Why not tax height instead of $250k? -  Do you really want to tax ability? - N. Gregory Mankiw and Matthew Weinzierl - Should the income tax system include a tax credit for short taxpayers and a tax surcharge for tall ones?  This column explains how the standard utilitarian framework for tax policy analysis says that individual attributes correlated with wages, such as height, should determine tax liabilities. Taller individuals should pay higher taxes. If this is objectionable, then something is wrong with the standard framework. - Voxeu.org    - Ira is 5'7" so this is really a good deal for him!

Also, read this short story: This reminds me of Harrison Bergeron - by Kurt Vonnegut (1961) 

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Paper: The Complementarity between Cities and Skills - Edward L. Glaeser, Matthew G. Resseger - ... Bigger cities certainly attract more skilled workers, and there is some
evidence suggesting that human capital accumulates more quickly in urban areas.   ... - NY Fed

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FORCED SALES AND HOUSE PRICES - John Y. Campbell, Stefano Giglio, and Parag Pathak - Each foreclosure that takes place 0.05 miles away lowers the price of a house by about 1 percent. - NBER Digest
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Foreclosure Fiasco Continues: The Bush-Obama Strategy of Throwing Billions at Banks Doesn't Work - Americans are now $14 trillion poorer. Many who thought they were middle class have now joined the ranks of the poor. - AlterNet.org

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U.S. Residential Construction Markets Take some New Twists and Turns - Alex Carrick - Among May’s set of housing statistics released by the U.S. Census Bureau, perhaps the most telling is that the number of new homes sold has stayed almost exactly flat since January 2009, at about 340,000 units. This is important because, with new home starts so low, the unsold inventory has continued to drop. - Reed Construction Data 

Latest Construction Cost Changes for 51 Major U.S. Cities as Calculated by RSMeans -  Alex Carrick -  Reed Construction Data 

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Housing, Lumber, and Logs: Forest Research Notes vol. 5 no. 4 by Forest Research Group

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paper: A Brief Examination of Previous House Price Declines - FHFA.gov