In the US house size has been growing for decades and houses are priced by the square foot. That's what I was referring to on growing house cost. If average people couldn't borrow enough to buy 2500+ sq ft houses they wouldn't sell, and post WWII size houses like my grandparents' would still be built today. For comparison I grew up in a 1400 sq ft house built in the 1960s and it was plenty for four people.

With cars, the gap between my parents' early sixties VW Beetle which they bought new when my father was a blue collar mill worker, is surprisingly small. Only about $2000 in 2023 dollars between that and a modern base level Kia or Hyundai. If you can believe the old ads, mileage is only about 4 mpg better today.

Before you say "yeah, but a 2023 compact is so much better!", it is, but imagine if you built a vintage car today with modern longer lasting materials and better tires and brakes and crash safety and a catalytic converter for emissions, how cheap it would be and little it would cost? As little electronics and power accessories as possible so you would get better reliability and cheaper repairs, and the mileage would still be about the same.