Buy land instead, build a home, rent meanwhile. In max 2 years you can have your dream house and cheaper than current market.
You can't. That's why the prices are so high. The price of construction will be built into the price asked by the land owner such that the overall price is within bounds of an existing home, and usually more expensive as a new home is seen as a premium product.
Historically, new homes are more expensive than existing homes, as it was in the U.S. prior to the 1990s that a new home was an upgrade from an older home for the people purchasing the new home, and the older home would be purchased (or rented) at a lower rate than the new home, a process that has disappeared due to constriction on supply and nowadays has spawned the term "market affordable housing", as I have seen this term used by charitable organizations that historically focused on housing for the extremely poor, now change somewhat to advocating for housing that merely lower class can afford, as this class is slowly being pushed completely out of affording any form of housing outside of shared rooms.
This really only works in the exurbs or rural areas.
The 2007-2008 crash wiped out a lot of over-leveraged residential developers, and individuals building single homes. From conversations I've had with people in that industry, their sense is that we learned next to nothing and that a repeat of that experience is inevitable. So commercial development became seen as more desirable and less risky.
Now that I think about it though, I haven't had any conversations since COVID! I wonder if the rise of remote work will have enough impact on commercial development to flip that calculus again.
A builder can only take on so many projects per year. Typically three or four. The amount of work that goes into managing a $300,000 project (not including land) is mostly the same as one that costs $600,000 or $1,200,000. Why make $30,000 per project when there’s an opportunity for $60k or $120k?
After 2008, I believe banks started being much less willing to provide construction loans to builders, as many went upside down on projects when the market crashed. The bank doesn’t want to repossess a halfway-done new construction project, which is the hardest thing to resell. There are fewer speculative custom homes being built now, compared to before 2008. And builders are no longer taking any kind of risk on projects, so their customers need to acquire financing on their own.
Relatively few banks offer reasonably priced construction loans. We were required to have the land paid in full and also bring 30% as a down payment for the construction loan.
The difficult part is finding a reasonable plot of land. During housing booms (bubbles?) land also tends to be overpriced, and you need to be aware of local regulations (how far well water needs to be from a leach field, etc.)
In my case, I'll only be required to go into work twice a week at most in Boston, so I'm building the house 3 hours away in Maine. I enjoy the rural lifestyle and also have personal connections to a builder - I'm not saying this is for everyone necessarily.
In this type of climate new housing can be justifiably built to an incredibly high level of insulation with only some intentional (and controllable) fresh air allowed. ICF is better than wood if you plan windows ahead of time. Eventually this will save you money in heating costs when you live in New England.
Anyway, yes it's still possible to build houses in America.