I think that the headline is misleading here. I don't think that this is how the housing market is driven in these places. If I choose a random street in inner

I think that the headline is misleading here. I don't think that this is how the housing market is driven in these places. If I choose a random street in inner London (UK) then homes on that street are worth approximately £1 million. One way to buy one of those houses would be to have a deposit of around £100K, taxes of about 50K (very rough estimate), a mortgage of £900K, and an income of around 200K at a 4.5x multiplier. But I don't believe that the majority of purchases in that part of the market function in that fashion. Instead, full cash purchases or >50% deposit purchases are fairly common. The money comes from savings and investments, either inherited or via saving for tens of years, trading up from a smaller place or in a different area, homes bought decades earlier, etc.