Ironically, we make housing way more expensive than it needs to be by forcing homes to be heavily permitted and built to code, rather than just letting people build non-code homes and letting purchasers decide to buy it or not with full knowledge.
Consumers never have full knowledge of the quality level of whatever they're purchasing, much less in something like a house that is not standard and has to be adapted to the place it's built in.
At least with a law setting minimums, if you're lucky, you can sue if it doesn't meet them.
You could easily describe a moderate house you desire to an architect, hire a GC and have a house built to code for $75k-$150k if it weren't for permits, zoning and regulations.