> For the price of a big 4 - 3 bedroom house in an mid income zip code in a moderate to low cost of living city in the US, I could buy a smallish 2-3 bedroom ap

> For the price of a big 4 - 3 bedroom house in an mid income zip code in a moderate to low cost of living city in the US, I could buy a smallish 2-3 bedroom apartment in my country's capital city, in a similarly nice area. I think this has to do with the high costs of capital cities, rather than comparisons across countries. European capitals for example, especially dense ones, have typically been very expensive - see London, Paris, and recently Berlin; the spread with other major cities in the same country is in the range 2/2.5x, or even more.