Leaving aside the value of land which is a whole other can of worms - how much time do you think building said house would take if you first had to gather the raw materials?
There’s a lot more labour involved in building a house than that of the construction worker.
Yep, you’re right. But the example I gave above is a symptom that something is broken. Many decades ago, in many countries within the Western hemisphere, a middle class worker with NO university at all was able to buy a home in only 10 years, whilst feeding a family of 4. Nowadays we reached the situation where some cities in the world are renting capsules for individuals: in L.A., for instance, there are renting capsules for living at a monthly price of $750 (check the video about it).
Take in mind that the video above was published in 2019, the capsules price are very likely higher now. Bart Simpson’s tree house was bigger and healthier than that. I’m not an economist, but I think the proof that buying homes can be much easier is that it was already done in the past.
You’re not wrong, but a lot of it is the fact that everyone wants to live in a few big cities where all the fun stuff is. Nearly 20 million people live in the vicinity of LA. NYC metropolitan area is over 20 million and the 5 boroughs themselves have over 8 million people. London is 9 million for the city proper.
If you live in bumfuck, nowhere… Prices are way different. Still worse than “many decades ago”, but nowhere near as bad as in the big cities.
Yeah, I live in a country where the median pre-tax income is a bit below 2k EUR, and I moved to a small town because my childhood home is here and after my ex-wife fucked up my finances, this is the one place where I don’t have to pay rent and have a garden where my toddler can comfortably run around and play (with me watching of course)
Renting an apartment nice enough for a single person would be like 230 EUR a month here. For a family, maybe 300. Less than half of what it is in the “cities” in this country, but I’m an hour away from the two or three bigger ones and they’re not even that big. Take a big country like the US and you have much more drastic differences. Manhattan vs Queens is already a major difference, but try Manhattan vs some random small town in upstate NY that isn’t near the great lakes or anything else spectacular. You’re bound to have at LEAST a 10x difference in price per square foot, but it could be like 20-30x by now.
Universal WFH for office workers that don’t have a good reason to be in the office would do so much for housing affordability, it’s not even funny. Because so many people would just leave the big cities for small towns or even literal forest cabins as long as they can get internet access somehow.
Yep, here where I live there’s too much difference as well, although the prices you’re mentioning sound significantly lower than here were I do. And, by the way, sorry about what happened with your ex-wife 😟
Leaving aside the value of land which is a whole other can of worms - how much time do you think building said house would take if you first had to gather the raw materials?
There’s a lot more labour involved in building a house than that of the construction worker.
Yep, you’re right. But the example I gave above is a symptom that something is broken. Many decades ago, in many countries within the Western hemisphere, a middle class worker with NO university at all was able to buy a home in only 10 years, whilst feeding a family of 4. Nowadays we reached the situation where some cities in the world are renting capsules for individuals: in L.A., for instance, there are renting capsules for living at a monthly price of $750 (check the video about it).
Take in mind that the video above was published in 2019, the capsules price are very likely higher now. Bart Simpson’s tree house was bigger and healthier than that. I’m not an economist, but I think the proof that buying homes can be much easier is that it was already done in the past.
You’re not wrong, but a lot of it is the fact that everyone wants to live in a few big cities where all the fun stuff is. Nearly 20 million people live in the vicinity of LA. NYC metropolitan area is over 20 million and the 5 boroughs themselves have over 8 million people. London is 9 million for the city proper.
If you live in bumfuck, nowhere… Prices are way different. Still worse than “many decades ago”, but nowhere near as bad as in the big cities.
Good point! 😮
Yeah, I live in a country where the median pre-tax income is a bit below 2k EUR, and I moved to a small town because my childhood home is here and after my ex-wife fucked up my finances, this is the one place where I don’t have to pay rent and have a garden where my toddler can comfortably run around and play (with me watching of course)
Renting an apartment nice enough for a single person would be like 230 EUR a month here. For a family, maybe 300. Less than half of what it is in the “cities” in this country, but I’m an hour away from the two or three bigger ones and they’re not even that big. Take a big country like the US and you have much more drastic differences. Manhattan vs Queens is already a major difference, but try Manhattan vs some random small town in upstate NY that isn’t near the great lakes or anything else spectacular. You’re bound to have at LEAST a 10x difference in price per square foot, but it could be like 20-30x by now.
Universal WFH for office workers that don’t have a good reason to be in the office would do so much for housing affordability, it’s not even funny. Because so many people would just leave the big cities for small towns or even literal forest cabins as long as they can get internet access somehow.
Yep, here where I live there’s too much difference as well, although the prices you’re mentioning sound significantly lower than here were I do. And, by the way, sorry about what happened with your ex-wife 😟