Observation

Three houses up from mine (here in Germany)....they are wrapping up a new house construction job. 

There on this corner...in the late 1960s...was a three-bedroom place (two story) with a car-garage, basement, etc.  It was more than enough for a family of four to five members.

At some point in the early 1990s....it sold to another family with two kids. The kids eventually grew up. 

If you go around this particular region (Wiesbaden), property prices have escalated big-time.  There's virtually no way that a 30-year old guy will be able to buy some house without a lot of money put down. 

So the parents in this case decided that they'd take the corner lot that they had, with the two kids fully grown and now having families....and tore down the old house to build a three-family house instead. I would make a guess in this village of 500 structures...there's probably two or three events like this every year now where the old structure simply isn't big enough and it's entirely torn down with a new house built to meet the current needs.

I won't say it's a big trend, but it's amazing at the value on land itself....within a driving distance of an urbanized area.