Canada

Condo builds are risky, a 12% profit margin is for a successful project, plenty of projects and developers fail and go bankrupt. I bet you the average return for every attempted project is much lower, but that's not being calculated into that number. A non-profit can still fuck things up and lose money, even (and maybe especially) the government.

The land costs for a condo should be nothing they use almost no base land per person, but even in this case it's still a third of the price. Condo land prices should be a smaller part of an apartment, that's literally the best case scenario for land use per person and why we build giant sky scrapers in the first place. Unfortunately they're also not optimal outside of city cores, and most families don't even want to live in one.

Now go look up the land price vs house price for a 4 bedroom home in the immediate suburbs of a large city.

https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/27750787/236-w-12th-avenue-vancouver https://www.bcassessment.ca/Property/Info/QTAwMDAwMVJYQw==

3.5 million dollars, Assessed at 3 million, and land value assessed at 2.8 of that 3 million. Even if you bought that property and build a new detached house on it from scratch for 1 million dollars, it would still be 75% land costs.

How about further out, somewhere in a random Richmond neighborhood.

https://www.bcassessment.ca//Property/Info/QTAwMDA1WE1UVg== https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/27926782/5280-cranbrook-avenue-richmond

This property is being advertised as basically a single lot for a single home rebuild and it's 2 million dollars. A million dollar home build on it would give you a 66% land cost.

You're absolutely right that a non-profit may build slightly cheaper buildings, but again, it's not going to be a lot.