I don't think my expectations are unrealistic, or perhaps it's better to say that our current reality is broken. I actually don't want a large house, it's wast

I don't think my expectations are unrealistic, or perhaps it's better to say that our current reality is broken. I actually don't want a large house, it's wasted space that costs more money to build and consumes more environmental resources just to be a bigger pain to clean and maintain. My ideal home is less than 1800sqft, which is smaller than almost all new builds today because home building in the US is optimized on how quickly a house can be constructed and on square footage in the lot space so that they can get the highest ROI for the builder/developer. Upthread somewhere I said my budget was $1.25M and I was having trouble finding houses that are even bordering on acceptable. I don't expect a house to exactly match my wants if it's not custom built for me, which is exactly why I'm resigned to likely needing to custom build (and surprised by how cheap it is compared to buying, when it used to be a luxury). The issue I have, and most people have, is that low-grade cookie cutter homes are MASSIVELY overpriced relative to their actual value as a place to live. Nobody in their right mind would be happy paying $850k+ for a KB Homes "starter home" in a suburb that cost less than $60k in materials to construct and was built to the absolute minimum standards they could get away with.