Price/area is a flawed metric. People are not only buying square feet but also houses they can live in and houses with a certain number of bedrooms and other fe

Price/area is a flawed metric. People are not only buying square feet but also houses they can live in and houses with a certain number of bedrooms and other features. A better model would assign a part of the price to a 0-room 0 square feet house, a part of it to each room, and only a part to the size of the house. The biggest affordability issue I see is that nobody builds starter homes for sale. In most areas, you can easily find a small 1br or 2br apartment to rent, but you can't buy a similar apartment. If you have to continue renting for years after you have settled down, because you can't buy anything smaller than 1000 square feet, it's harder to afford buying that 1000+ square foot house.