It's the Regulations, Stupid, Part 4

Here's a little telltale sign for you.

Housing starts fell 4.3 percent to a 529,000 annual rate, the lowest level since October 2009, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey called for a 550,000 rate. A jump in building permits, a proxy for future construction, may reflect attempts to get approval before changes in building codes took effect at the beginning of this year.

Emphasis mine. That italicized sentence tells you that in the last year, new government regulations have made it harder to build houses.

Awesome.