Desirable land is not just finite, it's shrinking in area, due to ongoing fossil-fueled global warming. For example, many people who were planning on retiring to the bucolic Sierra foothills in California have changed plans since that whole region is now a major fire risk zone (much more so than it was 40 years ago).

https://www.deseret.com/2022/2/11/22928243/stanford-universi...

> "Rao and other researchers looked at the “vapor pressure deficit,” which is an indicator of how much moisture the air can suck out of soil and plants, across the region. Vapor pressure deficit has increased over the past 40 years across most of the American West, largely because warmer air can hold more water."

Likewise, zones categorized as having major flood risks are expanding:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/29/climate/hidde...

And “desirable” is a fairly dynamic thing with really unequal outcomes. The people who are best able to afford it (yes the gentry, of gentrification) have shifted considerably in their preferences in the past 20 years or so, from large suburban properties to much more dense urban centers or at least close/quickly accessible proximity to them. Scarcity of actual space to develop anything increases as population density does too. Some of this desirability has shifted back since the pandemic, but I don’t think it’ll be enough to negate the non-linear price inflation that’s happened and still is. Major and medium sized cities are just growing faster than the land and policy incentives can keep up with, especially relative to overall population growth.

Detroit used to be highly desirable land.

This is a very interesting point. Economics surely plays a factor in the price of real estate, as does climate as suggested by the other comments. Here is a link to the change in house prices in all 50 states. It is not at all uniform:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/06/27/how...