Cogent intelligent article. The dime and ten cents store as a concept, had its beginnings on the back of the Great Depression.
It was spectacularly successful in comparison to traditional models, which sort to boost profitability via larger then even larger margins, which simply forced the customer base to leave and shop elsewhere! Whereas, the dime and ten cents merchants relied on VOLUME for quite massive profits, even where margins were trimmed to the bone!
For any sustainable housing market recovery, as argued, volume is the answer!
That volume needs to be exclusively new housing.
Be it urban renewal, or more urbanisation.
We can and ought to build very rapid rail links. Some of the land alongside those links, where station stops would be logical, could be rezoned as urban.
The sales of said land would then pay for the rapid rail links! The small self contained towns, would necessarily include a planned CBD and an industrial estate.
A reasonably modest waste disposal system, would provide off grid energy self sufficiency, free hot water, and safe sanitised reusable nutrient loaded water.
Small grids placed around a metre apart in gutters and connected to underground ag-pipes, would allow subsoil etc, to absorb and store much more storm water!
House hold storage, if large enough, would provide safe potable water.
Virtual power and water self sufficiency, would allow the new towns to be placed almost anywhere. Rapid rail would make them desirable low cost locations.
Housing affordability would re-emerge as a feature and volume sales would follow, along with the quite massive economic boost for the poorest performing parts of the economy.
We just need govt to either help the process or get out of the way if they can't!
Getting out of the way, would include not using the housing market as some sort of ATM, than can be raided via parasitical cascading taxes or stamp duties etc/etc!
Build it and they will come!
Rhrosty.

Rhrosty,
you touched on my favourite subject. rail. A Mono rail right around & across Australia. You could have water pipe lines, power etc all running in the one setup. no major environmental impact by not needing huge bridges or land fill to run a traditional rail line. Speed ? Speed is not as vital as reliability & cost of providing infrastructure. A mono rail would probably provide the same service as a normal rail for a quarter of the cost. If the rail is too slow for some then they got other options. They could fly or they could get a life.
High speed rail ? Shades of NBN ?
Housing too needs a good shake up by reality. Prices are way past insane. Look at how many can't afford to pay the mortgage. Surely some can see that there's something terribly wrong when people are given loans with not a hope in hell to repay.
I maintain that only a flat tax & National Service can put a stop to the present insanity.

I find it astounding that a subject like this has no takers. isn't anyone interested in the economic development of this Nation ? is it really just all about gimme, gimme ?
Just think of the jobs & taking the pressure off coastal development by creating small towns in the interior.
Come on people show some interest & offer some ideas.