5,000$ dollars! Do you mean to tell me that most people do not have any spare space on their electric panel for an extra 220v plug? I didn’t but that’s because my house was owned by cheapstakes who saved 100$ by installing a slightly smaller panel that few electricians I talked to had ever seen. That can’t be most people?!

Sadly it's fairly common in the Northeast as far as I could tell while househunting in the 2010s and 2020s

Places with natural gas heating/stove are more likely to run into the issue because the builders never planned for any of the 'important' appliances to need 240V plugs. My new (old) house had exactly that problem once I started looking at replacing some older gas appliances.