> Well, but imagine that houses cost a fraction of their current price. That’s the point.

That's not how your proposed measures would work in reality. You would just make market less effective and create a lot of problems who want to participate in it.

It would be much harder to find a place to rent, and it would be without any contracts or legal protections, as most landlords would look as if they're actually living in the apartments. A cottage industry of people who serve as fictive "owners" of the apartments will spring up for others who want to invest in real estate. A lot of government officials will be hired to "ensure" that you're buying a house or an apartment for yourself. They will take bribes to look the other way, and they will have a huge backlog of apartments to check.

Apartments and houses that are listed for sale officially (not on the emergent black market) may have their list prices come down, but it would be very hard to get access to them and actually buy one. Probably further government regulation will ensure that some queue system is in place so that people who "need it the most" (bribed the official in charge) would get preferential treatment, and as a result it would take years to actually buy one. Commercial investment in real estate will plummet, so the government will take over. Residential construction will soon balloon in cost and go down in quality.

Your ideas are not new. They, or variations of them, have been tried, a lot. Interventions in the free markets always have a lot of unintended consequences of second and third order, and as more regulations are patched on top in the attempts to fix them, the situation just becomes worse and worse.

Landlords are a convenient scrapegoat — but if you actually dive into how the market works, you have to acknowledge that they provide a very important financial service. Nobody on the real estate has any kind of monopolistic influence (except the government), and nobody is able to artificially inflate the prices. The world is entering a stage of ultra-urbanisation, where small and ordinary towns die down and the biggest centers grow more and more important — so real estate in them balloons, because there's more and more demand for it. If you are just looking for a place to live, there's a lot of it around the world. For example, a very nice 2-bedroom apartment in Nha Trang in a new building costs around $300 a month — it has an underground parking and all the infrastructure of a modern city around it. Especially in the age of remote work, "high costs" of real estate are not about people living on the street — it's about people not being able to live where they used to live before.

You can blame Airbnbs and hotels — but it all comes down to the fact that of other people on the market are ready to pay more than you do and have the cash for it, there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to outbid you. If somebody used to rent an apartment in the neighbourhood for 20 years but now can't afford it — it may be sad for this person, but it's not a reason why someone else who wants and can pay more for renting the same place shouldn't be able to do so. I guess you're an American? Guess what — more and more people come to your country from all around the world, and they (we) just outcompete you.