[supportengineer]

In other words, housing capacity is created and "trickles down" to the bottom.

If there was such as thing as a $250k house within a few hours drive, I would buy all of them and just sit on them, maybe rent them out.

[crooked-v]

What you're missing here is that housing is only a good investment because it's in such short supply. If plenty of $250K houses were available, they wouldn't be doubling in price every few years, and "sitting on them" and eating the maintenance costs would just lose money compared to other investments.