Total population means less than growth rate. The country may be sparsely populated but construction is the main bottleneck. It’s hard to spit out hundreds of high rises quickly enough.
Construction is the bottleneck because nothing ever gets approved, and when it does it takes years, and nobody who makes decisions is incentivized to fix this. It's not primarily because we can't physically build fast enough (although COVID has made this more notable lately, that's fair). The incentives for this situation get worse with an aging population because we lose working age people who can work construction.
