Furthermore, to the degree that people spending too much for housing is a problem in some places (like the Bay Area), I'd also suggest that's far more a function of land costs than it is granite countertops.
Land definitely explains some of it, yea. But we definitely have inflated our expectations as well. The average home size in the U.S. today is roughly twice what it was in the 1950s.
I'm sure that's true but I'm also not sure that's entirely a bad thing. We may have opinions on what is reasonable but I'm fairly sure we don't think in general that living in tenements is a good thing.
