ABSTRACT
Regardless of the best intentions to address the issue among policymakers, affordable housing remains one of the most underprovided assets in advanced economies, otherwise characterized by an ample supply of product offerings. Despite housing having a user value for the primary residents, serving as an investment asset in the broader financialized economy, and being the key source of household wealth, low-net-worth households have difficulties in finding and purchasing affordable homes. The chapter examines new affordable housing production as a low-cost strategy that demands diligent and persistent work to cut costs in all the phases of the construction project. As cost cutting is the most mundane and least theorized of all commercial activities, being of equal importance for low-cost and high-differentiation producers that seek to maximize the net return, the concept of the “mundanity of excellence” is introduced to underline how the attention to details and the capacity to align all the activities and practices into a coherent product or performance is of key importance.
