic need nor even a luxury that affords you independence.
Simply Google for cities/areas with declining population, choose one, look up average housing prices there over the last 10 years or so, see how they've changed, correct the figures for inflation, and you'll see that in almost all cases inflation-adjusted prices are lower today in those places than they were 10 years ago.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYSTHPI
Edit: DuckDuckGo seems to have served me a terrible example, further digging shows some examples which don't even need looking up, its clear that pricing has plummeted.
NYC has grown by about 1.5 million people over the last 30 years.
You're just being rude for no reason, which is also why I'm now rude to you. You could almost call it rudeflation, tomorrow we'll probably cause a rudeness singularity
Speculation is known to have an effect, but not nearly as much as an effect as under supply. Blackrock THEMSELVES published a paper that the reason their investments are working is due to the low development of housing. Their whole strategy is reliant on NIMBYism and people's lack of understanding of the housing market.
House occupancy laws also have a role here - some of the living arrangements that ended up in higher density in the past are illegal today, forcing population decline in a given area (which is not necessarily equivalent to _demand_ decline)
That aside, housing prices are reasonable in much of the country. Where population is stagnant or declining, they are generally reasonable.
In the old days it was common to build your own house. And it usually allows a house for half or less the market price. But this is effectively illegal/impractical in most the US. Some simple changes to legislation would halve the average cost of a house overnight!
Since the house was built without any compensation and not used for any commercial purpose, it bypasses "commerce" which was the auspice under which housing was regulated. When I was done I literally just sent the county a picture of a house and they closed the permit and that was that.
And it wouldn't be just the currently-active NIMBY's who fought tooth and nail against any "simple changes" that might halve the average cost of a house overnight.
But you can't, because the lot is unaffordable
edit: as a comment, there are a lot of people in places like big island hawaii for instance, that do something like this under burner LLCs with shipping containers, then just move them when caught and do the same thing over again.
Some people have valid excuses, but most do not.