It's because the price of the average house is due to the cost of urban/suburban land - which is scarce and therefore tracks affordability (i.e. rises steeply with median incomes, population growth and especially falling mortgage rates).
Meanwhile the price of multi-million dream homes are (a) often dominated by building costs which rise slower than incomes (b) don't rise due to falling mortgage rates as the NFL player/movie star/exiting startup founder pays in cash rather than over a 30yr mortgage term.
> and I've found that usually if something doesn't make sense to me - it is because it is misrepresented
That is a statement full of hubris. You might find that if something doesn't make sense, you might just not be in possession of all the relevant information. (In this case, the trajectory of mortgage rates and their effect on affordability of homes, demographics and population growth in a metro area, income growth and wealth distribution.)