Liberty Hub

This is true of the bricks, mortar, plumbing etc... but a plurality of the cost of a house (espacily in cities, and espacily in developed countries) is location value, so the plot of land, as well as the purely legal right to build a house on that land.

In my (pretty rural) local area, the cheapest livable houses will go for £180-200,000, whilst a similarly sized plot of land will go for £80-100,000 with planning permission, £5-20,000 if there is no hope of getting planning permission (woodland) and a dilapadated structure in need of complete rebuild will go for £125,000. The actual cost of constructing a house is pretty small, and were it not for land hoarding and the town-and-country planning act (which exists mainly to protect the interests of landholders) a self-build would be within the reach of even minimum wage workers, and wouldn't even require a loan if done by professional workers.

That's not to mention landlords exist in the commercial world as well as the residential. A storefront in a major city can cost thousands of dollars a day to rent. Virtually all of the "farmers" you see hopping about in tractors are actually farmhands paying some guy significant portions of the profit for the right to dirt that has been there since before the human race. Mining rights make people ___illionaires, even if they never actually set shovel to stone.

Hence many classical economists, most notably Henry George, argued for a land-improvement split, and the value of the land to be made public good through taxation.