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Comment by eksemplar | Hacker News Reader

Sellers will always be greedy, the problem arise when buyers and lenders take risks.

In Denmark housing is way higher than it was before the crisis, but wages aren’t really up.

The market has now reached the point where the middle class can’t afford to buy a home near our biggest cities.

Of course it’s going to end poorly. Especially with the aging population. If we didn’t own an appartment in the central part of time that was bought at 30% lower than the current prices I’d honestly be shitting bricks.

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American here. Basically giving up on ever owning in a city that I want to live in.

Also terrified that if I ever did buy, the bottom would fall out on me. Most of the homes in my area are a few million even if they’re objectively garbage.

> Basically giving up on ever owning in a city that I want to live in.

I'm going to guess that "in a city that I want to live in" is a fairly short list. In most of the country, a few million gets you a palace.

You might consider re-evaluating where you want to live. Most of the rest of the country isn't horrible.

> I'm going to guess that "in a city that I want to live in" is a fairly short list. In most of the country, a few million gets you a palace.

In most by geographic area, sure, but most of the country by geographic area is sparsely populated because, to a rough approximation, no one wants to live there (at least, after accounting for work opportunity.) In urban centers that aren't going through collapse, it doesn't go nearly that far, though outside of Manhattan and San Francisco (even in the same metros) it'll still get you a pretty nice place.

Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Denver, even Chicago - are any of them that overheated? No one wants to live in those places? That seems a bit unrealistic.

Seattle, San Francisco/San Jose, NYC, maybe Los Angeles and San Diego are that overheated. But that's not even the majority of the population of large metro areas.

I mean, I get it if someone doesn't want to live in Boise or Omaha. But what's so bad about Denver?

I’ve actually lived in a decent number of those places. I prefer some of those overheated markets for my own personal reasons.

And it appears that a lot of people agree with you - that's why those markets are overheated.

But, well, if you want something different than what you've been getting, you're going to have to do something other that what you've been doing. I'd suggest that it might be worth re-thinking whether you really want to live in those places, at the price it's costing you. And if you do, then you do - it means that you're giving up what you want less (to own your own home) in order to get what you want more (to live in one of your chosen cities).

I’ve thought about it a lot, thanks. I’ve also moved around a lot to test my theories out IRL.

Well, owning your own house won't make up for being miserable, if it comes to that.

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