9 ms·

Cities Where Job Growth Is Outpacing New Homes

79 points by luu 7y ago

csunbird 7y ago
There is a housing problem in Berlin now, because there are a lot of tech workers are immigrating from India, Turkey, Russia and many other countries for work and the rents are over the roof.
- MatthiasP 7y ago
  The amount of tech workers migrating is minuscule compared to the number of unskilled migration coming from countries like Syria and Afghanistan to Berlin. That is where the demand shock on the housing market comes from.
  - durnygbur 7y ago
    You're both right. Correcting OP, desperate tech workers accepting being lowballed, hopping between temporary apartments each couple of months, being replaced in 2 years by someone even more desperate, hoping to get their feet in the door (into a place with minuscle payrises and impossible housing market). Ideal candidate is someone from outside of EU (or an EU country but troubled with decades of economic crisis) with a spouse and a child. Have fun you all, because I'm out of this freak place! > number of unskilled migration coming from countries like Syria and Afghanistan to Berlin These people cluser in the city districts ruled by Middle Eastern organized crime (if you ask Germans, no such phenomenon exists). There, market forces don't apply and housing market is hermetic to the outsiders - and it doesn't matter because you wouldn't want to live there.
    - mtrovo 7y ago
      I kind of disagree with this view over salaries. There’s a lot of rules to bring a skilled worker from outside of EU. One in particular deals with how low can your salary be, which if I remember correctly is around 45~50k. The main problem I see is with poor countries inside EU. I remember a Portuguese girl in my previous company with similar role and experience making 30k a year, she left when while complaining about salary they said they could offer a 10% raise which would be an amazing raise for her. Same situation on the current company, this time with a Hungarian guy.
      - csunbird 7y ago
        45-50k is not enough to make a good living in Berlin, when your rent and utilities (everything included) is around 1k to 1,250 EUR, which leaves you around 1k EUR to live by.
        dgellow 7y ago
        Is that a joke? With €45k+ in Berlin you have a pretty decent way of living, that’s higher than any median or average. And you can have good rent if you don’t live in trendy areas where prices are inflated.
        durnygbur 7y ago
        > With €45k+ in Berlin you have a pretty decent way of living Then cancel you rental contract, rent something new again and now... if not homeless (or stuck with airbnb)... re-estimate what the decent salary would be.
        dgellow 7y ago
        I’m in the process of moving right now (literally in a week), I’m quite aware of rent prices. Maybe we have a different definition of “decent” in this context.
        lnsru 7y ago
        So what when that’s higher than any median and average? It’a enough money to survive in today’s Berlin, but it’s far far away from anything decent! Started almost decade ago with these €45k in Lindau, 800€ rent, 400€ unavoidable expenses. Add some savings and an upkeep costs of a 7 years old car and it’s gone.
        NullPrefix 7y ago
        >7 years old car Mr. Big Shot
- yulaow 7y ago
  I am not sure about Berlin, but for example in Milan (Italy) there are nonsensic prices for homes (London level prices with salaries of about half of the half of what you get in London) and they are driven up just by the movement of other italians from other (poorer) regions, or even other close cities, looking for jobs. The main problem is that most high level - high skilled jobs are now in 2-3 of the biggest cities in Italy, and now everyone is trying to move there and so even more companies try to move their HQs there, and so on. I think a similar problem is happening also in others EU states.
  - durnygbur 7y ago
    Italian economy is so miserable and few opportunity hubs so competitive that most Italians in their 20s and 30s end up in Germany and UK. Meantime rich Europeans visit Italy each summer searching for dolce vita and forgetting that 60s and 70s are long time gone. What an absurd.
    - milquetoastaf 7y ago
      I uh don't think the 70s were the nicest time to visit Italy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_Lead_(Italy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_Lead_(Italy)
  - Bombthecat 7y ago
    Yeah, and I don't think it will stop anytime soon.. Some (myself included) call it the second industrialization.
- meerita 7y ago
  It is happening all around Europe. Rent control + increasing wealth of the economy is crowding areas and limiting to bid for new renting spaces.
  - collyw 7y ago
    Are places with rent control better or worse? The only city I am aware of with rent control in Europe is Stockholm. Apparently finding a flat there is a nightmare. Where I live there is no rent control and its still a nightmare trying to find somewhere central to rent for a decent price.
    - meerita 7y ago
      There is all kinds of rent control over all Europe. In Stockholm is a nightmare. I tell you, 20 years to get a flat. There are other forms of rent control, that affects more or less. The economist Juan Ramon Rallo studied this matter deeply and he states that the only solution is deregulate construction (more buildings, higher) and no rent control, so tenants can rent cheaply without so much requirements to get into a flat.
      - collyw 7y ago
        Ok, its true, there is some sort of rent control where I live, the inflation can only go up by the same as inflation - for the duration of the contract. But then one the contract is up they can charge what the market will let them. Contracts were 5 years, went down to 3, and are now back up to 5. At the end of our last 5 year contract the rent went up by around 45%. Bought a small place further out instead.
      - fastbeef 7y ago
        Playing the devils advocate, it's not 20 years to get a flat. It's 20 years to get a large, cheap, centrally located flat. You can get a firsthand contract for spatious 2 room apartment in Märsta for 14k a month right now.
        7y ago
- Wellshit 7y ago
  It's everywhere in Europe, not just Berlin. Some cities in Portugal have more than doubled the rents in the last 4 years.
baybal2 7y ago
I ask the honourable HN readers, how much are you into all that real estate talks? I feel that second to computer stuff, the biggest interest of the tech people is property market. Is it such a big concern even for so highly paid people?
- AllegedAlec 7y ago
  > Is it such a big concern even for so highly paid people? Yes. I get paid handsomely for my country and the actual experience I have. However, despite that, it's impossible for me to buy a house within 45 minutes travelling of my workplace, so I'm forced to spend about half my net incoming on rent.
  - swarnie_ 7y ago
    Similar situation to me. I now pay more for a room in a five person shared house then i paid for a 3 bed house to myself. The only difference is being located closer to London for the better career advancement/salary.
- linguae 7y ago
  It is for me. I work as a research engineer at a non-FAANG company in Silicon Valley and I have 4.5 years of industry experience largely in R&D environments. If I were in the Sacramento metro area then I could afford to purchase a detached single-family home in all but the most expensive neighborhoods. I would have a wide selection of safe neighborhoods to choose from with excellent public schools, beautiful parks, and other amenities. Unfortunately, in the Bay Area my options for purchasing a detached single-family house are limited. At my current salary, if I want to purchase a detached single-family home, I'd either need to buy it in exurbia (e.g., places like Tracy to the east or Hollister to the south) or in East Oakland, which is still struggling with crime. Both places are a long commute from my Silicon Valley office. If I want to purchase a place within an hour from my job such as the southern part of San Jose, I'd need a considerable salary boost. Places like Cupertino and Sunnyvale seem impossibly expensive to me. I've been thinking a lot about where I'd like to settle down. Silicon Valley has a wealth of specialized research scientist and research engineer positions, but I don't see myself ever being able to afford a house within an hour from Silicon Valley unless I join an early-stage startup that happens to be a wild success. On the flip side, there are plenty of places across the country, even within California, where homes are affordable with a low six-figure salary, but the problem is the types of jobs that I want tend to be restricted to tech hubs, which tend to have very high housing costs.
bb123 7y ago
Cities Where Job Growth Is Outpacing New Homes *(In the US)
chrisweekly 7y ago
Based on title alone, sounds like cities where remote work is going to play a prominent role.
- blisterpeanuts 7y ago
  Yes it's interesting that the SF area has such high demand for technology workers yet almost no space to actually house them (let alone all the down-and-out people living in parks & alleyways). Sounds like kind of a disconnect between the business community and the government as well as the geographic realities of a city crowded onto a little peninsula, albeit of course with many suburban towns nearby but very heavily developed already. I couldn't imagine being lured to the bay area for a job even for double my current salary (standard software engineer very low 6 figs). I have maybe $210K of equity in my current home; how much of a house is that going to get me there? I'd never afford a million dollar mortgage. Would have to be full time remote.
  - xienze 7y ago
    > I'd never afford a million dollar mortgage. Well if HN is to be believed, $350K of total compensation isn’t out of the ordinary for FAANG, so that would get you in a million dollar house. Never seems to occur to anyone that crazy high salaries might be driving crazy high housing prices, not the other way around, though...
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      >Never seems to occur to anyone that crazy high salaries might be driving crazy high housing prices It's the only logical conclusion. Married couples, each making well over $100k, competing with each other will obviously result in higher home prices, unless you increase the supply of the homes that those married couples desire. If you look at a map of recent home sale prices on Redfin or the real estate websites, you can easily see where all the doctors/programmers/business owners live in a town.
      - garyrichardson 7y ago
Grzegrzolka 7y ago
Same thing happens in Poland. There are only 4-5 rather small cities with good jobs + shitload of skilled and unskilled Ukrainian immigrants (like really, there are days when I walk through town and 80% people I pass by speak Ukrainian) + Airbnb craziness + no regulations + shitty politicians = it became impossible to rent or buy even small apartment if you are not highly skilled or not willing to share room with someone you don't know. It all happend in last 4-5 years. I was born in one of these towns (Krakow) and it just hurts me to see huge division in society, clearly there are lots of rich people that are getting richer every month, buying multiple houses and renting, and there are shitload of (some of them university educated) people living in tiny old Soviet era apartments (imagine whole family and dog in 400-450sqft). Actually many people don't even dream about own place. Both my parents and my grandparents were able to buy apartment without having any sort of education, today if I wasn't Software Dev I would be homeless. We are talking Poland here, can't imagine how much worse it must be in other actually real countries.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  Even in Warsaw, where there are many building projects, the prices are very high. As a dev I had to save for a bunch of years to afford it. (Calculated it to be more efficient and safer in terms of risk than mortgage.) Sellers indeed noticed that the prices exceeded what most can pay, even in Greater Warsaw.
- leemailll 7y ago
  Krakow is small? I think it is one of largest cities in Poland
  - frobozz 7y ago
    Krakow is the second or third most populous city in Poland. However, the population of the whole metropolitan area is ca 1.3 Million. [1] or 1.7 Million [2] At the larger estimate, that's about as big as Oxford or Slough, smaller than Swindon. At the smaller, High Wycombe or Grimsby [3], none of which would appear on a list of Big British Cities. It's about 38 in the list of EU Larger Urban Zones [4]. Seven German cities appear higher in that list. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larger_urban_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larger_urban_zone [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_Uni... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larger_urban_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larger_urban_zone
TrackerFF 7y ago
I live in such a city here in Norway. There are many reasons, but here are some: - Decades long centralizing policies, which have effectively removed gov / state jobs from more rural areas and districts, and centralized them to a select few larger towns. Lots of smaller towns and areas are dying, while everyone's emigrating to the same cities. - Explosion on college education. Our local University has a 10%-15% growth rate, every year. Students in turn need to live somewhere, and there aren't being built nearly enough student housing / dorms. - More tourism; We've had a boom in tourism, especially among Asian tourists. This has lead to expansions of hotels, and more people renting out their apartments etc. to airbnb - Other economic growth in private industries, which means more workers - Construction workers that need places to stay - we have thousands of construction workers coming here every year, none of them which own - or plan to own - housing themselves. When I moved here, rent was around $400 for a small studio apartment. 10 years later, the same studio apartment is rented out for $1200...it's grotesque. The lucky people are either those who's owned units since the 80s, or those that bought right after the last recession. I know so many people that have made hundreds of thousands, just because they bought at the right time - no renovations needed. Edit: Just to give an example; In the city where I now live, a decent house will cost you around $600k-$700k. A "starter" apartment will cost you minimum $180k-$200k. If you drive 1 hour away, the prices will be cut in half. If you move 1-2 hr flight time away, you'll probably pay 20% of those prices. And we have 15% down-payment here in Norway! Lots of young people will spend a solid 3-5 years just saving up for the down-payment. One "life-hack" among fresh grads is to simply move somewhere rural if you can get a relevant job, save aggressively for a couple of years, and then move back to the city.
glloydell 7y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this methodology seems flawed. Using building permits per 1000 residents only provides an accurate comparison metric if the density of the housing is the same. If the move is (as it seems to be) towards large multi-unit housing complexes, shouldn't we be looking at residential units created?

79 points by luu 7y ago

There is a housing problem in Berlin now, because there are a lot of tech workers are immigrating from India, Turkey, Russia and many other countries for work and the rents are over the roof.

MatthiasP 7y ago
The amount of tech workers migrating is minuscule compared to the number of unskilled migration coming from countries like Syria and Afghanistan to Berlin. That is where the demand shock on the housing market comes from.
- durnygbur 7y ago
  You're both right. Correcting OP, desperate tech workers accepting being lowballed, hopping between temporary apartments each couple of months, being replaced in 2 years by someone even more desperate, hoping to get their feet in the door (into a place with minuscle payrises and impossible housing market). Ideal candidate is someone from outside of EU (or an EU country but troubled with decades of economic crisis) with a spouse and a child. Have fun you all, because I'm out of this freak place! > number of unskilled migration coming from countries like Syria and Afghanistan to Berlin These people cluser in the city districts ruled by Middle Eastern organized crime (if you ask Germans, no such phenomenon exists). There, market forces don't apply and housing market is hermetic to the outsiders - and it doesn't matter because you wouldn't want to live there.
  - mtrovo 7y ago
    I kind of disagree with this view over salaries. There’s a lot of rules to bring a skilled worker from outside of EU. One in particular deals with how low can your salary be, which if I remember correctly is around 45~50k. The main problem I see is with poor countries inside EU. I remember a Portuguese girl in my previous company with similar role and experience making 30k a year, she left when while complaining about salary they said they could offer a 10% raise which would be an amazing raise for her. Same situation on the current company, this time with a Hungarian guy.
    - csunbird 7y ago
      45-50k is not enough to make a good living in Berlin, when your rent and utilities (everything included) is around 1k to 1,250 EUR, which leaves you around 1k EUR to live by.
      - dgellow 7y ago
        Is that a joke? With €45k+ in Berlin you have a pretty decent way of living, that’s higher than any median or average. And you can have good rent if you don’t live in trendy areas where prices are inflated.
        durnygbur 7y ago
        > With €45k+ in Berlin you have a pretty decent way of living Then cancel you rental contract, rent something new again and now... if not homeless (or stuck with airbnb)... re-estimate what the decent salary would be.
        dgellow 7y ago
        I’m in the process of moving right now (literally in a week), I’m quite aware of rent prices. Maybe we have a different definition of “decent” in this context.
        lnsru 7y ago
        So what when that’s higher than any median and average? It’a enough money to survive in today’s Berlin, but it’s far far away from anything decent! Started almost decade ago with these €45k in Lindau, 800€ rent, 400€ unavoidable expenses. Add some savings and an upkeep costs of a 7 years old car and it’s gone.
        NullPrefix 7y ago
        >7 years old car Mr. Big Shot
yulaow 7y ago
I am not sure about Berlin, but for example in Milan (Italy) there are nonsensic prices for homes (London level prices with salaries of about half of the half of what you get in London) and they are driven up just by the movement of other italians from other (poorer) regions, or even other close cities, looking for jobs. The main problem is that most high level - high skilled jobs are now in 2-3 of the biggest cities in Italy, and now everyone is trying to move there and so even more companies try to move their HQs there, and so on. I think a similar problem is happening also in others EU states.
- durnygbur 7y ago
  Italian economy is so miserable and few opportunity hubs so competitive that most Italians in their 20s and 30s end up in Germany and UK. Meantime rich Europeans visit Italy each summer searching for dolce vita and forgetting that 60s and 70s are long time gone. What an absurd.
  - milquetoastaf 7y ago
    I uh don't think the 70s were the nicest time to visit Italy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_Lead_(Italy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_Lead_(Italy)
- Bombthecat 7y ago
  Yeah, and I don't think it will stop anytime soon.. Some (myself included) call it the second industrialization.
meerita 7y ago
It is happening all around Europe. Rent control + increasing wealth of the economy is crowding areas and limiting to bid for new renting spaces.
- collyw 7y ago
  Are places with rent control better or worse? The only city I am aware of with rent control in Europe is Stockholm. Apparently finding a flat there is a nightmare. Where I live there is no rent control and its still a nightmare trying to find somewhere central to rent for a decent price.
  - meerita 7y ago
    There is all kinds of rent control over all Europe. In Stockholm is a nightmare. I tell you, 20 years to get a flat. There are other forms of rent control, that affects more or less. The economist Juan Ramon Rallo studied this matter deeply and he states that the only solution is deregulate construction (more buildings, higher) and no rent control, so tenants can rent cheaply without so much requirements to get into a flat.
    - collyw 7y ago
      Ok, its true, there is some sort of rent control where I live, the inflation can only go up by the same as inflation - for the duration of the contract. But then one the contract is up they can charge what the market will let them. Contracts were 5 years, went down to 3, and are now back up to 5. At the end of our last 5 year contract the rent went up by around 45%. Bought a small place further out instead.
    - fastbeef 7y ago
      Playing the devils advocate, it's not 20 years to get a flat. It's 20 years to get a large, cheap, centrally located flat. You can get a firsthand contract for spatious 2 room apartment in Märsta for 14k a month right now.
      - 7y ago
Wellshit 7y ago
It's everywhere in Europe, not just Berlin. Some cities in Portugal have more than doubled the rents in the last 4 years.

baybal2 7y ago

I ask the honourable HN readers, how much are you into all that real estate talks? I feel that second to computer stuff, the biggest interest of the tech people is property market. Is it such a big concern even for so highly paid people?

AllegedAlec 7y ago
> Is it such a big concern even for so highly paid people? Yes. I get paid handsomely for my country and the actual experience I have. However, despite that, it's impossible for me to buy a house within 45 minutes travelling of my workplace, so I'm forced to spend about half my net incoming on rent.
- swarnie_ 7y ago
  Similar situation to me. I now pay more for a room in a five person shared house then i paid for a 3 bed house to myself. The only difference is being located closer to London for the better career advancement/salary.
linguae 7y ago
It is for me. I work as a research engineer at a non-FAANG company in Silicon Valley and I have 4.5 years of industry experience largely in R&D environments. If I were in the Sacramento metro area then I could afford to purchase a detached single-family home in all but the most expensive neighborhoods. I would have a wide selection of safe neighborhoods to choose from with excellent public schools, beautiful parks, and other amenities. Unfortunately, in the Bay Area my options for purchasing a detached single-family house are limited. At my current salary, if I want to purchase a detached single-family home, I'd either need to buy it in exurbia (e.g., places like Tracy to the east or Hollister to the south) or in East Oakland, which is still struggling with crime. Both places are a long commute from my Silicon Valley office. If I want to purchase a place within an hour from my job such as the southern part of San Jose, I'd need a considerable salary boost. Places like Cupertino and Sunnyvale seem impossibly expensive to me. I've been thinking a lot about where I'd like to settle down. Silicon Valley has a wealth of specialized research scientist and research engineer positions, but I don't see myself ever being able to afford a house within an hour from Silicon Valley unless I join an early-stage startup that happens to be a wild success. On the flip side, there are plenty of places across the country, even within California, where homes are affordable with a low six-figure salary, but the problem is the types of jobs that I want tend to be restricted to tech hubs, which tend to have very high housing costs.

bb123 7y ago

Cities Where Job Growth Is Outpacing New Homes *(In the US)

chrisweekly 7y ago

Based on title alone, sounds like cities where remote work is going to play a prominent role.

blisterpeanuts 7y ago
Yes it's interesting that the SF area has such high demand for technology workers yet almost no space to actually house them (let alone all the down-and-out people living in parks & alleyways). Sounds like kind of a disconnect between the business community and the government as well as the geographic realities of a city crowded onto a little peninsula, albeit of course with many suburban towns nearby but very heavily developed already. I couldn't imagine being lured to the bay area for a job even for double my current salary (standard software engineer very low 6 figs). I have maybe $210K of equity in my current home; how much of a house is that going to get me there? I'd never afford a million dollar mortgage. Would have to be full time remote.
- xienze 7y ago
  > I'd never afford a million dollar mortgage. Well if HN is to be believed, $350K of total compensation isn’t out of the ordinary for FAANG, so that would get you in a million dollar house. Never seems to occur to anyone that crazy high salaries might be driving crazy high housing prices, not the other way around, though...
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    >Never seems to occur to anyone that crazy high salaries might be driving crazy high housing prices It's the only logical conclusion. Married couples, each making well over $100k, competing with each other will obviously result in higher home prices, unless you increase the supply of the homes that those married couples desire. If you look at a map of recent home sale prices on Redfin or the real estate websites, you can easily see where all the doctors/programmers/business owners live in a town.
    - garyrichardson 7y ago

Grzegrzolka 7y ago

Same thing happens in Poland. There are only 4-5 rather small cities with good jobs + shitload of skilled and unskilled Ukrainian immigrants (like really, there are days when I walk through town and 80% people I pass by speak Ukrainian) + Airbnb craziness + no regulations + shitty politicians = it became impossible to rent or buy even small apartment if you are not highly skilled or not willing to share room with someone you don't know. It all happend in last 4-5 years. I was born in one of these towns (Krakow) and it just hurts me to see huge division in society, clearly there are lots of rich people that are getting richer every month, buying multiple houses and renting, and there are shitload of (some of them university educated) people living in tiny old Soviet era apartments (imagine whole family and dog in 400-450sqft). Actually many people don't even dream about own place. Both my parents and my grandparents were able to buy apartment without having any sort of education, today if I wasn't Software Dev I would be homeless. We are talking Poland here, can't imagine how much worse it must be in other actually real countries.

AstralStorm 7y ago
Even in Warsaw, where there are many building projects, the prices are very high. As a dev I had to save for a bunch of years to afford it. (Calculated it to be more efficient and safer in terms of risk than mortgage.) Sellers indeed noticed that the prices exceeded what most can pay, even in Greater Warsaw.
leemailll 7y ago
Krakow is small? I think it is one of largest cities in Poland
- frobozz 7y ago
  Krakow is the second or third most populous city in Poland. However, the population of the whole metropolitan area is ca 1.3 Million. [1] or 1.7 Million [2] At the larger estimate, that's about as big as Oxford or Slough, smaller than Swindon. At the smaller, High Wycombe or Grimsby [3], none of which would appear on a list of Big British Cities. It's about 38 in the list of EU Larger Urban Zones [4]. Seven German cities appear higher in that list. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larger_urban_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larger_urban_zone [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_Uni... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larger_urban_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larger_urban_zone

TrackerFF 7y ago

I live in such a city here in Norway. There are many reasons, but here are some: - Decades long centralizing policies, which have effectively removed gov / state jobs from more rural areas and districts, and centralized them to a select few larger towns. Lots of smaller towns and areas are dying, while everyone's emigrating to the same cities. - Explosion on college education. Our local University has a 10%-15% growth rate, every year. Students in turn need to live somewhere, and there aren't being built nearly enough student housing / dorms. - More tourism; We've had a boom in tourism, especially among Asian tourists. This has lead to expansions of hotels, and more people renting out their apartments etc. to airbnb - Other economic growth in private industries, which means more workers - Construction workers that need places to stay - we have thousands of construction workers coming here every year, none of them which own - or plan to own - housing themselves. When I moved here, rent was around $400 for a small studio apartment. 10 years later, the same studio apartment is rented out for $1200...it's grotesque. The lucky people are either those who's owned units since the 80s, or those that bought right after the last recession. I know so many people that have made hundreds of thousands, just because they bought at the right time - no renovations needed. Edit: Just to give an example; In the city where I now live, a decent house will cost you around $600k-$700k. A "starter" apartment will cost you minimum $180k-$200k. If you drive 1 hour away, the prices will be cut in half. If you move 1-2 hr flight time away, you'll probably pay 20% of those prices. And we have 15% down-payment here in Norway! Lots of young people will spend a solid 3-5 years just saving up for the down-payment. One "life-hack" among fresh grads is to simply move somewhere rural if you can get a relevant job, save aggressively for a couple of years, and then move back to the city.

glloydell 7y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this methodology seems flawed. Using building permits per 1000 residents only provides an accurate comparison metric if the density of the housing is the same. If the move is (as it seems to be) towards large multi-unit housing complexes, shouldn't we be looking at residential units created?