I think it’s rather because of scarcity: you can’t scale and automate land/prime-location land

Well you can scale it, which is why housing affordability is higher in many places where the cities are actually far denser than Australia. There are perverse incentives not to though, property prices don’t rise (which is what investors want) if you actually focus on increasing supply.

People are building houses with way more features, that last longer, have better thermoregulation, and just more comfortable to live in.

Same goes for TVs too. That’s clearly not the reason why house prices rose so drastically.