| To add to your edit: Lots of land is, literally, dirt cheap. There's externalities in having a home that aren't just the land itself, but also the infrastructure per person. The infrastructure costs are why very few people are buying up land in e.g. California City[0] and popping a cheap concrete[1] or steel[2] box (depending on your preference of 3D printing or prefab/shipping container houses) in the desert for less than many people here earn per month. Did you want a road with that house? Running water? Electricity? Internet? A police force? Yes, these things are all doable. But they also add to the value proposition of a property ("it's in a good area"), driving up demand, meaning people can charge more for the land, and if you're going to spend a lot more on the land anyway then you might as well make the structure of the home itself a bit nicer, and it all blows up rapidly. Police in particular are currently getting more expensive thanks to Baumol's cost disease, because policing isn't automated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect I'm not sure how costs of sewage etc. change with increased population density. Pipes have to get wider per person, but low-density also means they're longer. [0] https://www.landwatch.com/kern-county-california-recreationa... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20180926121023/https://www.busin... [2] https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/prefab-container-house.html |
School systems are a huge factor in this for many folks as well.