No, your US numbers are way way off. 1. Just doing a back of the envelope calculation will show your $15K per sq-m means that a tiny house the size of a small

No, your US numbers are way way off. 1. Just doing a back of the envelope calculation will show your $15K per sq-m means that a tiny house the size of a small apartment (~ 100 sq-m/ 1000 sq-ft) is going to cost $1.5 Million. The average house in the US is over 200 sq-m (~2000 sq-feet) [1]. You are trying to tell us that an average house in the US costs over 3 million USD? Sorry, that makes zero sense. That $15K number is what the top 0.1% pays in Manhattan overlooking central park. 2. Since you gave a China average, for a realistic comparison lets look the medians in various cities [2]. Chicago median houses are at $1700 per sq-m. Chicago is probably in the top 25% of cities in the US from price of real estate and it is as expensive as average of China across all the cities. BTW, if you did the ranking of various cities in China like the guys in [2] have done you will end up with a list similar if not more expensive (Shanghai, Beijing, HK at top with prices much higher than the $1700 per sq-m you have listed). If we did the same averaging across the US pretty sure the average house price will drop much below $1700 per sq-m. 3. The US GDP per capita is nine times China on a nominal basis and at least 6 times on Purchasing price parity basis. So if the house prices in China are similar or more than the ones in the US how will the Chinese be able to pay for these houses. People in the US are barely able to make their payments. Even accounting for the fact that houses in China are smaller, they are definitely not 6-9 times smaller. 4. Where do you think the wealthy and elite Chinese are buying properties? Hint: not china. As to your second point, I believe I answered that question. It is not a matter of what someone needs, it is a question of being able to afford a house at a given price. [1] http://www.census.gov/const/C25Ann/sftotalmedavgsqft.pdf http://www.census.gov/const/C25Ann/sftotalmedavgsqft.pdf [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/us-city-real-estate-price-chart-2014-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/us-city-real-estate-price-cha...