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Comment by ipsi | Hacker News Reader

That's not correct. I suspect that the source you saw said:

> As of 2017, the average annual real disposable income of Dutch households was roughly 31,500 euros.

Disposable household income would be, at a minimum, after tax, and possibly after accommodation. You'd want to increase that by about 60% to account for tax/etc, which would be 50.4K. That seems more reasonable to me, and would put the multiplier at 7.7.

Not sure about the UK - that could very well be accurate, but London throws averages completely out of whack.

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I don't think London throws them out of whack all that much. I'm around Milton Keynes/Bedford so SE but a bit further than most folk would want to commute to London (and I'd imagine a reasonable percentage of the population live within a similar radius of London) and that average house price feels about right. You'd might manage to get a three-bed terrace or two-bed semi for that sort of amount I'd say.

I dunno - I always assumed that London-proper prices (i.e., not Milton Keynes) being so outrageously high, upwards of £1,000,000, would throw out the average. Though perhaps the number of slightly cheaper apartments brings it back down again (although of course statistics can't tell you that's because the apartments are the size of a shoebox).

Plus as I understand it, a bit further north you could probably start getting a decent house for £300,000 or less. And in really out of the way places, under £150,000. Trying to talk about "average" house prices in most countries is generally a bit daft IMO because the range between "remote little country town" and "centre of the largest city" is vast.

https://espc.com/properties?locations=edinburgh&minbeds=2plu...

TIL the capital of my country is really out of the way :D

Do agree that it's hard to talk about averages - you almost need e.g. a heat map of the price for a certain size of 3-bed semi or 2-bed flat or such like. It's tricky too because house prices in areas of the country where there are few jobs are irrelevant for anybody needing a job who can't get one in that area. Although I imagine remote working has flattened things somewhat.

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