Building a huge layout doesn’t have to be the sole domain of music moguls. Yes I work in the same industry but have nowhere near that kind of income but I’m still building an insane layout, a scale model of Ipswich. I live in a modest rented terraced house (albeit with a reasonably large garage) and now have three large (!) layouts and three small ones.
Ipswich is built with no compression at all, the only major alteration is to straighten it slightly so that it all fits on a 4ft width straight set of boards. As someone said above, this does entail hand building the points to get them correct.
It all comes down to choices, I live alone (edit: that's actually not true, I share the space with three gorgeous felines!), I don’t drink very often, I have no children, and my house is pretty much a workshop!
Andi