Europe

Let me give you an example of how pathetic things are: there aren't many houses however there's a lot of space to build but building is expensive because you've to get a bunch of licenses and fulfill a lot of requirements.

One of those is you've to submit a project for a gas boiler and stove even if you don't plan to install and use those. Even more ridiculous, if the place where you're building doesn't have the public infrastructure to deliver natural gas to you then you're still required to deliver. A project like this may add 10-20k to your total cost for no reason and without it you won't be allowed to build the house.

10k seems small on a house but if you start pilling bullshit requirements like that you'll reach 50k or more in useless stuff. You also have construction permits and whatnot.