I'm actually sort-of familiar with this, as I have family that lives all around there. 1) Prices have gone up, but not nearly as much as places where supply is

I'm actually sort-of familiar with this, as I have family that lives all around there. 1) Prices have gone up, but not nearly as much as places where supply is much more constrained (i.e. the bay area or NYC metro area). 2) Even if there is 'unlimited land', the land closest to the city centers where most of the employment is located is still limited. A cheaper house 3 hours away from your job doesn't help someone all that much. 3) Texas absolutely has lots of policies that do things like limit housing density. Many of the huge suburban tracts being developed have home owner's associations that enforce a variety of policies like the ones discussed earlier (enforce uniformity in terms of lot size, minimum house size, parking, etc), as well as limiting your ability to do things like rent or subdivide your property 4) You just need the population to be increasing faster than the housing supply to have a 'supply issue'. This last year has both seen a lot of raw material supply issues (and labor issues) due to the pandemic, and a lot of people also trying to relocate (also due to the pandemic). Sometimes temporary housing prices increases are unavoidable while supply and demand adjust, but long term policy decisions can definitely limit supply and force prices higher. Another commenter also pointed out that low federal interest rates generally promote asset price inflation (as buyers are frequently bidding based on their ability to carry a 30-year monthly mortgage payment, so lower interest rates can almost directly increase home values when people are bidding against each other).