@rhockin: the real estate market has been rife with regulation/interference/special tax treatment all along, whether it's taxpayer-guaranteed mortgages(now pushing $1 trillion-with-a-"T") or criminally-low-penalty property tax deferral programs or the existence of any capital gains exemptions or "homeowner grants", etc. The point with pretty much all those measures is that they've all served to drive prices UP. When you add into the mix our ridiculously low rate environment, our choice to facilitate citizenship of convenience, and our tanking dollar relative to the USD or RMB, the affordability nightmare we now have has occurred.

I guess what I'm saying is: it's less about "more" vs. "less" regulation than it is about acknowledging 1) how unbalanced regulation has been and 2) that the only effective solution is for prices to fall (because I don't see everyone's wages suddenly tripling). Falling prices are the solution, whether they come from new policies or removing existing ones.