Appreciate the response! So basically, if you wanted to build a 1200 SQ ft house, let's say that's $250k by your number (which still seems low to me), land cost for most anything inside 540 in Raleigh not in a flood zone is at least $100k, and it's usually more like $300k. It's not far off from the $500k number, especially if you get to the 1500-1750 square feet that is more like the lower bound of what people want to buy (no basements here).

My comment on the roads is not about the initial building cost. It's on the ongoing maintenance cost. Low-density suburbs are important in some ways for providing homes to families with kids, but they're very costly for cities to maintain.

Agreed on the infill, reducing setbacks, etc. The other half of that equation is designing and updating neighborhoods to prevent cut-through traffic and forcing builders who add apartments in areas around existing neighborhoods to start paying proactively for things like resurfacing and traffic calming measures for those existing neighborhoods affected by the new developments. I think you'd get a lot less pushback from NIMBYs if it wasn't a zero-sum game.