Has anyone else paid attention to Housing prices? Wow

We have a neighbor beside us who works for a quality custom home builder. She is in the admin end of things. When prices started to rise we met with the company to discuss renovating ours vs buying land and building new. This is approx 2 years ago when we met. They could build us one for approx $350/sq ft that includes everything( permits/applications etc). The land purchase isnt included in that price. Now vacant land is near extinct and apparently the house builder isnt touching anything for under $500k.