Related, a family member of mine lived in a VERY nice neighborhood, with some kind of strict historical codes, kind of like a town mandated HOA, no fighting it, period. Problem is most of the houses were from the 70s or earlier, and these days were too small, not enough bathrooms etc (Especially for the prices they were going for)....
Bottom line: people were putting on like 2,000 ft2 / $300k+ additions on 30-40 year old 1,200 ft2 houses. Of course they would have preferred to tear them down and start from scratch, but this was the best they could do to code. Served its intended purpose from a livability point of view, but looked silly from the outside.