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The Wal-Marts Of The Housing Market

Posted by: Arnab Chakraborty

10 April 2006 - 10:00am

With litigation costs escalating due to increasingly stringent zoning regulations, many family-owned development firms are forced out of the market by bigger firms that can afford to pay attorney's fees.

With increasing incomes, demand in the "luxury" homes sector is always high. According to this article, "Month in, month out...attorneys are engaged in dozens of legal battles with local zoning boards, pushing for permission to build in desirable markets." Homebuilders are fast increasing their market share in the new homes market. Thanks to the high cost of litigating with local zoning boards in "desirable" markets, the bigger, more diversified firms, with deeper pockets, are taking over the small, family-owned firms.

"Land -- and specifically land-use regulation -- has grown too costly for little guys to compete."

"Community barriers to building -- whether expressed as 'sustainable' planning rules or as unvarnished snob zoning -- have a lot to do with pushing up the cost of real estate..."

Full Story: Housing bubble, zoning boards
Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 7, 2006
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No matter how one wanted to organize the ideal city, housing security would be part of it. No community can function effectively if large numbers of its residents are regularly displaced or perpetually at risk of being displaced.
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