> Having a child is extremely expensive if you are an urban professional, because prices of real estate have skyrocketed to insane, unprecedented heights. This

> Having a child is extremely expensive if you are an urban professional, because prices of real estate have skyrocketed to insane, unprecedented heights. This has also happened in the US, even in what would be considered secondary cities like the one I live in. I have seen my house triple in value in 8 years. (My definition of a secondary city are those that are large cities that are not LA, San Francisco, NYC. For example: Salt Lake City, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Austin). Part of the issue is the percentage of population that lives in cities is higher than at any point in the past so competition for housing is fierce, and seemingly always increasing. I was hopeful that with folks being able to work from home due to the pandemic we might actually see a reversal of this, unfortunately that didn't really happen, although maybe it will require 5-10 years to really take hold and change buying patterns. I also think raising the interest rate is long overdue, the interest rate was finally raising a little bit until the pandemic hit and was slashed to effectively 0 again. A rising interest rate would likely also lower housing prices, the problem though is that there are likely a number of companies servicing lots of debt that if the interest rate were to rise would be in trouble.