It's the building the house due to labor and material costs that really has gone up the cost. Most places don't have serious zoning laws because most land by volume is just rural area.

In overbuilt areas you need zoning or people fill fuck each other over constantly and run the area into the ground with poor building choices. We tried it without zoning and we got shitty houses that lowered the value of everyone around them or flooded the area because nobody make them do water management.

Forcing home builders to do water management in higher population density areas or low/marshy areas is just smart. Not letting people build basements in the swamp is just smart.

As far as getting away from some of that you just have to build in less developed areas, you can't just cheat the population density problem and jam more houses together with less rules.