An extraordinarily long time to get warm/hot water to one or more faucets in standard one family homes is often caused by failing back flow preventers in old thermostatic shower valves.
Very easily to be checked if those valves do have internal shut off valves - sometimes only to be seen and accessible after removing the trim or casing.
Another possibility would be to close the cold water line downstream of the connection/branching to the warm water line (boiler etc.), if possible.
A similar test option is to open many cold water valves and to see if the waiting time is decreased at the concerned sink where only the warm water valve is open. The open cold water valves would reduce the (dynamic) pressure of the cold water net which would reduce or even stop the cold water flooding/invading the warm water net.
If a back flow preventer fails, cold water will be pressed into the warm water net, since the (dynamic) cold water net pressure is bigger than the (dynamic) pressure of the warm water net, since warm water tubes do collect more limestone coatings which reduces the effective tube diameter.
With the cold water line closed, the warm water can't be mixed any more with cold water before leaving the faucets.
A recirculation line would not much help in that case,
unless that one story ranch house was made for a huge family.
F.e., 15meter distance from boiler to faucet should take less then
10-20 seconds to get warm water, if the (uninsulated?) line is not used for many hours and if no micro or tube-in-tube circulation is present.
With micro circulation (which is sometimes intended as simple alternative to a recirculation system), that time will be even shorter.
Those back flow preventers are prone to fail in thermostatic shower valves. Sometimes dirt, metal rust parts or limestone keep the back flow preventer open, sometimes the thin diaphragma is torn or has holes.
Anyway, recirculation lines should be avoided where possible.
The energy losses of a recirculation system could be reduced by using timers for the recirculation pump, but still are often underestimated.
A second reason is the hygienic aspect - legionellas and other bacterias are more likely to settle in systems with recirculation, especially in "plastic" pipes. Copper is antibacterial to some extent.
A 3rd reason to avoid recirculation is the problem of corrosion in metal pipes, which can be increased by the recirculating tiny metal bits/ions.
Are the warm lines insulated?
Warm water pipes/tubes should be insulated with a thickness of at least 3 times the diameter.