If there was a glut of housing developers would quickly exist the business or go bankrupt. It’s either feast or famine for them, and the 2008 crash is why it took so long to ramp back up a decade later (talent pipeline for people who build homes stalled big time).

Again: I know builders.

The size of the home is not a structural rule of the building industry, and is not universal or permanent. Just like any business, it's something builders decide based on who their market is and what they think they'll buy.

The described strategy might be what you're seeing in your area and might be the only thing that makes sense to your own tastes, but there are plenty of cities and counties where the pressing demand from buyers is for other things. In trend-leading communities, demand has been growing for years for denser housing with immediate access to retail and commerce; for efficient homes with low utility costs or green considerations; for small houses, condos, and townhouses that are well-appointed but accessibly priced and low-maintenance, etc and this is what builders have been building when they've been able to get cleared to build at all.

Builders build bespoke one off things for crazy people. Developers build bulk housing to try and make a profit, and they maximize FAR.

The options are not limited to {"bespoke custom house", "one size for all"}.

These ones from this builder vary from 80-320 square metres (~10 square feet per square meter): https://www.heinzvonheiden.de/hausfinder

It would be hilarious if the famously choice-filled capitalist USA has a building industry limited to Cold War DDR "commie block" identikit construction.

In the US, price per square foot is an important metric for appraisal. If the appraiser puts too low a price on the house, the buyer can't get a loan. Therefore if you are building in the US to sell the house, then you will maximize the square feet to maximize the appraised value.

In addition, it is relatively rare in the US for an individual owner to commission a custom house to be built. Particularly in the more populated areas, it is more overhead to build one house vs several houses, so people buying new houses are typically buying a new house in a development with mostly cosmetic differences as their only choices.

The number of buyers able to obtain a loan increases if the home’s price is lower.

Increasing a home’s price reduces the number of potential buyers.

The reason to build a more expensive home is to be able to sell for a higher price. But if the population of buyers in a location cannot afford to pay more, then a builder would be stupid to build the most expensive home they can, because insufficient people will be able to afford it. Hence smaller (cheaper) homes get built in some places, and bigger homes in other places.

Exactly, and there is plenty of unmet demand from people who can afford high prices. It makes sense to build the most profitable thing you can sell.

> In the US, price per square foot is an important metric for appraisal. If the appraiser puts too low a price on the house, the buyer can't get a loan. Therefore if you are building in the US to sell the house, then you will maximize the square feet to maximize the appraised value.

Something in that paragraph doesn't add up. 500 sqft/$500k property is $1k/sqft, a 750 sqft property needs to be valued at at least $750k to be the same price per unit area; bigger is not sufficient for more per unit area — my expectation would be that cost is sublinear with area for most residential units due to various fixed costs such as (an assumption on my part) utility connection fees and architecture fees.

Mid scale development, entire districts at a time, I'd expect that to be linear with regard to area (so the derivative, cost per square foot, is constant); Very large scale, an entire city at once, that I'd expect the derivative of cost with respect to area to increase as size increases, due to the expectation that infrastructure becomes a dominant cost.

On a national level, the trends are that home size is increasing and lot size is decreasing. Sure there will be some local variances, and it is driven by what the market will support, but it's still the general trend.

In my view, it's also the aspect ratio of the lots. Most suburban lots are fairly close to square. That leaves wide side yards that are just wasted space. Who ever really does anything in their side yard?

Lots should be narrower. You could get more houses on a block, and they'd could all still have a usable front and back yard. In fact I'd allow them to be built closer to the street, because nobody really uses their front yard either. A nice backyard is something most people would use and enjoy.

Wide side yards are moats to keep you away from your neighbors. This is widely seen as a feature, not a bug.

"Not meeting your neighbors" works even better in a high rise, and that is tightly packed. :)

Not really, when you can hear every breath they take through the walls.

For noise reasons and to prevent spread of fire

That’s basically what you do with town homes. You need to obey minimum setbacks for fire reasons, but otherwise no yards.

Front gardens are a benefit to everyone in the neighbourhood, maintained at cost to the owner. They are an anti-SUV, in a way.

I could even support tax benefits for maintaining green space in the public view. The alternative (I saw this the UK) is that people turn their front garden into parking or expand their building towards the street.

Grassy front yards are a complete waste of space and water. Kids don't play on them. The person who uses a front yard to grow food is pretty rare.

At the end of the day, too, we have a housing crisis, not a front-yard crisis.

Lawns are bad but greenery is good.

We can recognize the need to not recreate Kowloon in the context of a housing shortage.

It's more likely that a man will jump to the moon than a North American municipality is to recreate a Kowloon.