This is the crux. Houses used to be built to be lived in, so ornamentation added value. Now they are commodities to be traded and sold, and variation makes a portfolio harder to manage/less uniform.
When and where was this a common thing?
I've lived and owned houses built from the 1750s to the 1960s in England and Norway and none of them have much in the way of ornamentation.
> Houses used to be built to be lived in
Of course and that's one reason why most didn't have a lot of ornamentation, the money would be spent on necessary functionality first.
Perhaps I'm just not wealthy enough.
> so ornamentation added value.
When and where was this a common thing?
Large urban buildings? I recently-ish randomly watched this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBOXF-FION4 "Why Everything We Build is Flat" i.e. how availability of caulk contributed to less beautiful houses (in urban settings at the least).