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That is easy:

1. bigger houses

2. a lot more equipment in it: electricity, plumbing, AC

3. zoning restrictions reducing supply to increase the value of existing houses; owners benefit from that, local government benefits even more from higher property taxes and also from permitting taxes

4. increase of demand due to different factors, like lifestyle changes (back then almost nobody lived on their own in a house, single people were very rare by comparison), unequally distributed immigration and internal migration to some cities)

5. very different and more expensive safety requirements for new houses

6. more expensive workforce building the houses

7. huge reduction in self-building houses and price gouging by the developers

and more



> 1. bigger houses

also 300 sqft condos.

sqft per person hasn't changed much since 1980s.




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