US house prices in 1950 vs. 2024, accounting for inflation(brilliantmaps.com)

  - We clearcut 95% of US timber, now the remaining 5% is in states like Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Some wood is an order of magnitude more expensive or simply unavailable, with prices held artificially low by importing wood and deforesting Canada, for example.
  - Good, fast, cheap (pick any two). We build homes good and fast, but little effort is being made to reduce costs by an order of magnitude by using materials like hempcrete.
  - Zoning laws have been changed so that row houses and 3-4 story apartments can be built right up to the road, maximizing profits but externalizing urban decay. High price/low value.
  - The US adopted a service economy when it sent 100,000 factories overseas under the GW Bush administration in the 2000s after Clinton signed NAFTA in the 1990s. Now a smaller fraction of the population does the work of building homes, with most everyone else pushing paper, so charges what it wishes.
  - People with high carbon footprints had more children. Bigger houses for high consumers left less housing for thriftier people.
  - Garages, lawns and commuting wasted immeasurable resources after we could/should have transitioned to sustainable energy and transportation in the 1980s but chose to double down on the nuclear family, trickle-down economics, etc.
  - The cost of those unnecessary roads was factored into property taxes, driving home prices higher.
  - Nearly unlimited financing was available for home loans, while almost none was devoted to startups and other disruptive industries. We got what we paid for (McMansions instead of, I don't know, 3D printed homes).
  - Modern techniques were almost never adopted into building codes. So rather than running wiring conduit through walls or encouraging similar practices to make additions and remodeling easier, we encouraged tearing down and building from scratch, which wasted countless trillions of dollars.
  - The tax system doesn't value trees, existing structures, previous money spent on remodels, etc. So developers profit from bulldozing homes and razing lots in a day to build houses in a month. The human and environmental cost of that can never compare to moving homes, remodeling them, etc.
  - Our culture and entertainment tell everyone they need granite countertops and $50,000 gas guzzlers. Things are expensive because other people consume more and more and more with insatiable appetites and expectations.
  - Wealthy people who could have steered our culture in a positive direction chose to do nothing. Or worse, actively encouraged extractive and vulture economic policies to enrich themselves further.