For most of US history, local economic booms were matched by local building booms. Into the 1960s, the building was lightly regulated almost everywhere. Much housing was built in all high-demand areas, including coastal California and New York City. However, between the 1960s and the 1990s, it became far more difficult to build in some areas with strong economic growth, especially those along the coasts. In this essay, we review the basic economics of housing supply and the functioning of US housing markets to better understand the distribution of home prices, household wealth, and the spatial distribution of people across markets. We employ a cost-based approach to gauge whether a housing market is delivering appropriately priced units. Specifically, we investigate whether market prices (roughly) equal the costs of producing the housing unit.