Cicero posted:

It always seemed to me like this was because of how few total units they were allowed to make. If you're only allowed to produce a thousand cars a year, obviously you're going to go for the high end.

The D&D response was along the lines of, "even if you let developers build as much as they want, they would make nothing but luxury condos 24/7", which makes no sense to me. There's only so much demand for those condos, because not everyone can afford them. Developers can't manufacture demand for arbitrarily-priced properties out of thin air; if that was the case, how would you explain lower-priced housing in cheaper parts of the country? Are the developers in cheaper places like Texas or Georgia just huge morons who are physically incapable of making luxury properties? Yes, demand in places like SF is very high, but it's not infinite.

Anyway, I kind of like the idea of "you're allowed to build taller/denser if you're making middle-class/affordable housing". That means there's a natural tradeoff, where developers CAN build luxury condos if they want to, but they may also be able to make comparable profits on cheaper housing since they could build more on the same land.