They want to buy mom & dad’s third house as their first. In 1985, our $68k first house was 1244 square feet. We moved up as the family grew. 38 years later we downsized from 4160 square feet to 2230 square feet after all the kids left. New homes now aren’t starter homes from the past. According to Google, the average cost per square foot for a new Virginia home is $155. California is 3 time the VA cost. Round the VA up to $200 and my starter home would cost $250,000 today.
Builders need to build smaller starter homes.
Only by understanding of building costs by almost all (some people are incurably stupid) prospective buyers will housing prices be reasonable.
Reasonable doesn’t mean affordable. Wonderfully temperate LA will be ‘unaffordable’ to most American citizens probably as long as there is a thing that could be called American civilization.