> "People are leveraging themselves to extreme (and unwise) levels just to afford the same house their parents comfortably bought with a single middle-class inc

> "People are leveraging themselves to extreme (and unwise) levels just to afford the same house their parents comfortably bought with a single middle-class income." The "same" house? Hardly. People are leveraging themselves to afford bigger houses than their parents had. According to the National Association of Home Builders [0], average new house size was 1400 sq ft in 1970 and 2700 sq ft in 2009. You can find similar data from the census bureau's American Housing Survey [1]. For example, only 16% of total residences in 1970 had 2 or more bathrooms; in 2011 about 50% of residences had 2+ bathrooms. I actually bought the same house as my parents [2]. Adjusting for inflation, it was essentially the same price in 2012 as it was in 1975 (within 2%, both as compared with CPI and comparing my dad's programmer salary at BigCo1 in 1975 to my wife's programmer salary at BigCo2 in 2009.) [0] http://www.infoplease.com/askeds/us-home-size.html http://www.infoplease.com/askeds/us-home-size.html [1] http://www.census.gov/housing/ahs/ http://www.census.gov/housing/ahs/ [2] We recently found a fully wheelchair-accessible condo for my parents. We bought their house for market value; they used the proceeds to buy the condo. While the house has aged 4 decades since they bought it, it's got a brand new kitchen and a bunch of other recent upgrades, so on the whole it's pretty comparable.