The land has some value. Also, home construction seems very inefficient - every home is a snowflake even if identical to the one next door. Drywall finishing as

The land has some value. Also, home construction seems very inefficient - every home is a snowflake even if identical to the one next door. Drywall finishing as an example is very time consuming and hard to do correctly . You need a lot of experience to be good at it (if you don’t believe me, just try it and weep at your results). Then, once this is done even painting is an entirely manual process costing $4K+.