Did standard improve 5x tho? Probably by like 2-3x I'd guess. Or standard maybe even decreased in some ways, but we're actually paying for complexity.
Also - building larger typically reduces price/sqm.
Also - building larger typically reduces price/sqm.
If you built a house today without electricity, with only cold water service, and an outhouse, I think you’d save a fair bit on skilled trades (and be pretty damn unhappy when you visited a neighbor and saw their utilities).
This is true but can be a little bit misleading.
You would expect new homes built in 1925 or 1940 to have many more of these amenities than the average. (you can see the flush toilet in the Sears 1914 home).
For context, The average home in the US today was built ~45 years ago.
Surely if our goal was to compare prices of TVs over the past 20 years, and if we found that prices of TVs haven't changed, you cannot then claim 'well, old TVs were 720p and modern TVs are 4K, so actually the price of TVs dropped 4 times!'
Today we have all kinds of things that increase productivity: electric power tools, prebuilt parts, laser levels and measuring tools, CAD software, flooring that interlocks, expanding foam that's easilly applied from a spray can, drywall and dozens of things I never even heard of.
Complexity and feature set are probably the biggest. New construction single-family homes today are more likely to be customized, not kits, have way more features and way better mechanicals. That 1914 house had no kitchen appliances, no laundry appliances, no driveway, no garage, no insulation, no central HVAC, etc.