I get what you are saying.... I wanted a mountain view with a house on at least an acre of land with a creek. Looking for our TN mountain home they were way over priced when I would find one I liked it would be snapped up way more than we wanted to spend. No choices with a mountain view we could afford.
Ended up in TN with a house that is remodeled no mountain view no land just a yard have to drive a few minutes to see my mountain view and no creek on the property. We did get a neighborhood rooster that is gorgeous and frequents our yard regularly and I am still building my raised beds for garden in the yard. The house does have a new roof and is quite nice as I would not give on a price we wanted to spend and now our housing costs are less than half what they were in Florida. I am still accumulating money and still watching the houses go up in price which is crazy but we are in cooler weather and we are in TN. I can drive to Gatlinburg in less time than living in Florida and can see my mountains in less than 15 minutes....so I will take this all as a win.... But yes there is a housing shortage....
And you are in a rural location. It's much worse inside of the big cities of TN...I'm in Nashville...much much worse here and multiple times more expensive. Finding an apartment is difficult. We have 80+ people moving here each day.
Residential construction is done by the lowest common denominator of the construction world. These are the guys unfit to do commercial/industrial construction...ones that usually have chemical dependant issues to where they can't show up to work on time or sober. The least skilled or knowledgeable. Also illegal immigrants flourish in this trade as they don't have to have papers to work. So English is not their primary language.
Most framing is done in a factory anymore. A jig is loaded and nail gunned together and trucked out to a preformed foundation of some kind.
Stick construction is almost a thing of the past.
Then there's a huge variety in the types of materials used to build a house lately. Heavy wall rigid copper plumbing is almost never used anymore. Pex or cpvc is the material of choice. Thin-walled copper is overpriced and sold as if it's heavy walled copper. Pex is good...but mice can't eat it fast enough and the connections are notorious for going bad.
Then the wiring? Codes are extreme for this area. So your house won't burn down...but don't expect plugs to be convenient or that you can do extra wiring for speakers, computer controls, cameras, or something else easily anymore. So make sure that you have it installed when your home is built.
Today's homes focus on the trim...nice bathrooms and kitchens and outside trim... otherwise they are fairly well neglected.
But that's what can make a home really good...the bones of the house.
Great wiring, great plumbing, good foundation, and good framing. Everything else is cosmetics.
(Even the garbage disposal)
Every house needs maintenance...lots and lots of it. Just like they need cleaning and the lawn mowed.
"Bubba" has done some remodeling everywhere... hasn't thought through any of it. So fixing what Bubba did is sometimes a nightmare. And you want to cry over the loss of poorly used/installed expensive materials that just ended up wasting them.