This is a very Reddit comment. You can move to Oklahoma and get a brand new construction house for under $300k. But you won’t, because you want to live within an hour or so of the same dozen major US cities everyone else wants to live in close proximity to.

The houses as a structure aren’t going up in value (any more than the price of construction materials and labor has). It’s the land that’s appreciating faster than inflation in most cases you’re complaining about.