So I think some of the national statistics about house prices vs number of units are a bit misleading. We're increasingly paying a premium because we are increasingly concentrating where we want to/need to live.
Many of my friends in Southern California lament that they'll never be able to buy a home because in their minds houses _start_ at $750k. I bought a house for roughly one-third of that in a place that none of them would be caught dead so much as visiting. It's almost as though areas that are nice to live in are consequently in high demand which drives property values up... obviously NIMBYism, Prop 13, and a host of perverse incentives are also at play here but it doesn't change the fact that you gotta pay to play.
If anybody's interested I just found this handy map [1] that illustrates precisely what I'm talking about, and since it's adjusted for income it paints a decent picture of why things are the way that they are.
[1] https://abag.ca.gov/tools-resources/maps/map-month/how-large...
Which should tell you something about why your friends in SoCal don’t want to live in those cheaper places.
It reminds me of some politician in the south whining about people leaving the state (to get to the coast). And he wished silicon valley would "come to real America to create jobs here too".
Of course, as you guessed it, it was one of the deep red states and we all can guess why people were leaving.
Essentially, cities exist entirely as job markets - where individuals make tradeoffs to handle geographic constraints.
It will be interesting to see if the WFH shift changes this dynamic.
I grew up in a suburban bedroom community where everything involved driving in a car and there were few places you could reasonably walk to.
Regardless of my freedom to live where I want, I have little interest to move to low density suburbs or rural areas because the convenience of urban areas is just too nice for me.