“I’ve had a few houses built and never has the cost of labor gone down.”
Probably because of what’s being built these days. 40 years ago, houses required MUCH LESS labor than today, because they were smaller and didn’t have nearly the amount of fancy crap that they do now...such as wood/tile flooring (just one example).
As to Illegals, I actually did support them decades ago when they were busting up the unions (who I still despise more than even Illegals)...but that was only because it never occurred to me that they’d have kids and repopulate the country. So my bad, back then.
The last house I had built was constructed on my own lakefront lot in 2005. Did my due diligence on the contractor, multiple bids from different contractors and didn’t go with the absolute cheapest. He came highly recommended, beautiful houses he’d built, glowing recommendations from owners. He turned out to be a nightmare, I don’t know what happened, drugs? Substitution of inferior materials that had been specified in the contract, foundation was to have been poured and formed concrete but he built it cinderblock, I had to hire an attorney. And, he used illegals so green they couldn’t understand a word of English. I’ll not be building another house anytime soon, it was not a good experience. Beautiful place though, ended up having to sell it due to the crash in 2008, made money on it. Would have made considerably more had I sold it a year earlier, though.