It's actually way cheaper to simply pave a yard on a new construction house with gravel than to sod it and install an irrigation system, which is essentially required in the kinds of deserts I'm talking about.

I know if I were buying a new house today, one of which had several hundreds of dollars per month in required water costs to keep the lawn alive, and one of which did not, I'm going with the latter one every time. Especially because you know the lawn is going to die on the former anyway at some point in the future when more severe water restrictions come into play and watering your lawn is (rightfully) prohibited.