Nations with well-functioning housing markets that are responsive to changes in demand will be more likely to grow faster than nations with strict land-use regulation, says a new report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The report is a part of a series of studies known as Going for Growth that are promoting economic development.
The report (which is also summarized in this presentation) compared housing markets in more than 20 leading nations and showed that those with less regulation tended to have more affordable housing whose prices were less volatile. Some of the data in the report, however, were overly simplistic: the United States and Canada, for example, were each considered as single housing markets, when in fact housing policies and market conditions vary tremendously from state to state, province to province, and metro area to metro area.
