Or just not living in the regions where it's super expensive to buy a house... We just moved out of a small city with all services (hospital, groceries, sewers, water, cultural events...) and a house like OP is describing would have been super cheap, hell in a village 10 minutes away there was a project to complete that would have cost about 150k total (purchase + finishing the project) and that was a two floors house with a half acre lot...