3 ms·

The data is completely unambiguous: housing prices are (and have been) rising much, much, much faster than wages.

trident5000 3y ago
The financial aspect of owing a home, as we know, is more complicated than wages and home prices. Theres also the debt aspect and juxtaposed interest rate. In any case, the home ownership hasnt budged much in over 50 years. People just like to complain like they always have.
anovikov 3y ago
Well, this is simply not the case. Inflation adjusted housing prices per square foot has been flat for the last 50 years with slight fluctuations. Houses increased in footage, so inflation adjusted house prices have been flat vs wages (that grew). Perception of things being different is simply because everyone and their dog is trying to fit into the few most attractive areas where prices have indeed skyrocketed. U.S. is by far the cheapest in housing prices vs salaries of all developed countries and nearly the cheapest of all large countries in the world. 5th cheapest to be precise, those 4 above are oil petrocracies plus South Africa, that's fucked in so many ways it doesn't need to be discussed.
- jonahrd 3y ago
  Urbanisation is a trend across the entire globe for many more reasons than just wanting to live in a few attractive areas. And it's absolutely necessary for us to urbanize instead of the wasteful way we use our land, in order to avoid the impending climate, biodiversity, and energy crises. Anyway --- with this square footage argument. End of the day, I'm still priced out of a house, whether it'd be a big one or a small one. I don't really care about the price per square footage, I care about the ability to get a roof over my head. Edit: Actually, can you provide sources for this? From what I can find, home prices have been anything but flat, even adjusting for inflation: https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/ https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/ I have a hard time believing that in ~12 years we grew the entire housing stock square footage by 33% I also found some data that strongly disputes your claim that the US is the 5th lowest house price to salary ratio: https://www.statista.com/statistics/237529/price-to-income-ratio-of-housing-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/237529/price-to-income-r..., in fact it seems to be comfortably in the top 10 _highest_
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - anovikov 3y ago
    https://infogram.com/1pqdpn20vkmlelcq6qx7jzwz9pf00g9xnq5 https://infogram.com/1pqdpn20vkmlelcq6qx7jzwz9pf00g9xnq5 https://www.supermoney.com/inflation-adjusted-home-prices/ https://www.supermoney.com/inflation-adjusted-home-prices/ as for your link - easy, what's understood by "house" in Luxembourg is usually a "Soviet style apartment block". You need to be a billionaire to own a typical US-sized single family house there, these are passed down the generations from the people who were rich 100+ years ago (but granted, they are usually not built of shit). https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_count... This rating assumes same housing everywhere, not just "average house in a given country". In this case, easily U.S. can be among top 5, because being very rich, and as people say here in the same thread "everything apart from housing and healthcare is cheap anyway", a bigger chunk of expenses can go there. By another metric - "mortgage vs income" - U.S. is 6th best out of 106 large countries. 50% of the countries (that is, omitting 1/4 worst and 1/4 best) are between 1.7x and 5x worse. Housing is much more accessible in the U.S. than in just about any country, even if you correct by per capita GDP, that is, it is more accessible than the per capita GDP would imply.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      Did you by chance look at the charts in this? For example, the western part of the country's $/sqft going from $140 to $220 from 2012 to 2022 -- including inflation adjustment? Sorry but, "housing prices have only gone up by 20% in the last 10 years in areas that are hemorrhaging job opportunities and education!" is not a good counterargument.
    - jonahrd 3y ago
      I see. This article compares GDP vs housing prices, which isn't a surprise that US fares very well because the US is stellar at GDP growth. But GDP is _absolutely irrelevant_ to the average citizen's purchasing power / income.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Oh duh, why didn't I think about purchasing just a quarter of a unit? Just need to decide if I want a bathroom and a bedroom, or a bedroom and a kitchen, I suppose. Maybe a bathroom and kitchen is the optimal move and then I can sleep inside a kitchen cabinet and charge my next-room neighbors to use my kitchen.

The financial aspect of owing a home, as we know, is more complicated than wages and home prices. Theres also the debt aspect and juxtaposed interest rate. In any case, the home ownership hasnt budged much in over 50 years. People just like to complain like they always have.

anovikov 3y ago

Well, this is simply not the case. Inflation adjusted housing prices per square foot has been flat for the last 50 years with slight fluctuations. Houses increased in footage, so inflation adjusted house prices have been flat vs wages (that grew). Perception of things being different is simply because everyone and their dog is trying to fit into the few most attractive areas where prices have indeed skyrocketed. U.S. is by far the cheapest in housing prices vs salaries of all developed countries and nearly the cheapest of all large countries in the world. 5th cheapest to be precise, those 4 above are oil petrocracies plus South Africa, that's fucked in so many ways it doesn't need to be discussed.

jonahrd 3y ago
Urbanisation is a trend across the entire globe for many more reasons than just wanting to live in a few attractive areas. And it's absolutely necessary for us to urbanize instead of the wasteful way we use our land, in order to avoid the impending climate, biodiversity, and energy crises. Anyway --- with this square footage argument. End of the day, I'm still priced out of a house, whether it'd be a big one or a small one. I don't really care about the price per square footage, I care about the ability to get a roof over my head. Edit: Actually, can you provide sources for this? From what I can find, home prices have been anything but flat, even adjusting for inflation: https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/ https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/ I have a hard time believing that in ~12 years we grew the entire housing stock square footage by 33% I also found some data that strongly disputes your claim that the US is the 5th lowest house price to salary ratio: https://www.statista.com/statistics/237529/price-to-income-ratio-of-housing-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/237529/price-to-income-r..., in fact it seems to be comfortably in the top 10 _highest_
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- anovikov 3y ago
  https://infogram.com/1pqdpn20vkmlelcq6qx7jzwz9pf00g9xnq5 https://infogram.com/1pqdpn20vkmlelcq6qx7jzwz9pf00g9xnq5 https://www.supermoney.com/inflation-adjusted-home-prices/ https://www.supermoney.com/inflation-adjusted-home-prices/ as for your link - easy, what's understood by "house" in Luxembourg is usually a "Soviet style apartment block". You need to be a billionaire to own a typical US-sized single family house there, these are passed down the generations from the people who were rich 100+ years ago (but granted, they are usually not built of shit). https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_count... This rating assumes same housing everywhere, not just "average house in a given country". In this case, easily U.S. can be among top 5, because being very rich, and as people say here in the same thread "everything apart from housing and healthcare is cheap anyway", a bigger chunk of expenses can go there. By another metric - "mortgage vs income" - U.S. is 6th best out of 106 large countries. 50% of the countries (that is, omitting 1/4 worst and 1/4 best) are between 1.7x and 5x worse. Housing is much more accessible in the U.S. than in just about any country, even if you correct by per capita GDP, that is, it is more accessible than the per capita GDP would imply.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    Did you by chance look at the charts in this? For example, the western part of the country's $/sqft going from $140 to $220 from 2012 to 2022 -- including inflation adjustment? Sorry but, "housing prices have only gone up by 20% in the last 10 years in areas that are hemorrhaging job opportunities and education!" is not a good counterargument.
  - jonahrd 3y ago
    I see. This article compares GDP vs housing prices, which isn't a surprise that US fares very well because the US is stellar at GDP growth. But GDP is _absolutely irrelevant_ to the average citizen's purchasing power / income.
ethanbond 3y ago
Oh duh, why didn't I think about purchasing just a quarter of a unit? Just need to decide if I want a bathroom and a bedroom, or a bedroom and a kitchen, I suppose. Maybe a bathroom and kitchen is the optimal move and then I can sleep inside a kitchen cabinet and charge my next-room neighbors to use my kitchen.