Exactly. Zoning laws affect lot sizes, remove them as in Houston or most other countries and the problem disappears.

Rural America often doesn’t have “zoning laws”. That hasn’t stopped my home price from more than doubling since 2012.

Zoning laws still influence rural prices! People fled expensive cities to more affordable rural areas due to city zoning, and that drove up prices in short term, as construction lags demand. Other factors (material costs, construction labor costs) had influence too

There’s multiple factors. Another is the zero interest rate era which inflated all asset prices. Money has been insanely cheap for a long time.