I had to pay the Fish & Game $1250 for reducing the grass area on my property where the house now is...
I had to have a public hearing because the peak of my roof was 34’, 4’ higher than the maximum allowed by the city. This is on a 5 acre lot that is in the steep hills where housing is low density.
I had to hire a geologist to analyze my soil because the city said there was asbestos in the dirt and that my grading plan for my driveway was going to be a health hazard for the neighbors. The geologist wrote a report stating they couldn't detect any asbestos in the soil...
I had to put in a full fledged city fire hydrant at the street because the fire chief wanted one. It didn't matter that I met the written rules for the distance to the nearest preexisting fire hydrant - he wanted another one and he has to sign off on the house for it to be occupied.
The list is long, painful and expensive...
Basic economics: Home builders will keep building homes as long as selling them cover their fixed costs, even at the expense of losing money on the variable costs. If a two story home costs $200,000 to build and sells for $300,000, and if the variable costs are $50,000 of the cost to build, then builders will keep building until house prices drop to $150,000.00 even if they are taking a $50,000 hit on each house. Once the fixed costs are greater than the home price, the builder will close the business rather than continue to build houses that do not create enough revenue to cover the fixed costs.
Those gov’t bureaucrats got to have SOMETHING to do!
Interesting. You know here in Maryland because of federal gov spending/jobs house prices have sky-rocketed and so has home construction, houses every spot of land. But the roads and schools required have been funding by raising our taxes(we pay close to 10K in state taxes in my area and we are middle class). A republican ran for our county lost that was promoting my idea, a tax for new land development for home builders to build house developments to pay for all the new services they require. Understand we are talking about >10,000 new houses per year in state, and our taxes were going up during the boom to support them. So ironically I was a anti-development.