I can't think of a single major economic center that has affordable housing now.
Vienna can be cheap to live in because a large percentage of the housing is the social/public kind.
And there is choice! I could live 15 min away from where I live and save 30% of my rent. But I love the place where I live! (and I don't need to travel anywhere, just walk. So worth the money).
One can vary the size / location / age of the building and fight something. Tokyo is so amazing due to mixed-use zoning. Apartments, restaurants, shops, office buildings. All tastefully mixed together.
Also the food is so much cheaper. I can get a great, tasty and healthy (-enough) lunch in Tokyo for $10. Same food/quality would cost me $20 in US.
Bay Area is terrible. Pay through the roof to live in the middle of nowhere and spend hours every day in traffic.
It's just the newcomers and perpetually poor who suffer the economic effects.
But, hey, the weather is nice and I don't see many "no gaijin" signs here. Would be weird since we're closing in on 40% foreign born after all.
Maybe it helps that I don't read Japanese :P
> or inherited
Sadly I failed to inherit property in major metropolitan area :( I suppose I tried?
Regarding prices I was thinking about rent actually. Owning a house in Bay Area is not something that pops into my mind in most circumstances!
Don't disagree, but it's also true that compensation at least for programmers is vastly higher in the bay area than Tokyo. Like 3x higher, maybe even more than that.
That's what makes them major economic centers: real estate prices. The building, renovation, redevelopment, renting and investing of real estate ... that a massive part of the the modern economy. Think Vancouver makes its money on tourism or lumber? Fishing? It is all down to industry that is perpetually-increasing land values.
High real estate prices is just rent-collection by landlords.
Vancouver is an outlier that makes its money as a destination for laundered international money. The other economic centers actually produce, and export useful goods.
High rent collection is a symptom of high demand for an asset. If the land wasn’t valuable, the rent wouldn’t be high!
But the argument that “place X is an economic engine but should still be cheap” is wildly unrealistic.
Or married to someone twiddling atoms, or needing to support someone twiddling atoms, or married to someone who needs to support someone twiddling atoms... Or have such level of arrogance and greeds (:gasp:) as to want to be near a family member who needs to twiddle atoms... Or if you're straight up greedy and don't want to live in the middle of nowhere.
Yes, but they could certainly be made cheap-er. The bay area's weather and economic success guarantee that it'll be at least moderately expensive, but that it's absurdly expensive is because of bad policy.
https://www.redfin.com/NY/Corona/112-50-Northern-Blvd-11368/...
In the Bay Area it's expensive near job centers but it's still expensive 40 miles away.