Housing prices are very, very sticky. If housing demand is soft people tend to just hold real estate instead of selling. The only time you see housing fall a lo

Housing prices are very, very sticky. If housing demand is soft people tend to just hold real estate instead of selling. The only time you see housing fall a lot is when a whole region collapses economically like Detroit in the 1980s. The only way housing gets affordable again is if the entire rest of the economy inflates while housing stands still. That would probably require a combination of inflation and a building boom or inflation with high interest rates. Housing is the great millstone around the neck of the economy. Fundamentally it’s rooted in the fact that our society treats it as both a product and an investment. Housing cannot simultaneously be affordable and a good investment, placing its utility and its quality as an investment at odds and creating perverse incentives everywhere. It’s a horrifically bad system that is deeply entrenched and that tends to benefit older and wealthier people and so would be very hard to change. You can escape the worst of it by leaving high real estate cost traps like the West Coast and Boston/NYC. Telework makes this easier. If you do go to those places just go for a while to establish your career and then leave.