Comment by estearum

This is always a hilarious idea because like... think one step further amigo...

Residential development already has razor thin margins. Your idea is that people will still do this multi-million (or multi-billion)-dollar projects into an environment of flat or falling sales prices?

The problem is the cost of inputs, full stop. Land and labor (and now materials) are too expensive. Land is the one component that's pretty much a bullshit price, i.e. there's no reason it needs to be high in absolute terms, because the land is all there regardless of the selling price.