From a market-level perspective, that's basically a no-op unless they're changing the number of units. They're increasing their own pricing power relative to ot

From a market-level perspective, that's basically a no-op unless they're changing the number of units. They're increasing their own pricing power relative to others in the market, but most of that overall increase over the period you saw is probably due to the demand/supply imbalance growing for that whole market. The market clearing price of a place to live just increased by a lot. But I'm talking about new developments. If you ever go to city council meetings where development proposals for new high density housing developments are discussed, you'll see a small slice of the incredible hassle they currently go through. Everyone wants to have a say in what others do with their land, numerous rounds of revisions are frequently required, and that means it's incredibly expensive to shepherd one of these things through. Fundamentally, those units cannot be cheap if that's what it takes to build them.