Comment: What is your proposal for this particular problem though, other than restricting who a homeowner can sell their property to, even if it is a significantly higher bid?  Genuinely asking, because any law that would mandate selling to a lower bidder would almost certainly run afoul of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Any Portland homeowner selling a home is free to keep Portland weird and/or affordable by selling at a below-market price to a native Portlander, a low-income person who barely qualifies for an FHA loan, etc.  Yet they never seem to.

I totally agree with you that most of the new stuff going up is ugly crap designed to maximize developer $$$.  But design controls and the process that goes along with them also makes building something that much more expensive, which again exacerbates the problem. 

Across the board, this is not an easy problem to solve, which is probably why it hasn't been solved to date.  A ton of new housing supply (even ugly) would at least help.