5 ms·
> the scale of what I've seen so far in Finland is nothing like what it is in the United States This is because US housing was already insanely cheap by compar
by pembrook 3y ago
> the scale of what I've seen so far in Finland is nothing like what it is in the United States
This is because US housing was already insanely cheap by comparison globally. Just as you say housing is cheap outside Helsinki...outside NYC/SF/LA, housing in the United States is even cheaper.
Even today, the average US house is 40% cheaper than the average Finnish house. [1] And US incomes are on average 25% higher. AND taxes are 15% lower on average in the US.
Meaning the price-to-net income ratio is almost 2X for Finnish real estate vs. US real estate.
[1] As of 2023, average price per sq meter in Finland is 2800 USD. Average price per sq meter in the US is 1800 USD.
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y agoHuh. Now those are interesting numbers. My memory tells me that's not what it felt like when I lived in the US. by your stats I'd have expected my US rent to have eaten closer to 15% than 30% of my take home pay, like it does here, at least if the rents were a competitive enough market to track closely with mortgages. But that's not what I remember ever happening, nor did I spend most of my life in major metros -- my adult working life was almost entirely in Madison, WI, which is about the size of my current Tampere. Rent ate up about 30% of my take home in both places. The apartment I currently rent is bigger than the apartment I rented back there as well, although it is a little older. I'd expect to have felt the pinch of such a vast price to net income ratio difference in my rent, at least a little bit. So... why haven't I? I have about as apples-to-apples a comparison as it is reasonable to make, right down to them both being heavy student towns.