What's your definition of normal? 300 years ago you'd just set up on a chunk of land and build your own house. I'm not saying that's preferable to today but the actual financial cost was comparatively extremely little.

I bet there is a middle ground where we could relax or eliminate a lot of building restrictions and NIMBY policies to ease the upward pressure or even exert some downward pressure on home prices. We're also fighting against 6-7% interest rates after an extensive period of 2-3%.