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Desirable cities in Europe also have the same “housing affordability crisis”, so I’m not sure I buy your hypothesis.

• xyzzyz 5y ago
  They don't have the same affordability crisis. It's actually much worse in Europe. Prices are as high as they are in US, but people make even less, and pay higher taxes. Go to https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/region_rankings_current.jsp?region=150 https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/region_rankings_c... and check out some European cities you know by name. I recommend looking at the "Mortgage as Percentage of Income" metric: Mortgage as Percentage of Income is a ratio of the actual monthly cost of the mortgage to take-home family income (lower is better). Average monthly salary is used to estimate family income. It assumes 100% mortgage is taken on 20 years for the house(or apt) of 90 square meters which price per square meter is the average of price in the city center and outside of city center. 90 square meters is around 1000 square feet. In San Francisco, that's 50%. Sounds bad, huh? Well, it's 70% in Madrid, 92% in London and Munich, 101% in Rome, and 117% in Paris, and these are not even the worst: Kiev, Moscow, Minsk, Krakow or Dubrovnik are much worse than that. Maybe it's better in 2nd tier cities? Well, in some (e.g. 31% in Antwerp or 37% in Aarhus), but not in most: 115% in Brno, 93% in Zagreb, or 61% in Lyon. Back to US: San Francisco 50% is basically as bad as it gets in US, outside of NYC (where it's 66%). Most places in US are in 20-30%s. You think Seattle or Denver are not affordable? Well, the mortgage-to-income ratio there is only around 27%. That's cheaper than basically any major European city. So yeah, compared to most of European cities, San Francisco houses are a steal.