Because home prices are tracked so closely, sited widely, and used as a barometer of economic success and political success.

But yeah I think that's weird and destructive. Wouldn't it be better to prominently track and celebrate how much new housing is built?

OTOH, many people have all or most of their net-worth tied up in their home price. So even though NOTHING CHANGES when that price goes up or down, it has a psychological affect on them, who vote a lot.

HOAs are even worse than county & state governments when it comes to building a house. Many HOAs have building codes which include a minimum square footage. Some HOA regulations require over a 1000 sq ft livable footprint (garages don't count). The problem is HOAs have an incentive to raise property value, which makes it far more expensive for people to build a home to live in. HOAs are incentivized to increase property value of the neighborhood & large houses increase property value.

Small plots of land are dominated by HOAs. Finding small plots of "unregulated" (no HOA) land requires one to live very far from a city & decent grocery stores.

I'm not a big fan of the red tape of regulation & how regulations can be abused by large capital, but in the case of housing, HOAs are a bigger problem. Of course, there are also municipal regulations which require small plots of land to be more tightly regulated re: housing.