"As prices of houses rise, so does the cost of land" by Shaila Dewan | New York Times, September 08, 2013
MINNEAPOLIS — The latest land rush is in full swing....
With home prices now rising faster than expected, builders are again looking for what, in the land trade, is referred to as dirt....
At least three golf courses in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area are being carved into millions of dollars’ worth of residential lots, where bulldozers are laying the groundwork for four-bedroom houses with three-car garages, in subdivisions bordered by cornfields...
The housing crash left them with a land surplus so large that lots were selling for pennies on the dollar....
The shortage of lots is slowing the housing recovery, the National Association of Home Builders said last week....
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Housing is a critical driver for the economy, not just because of the jobs and supplies needed to build homes but also the appliances and furnishings that new occupants buy.
At the peak of the housing boom, builders were finishing more than 1.6 million single-family houses a year. That number plunged to less than half a million during the recession. This year, the industry is on track to complete more than 570,000 homes, still substantially below the level considered necessary to replace aging homes and provide for new households.
A return to more normal rates of construction would substantially lift the economy’s anemic growth rate of about 2 percent over the past year.
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