Home automation exists and is cheap. There's a huge niche industry built around it. The problem is that people don't actually want it as much as they say they do. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
I think they are still a bit too expensive for people. You can either get a whole system for several dozen kUSD, or single elements (e.g. smart outlets) for ~$100 each. The former is a significant expense people might not want to pay at once when buying homes, and the latter is a bit too expensive to buy one by one, because you require to have at least few of those devices before the system starts to get useful.
It's not nearly that expensive, though. A light socket is in the neighborhood of $15. A wall socket is less than $25. A transceiver is $30. For just over $100 you can get the controlling software, two wall switches, two light sockets, and a transceiver.
That's not the point, and there are units which address those concerns. The point is, home automation is not "right around the corner", it's here today and it doesn't take a millionaire to have a smart home. The sticking point is not technology nor is it money, it's that people have realized they don't really want that.
