Housing – Now get a house at cheap prices.
Low income housing became a concern during the 1960's, when families started breaking up and the wives with their kids and no husband could not afford to live in non-subsidized housing. That created a shortage that was filled for a period of time by the government. The 1960's also saw an explosion in manufactured housing, which created an opportunity for mobile home manufacturers to move away from their niche of supplying transients and retirees and go into the mainstream, where newly-minted families were looking for alternatives to regular housing or government low income housing. The housing market, which had been fairly uniform in the 1950's, began to mature and split into distinct sub-segments in the 1960's. The single family home, detached, was the model for all aspiring to own a home - at least those who lived outside the centers of the major cities. The next best choice was the condominium or townhome, which required less space and were easier to build. The design of these townhouses permitted easier on-site manufacturing, which was a boon for contractors who were looking for ways to be efficient with both labor and materials.
In the late 1960's, new manufacturing technology allowed a lot more houses to be built - in many years, over 2 million new homes per year. The Vietnam War-era recession of 1968 reduced the demand for such houses. Thus, a classic ‘housing bubble' was created, one which took a long time to work through as successive rounds of price controls, higher taxes and economic recession suppressed demand for a long time.
The housing market started to bounce back during the late 1970's, as the economy picked up and the government started to reduce taxes - particularly on Capital Gains, which were a major cost factor when a seller cashed in on his home investment.