Oh yes. A big mystery to me is why New Hampshire (and I suppose the rest of New England) is so expensive. We are in a rural setting, and there is plenty of land

Oh yes. A big mystery to me is why New Hampshire (and I suppose the rest of New England) is so expensive. We are in a rural setting, and there is plenty of land, we are an hour from Boston, but even if you go farther a way, the house prices are very high. The problem are the lot sizes. Houses are around 1,200 square feet, but the lot sizes are 20,000 square feet. Compare that to cities like Austin where the lot sizes are around 3,000 square feet. The land is clearly underutilized; many houses are old; and people just keep going farther and farther away. The high house prices also drive up the rest of prices. It is a lose, lose for every body, and the problem has existed for generations. It even destroys the forests, because big areas are cut down to build just one house.