Owning a Place to Live - Let's Compare Affordability Across Countries

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by DanS
Most unacquainted Euros will be astounded by how much house many Americans & Canadians have. Frankly, most have no Earthly conception, Kuci's bathrooms notwithstanding. I'm guessing that the Aussies and Auklanders are similar to the Northern Americans.

My place in central Sydney cost me about AU$440/month in rent. US$330 at the prevailing exchange rate. Equivalent cost in London is about £500, or US$1,000.

My brother's over in the states and his fiancée is from Minneapolis. Man, what I could buy there for the price I paid for my flat here. It would of course mean living in Minneapolis...

Give it ten - fifteen years of house price growth and London salary and I could probably retire to Brisbane or Adelaide quite easily.

[Pekka]

VetLegion, that's not huge, that's normal size.

60 square meters in Helsinki? Dude, you won't get it for 200k, not even close. Try 350k or something like that. I'm not kidding. And it's not luxury. It's just a 60 sqquare meter flat. Unless you want to live in the outskirts, then it might be like 250k-300k.

[Barnabas]

Originally posted by VetLegion


Please provide average yearly earnings, we can't compare otherwise.

Info from a study published last week

People who earn over 9800 pesos per month (2900 dollars per month) are considered wealthy, this is 5% of the population. Of course this group includes people who earn much more than 2900 dollars per month, the average wealthy person earns 21.000 pesos or 6500 dollars per month.

People who earn from 4000 pesos to 9800 pesos per month ( 1275 to 2900 dollars per month) are considered high middle class, and are 15% of the population

People who earn from 2000 to 4000 pesos per month ( 637 dollars to 1275 dollars) are considered typical middle class and are 25% of the population

People who earn from 1000 to 2000 pesos per month ( 320 to 637 dollars per month) are considered working class and are 25% of the population

People who earn less than 320 dollars per month are 30% of the population and considered poor.


The average income must be around around 550 dollars per month, around 6500 dollars per year

[VetLegion]

60 square meters in Helsinki? Dude, you won't get it for 200k, not even close. Try 350k or something like that. I'm not kidding. And it's not luxury. It's just a 60 sqquare meter flat. Unless you want to live in the outskirts, then it might be like 250k-300k.

That's depressing. I was thinking that the high flat price/average earnings ratio in my country is such because of temporary underinvestment due to economic problems in the nineties (we had a war and related disruptions which caused construction to crawl to a halt). But if a peaceful country like Finland can't reduce flat prices below 10x yearly earnings of an individual, it's kind of scary.

I'd like to have a bigger sample, but it could well be that 10x is something of a "natural" ratio for cities across the world.

The high ratio is here considered a part of the reason why people here marry and have kids late. You need to place the little buggers somewhere, and it's pricey

[Pekka]

VetLegion, dude, houses are expensive in here. In theory, you can get a cheap house if you live in the middle of nowhere in some crappy thing you build yourself.

Like.. I can't get a house for a LOOOOOONG time. Of course I'm young but the point is, I'm not sure if I can ever own a house in here. That's why I'm looking to get away, go abroad and score big first.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to own a house in here. We've got some beautiful places... and a summer cottage, oh yes... that's my personal heaven, sit in the terrace of the sauna, jump from the chair to the lake... climb back up and drink some more beer, and complete silence. No sounds what so ever, like you're the only person in the world. The lake is picture perfect and makes 0 waves, just like a mirror. It's a heaven. So I'm looking to get them but I just need to get out first to score and then possibly get back. I'd like to spend summers here and winters somewhere else.

Anyway it's looking good, since I had a chat with my co-workers today, I feel they're talented and definitely on the right track (that is we all agree ), and there's this common career path where we all feel like we want to do consulting for executives etc. Very high class consulting. And we know we're about the only ones in ths country specializing in the field of security we do (because we're the only Uni doing it in here). soo.... I think it's looking good. Need to score. I think we have the people here, if they want to ... connect the dots and maybe form some serious business... we'd already have some big ass clients, international, who we work for all the time anyway.

Shiiit... so anyway, we'll do that, THEN I buy the house. If I get a very nice house, VetLegion, I will invite you there so you can stay as my guest for some time. NOTE: this doesn't mean stay as long as you want. It means you can stay like a week.

[Spec]

Here, right now, a 30x36 bungalow costs around 160k + the price of the lot.

Basicly, it costs about 150$ a square foot to buy a house + the lot, but it costs 125$ a square foot to build a house. But it takes 25% cash down to build your own house if you wanna get financed.

EDIT: These prices are in CAD of course.

Spec.

[Cort Haus]

House by a lake, Pekka? Mind the mosquitos.

[Aeson]

In rural Utah ~$80k will get you 3000sq ft, 4 beds, 3 baths on an acre+. (You can get land for ~$500 an acre out by Nephi. I know this because there's a billboard on the side of the freeway that's been advertising it for several years. Must not be any buyers...)

That price includes weekly visits from the Ward Bishop and fellowship committee...

[Arrian]

For my county:

Median household income in 2005: $73,919
2005 median house value: $229,000

We paid ~ $165/sq.ft. for a house on 5.8 acres of land in June of this year. Given what other similar properties went for, that is fairly typical.

-Arrian

[Kontiki]

Here's a good report on the subject:

http://www.demographia.com/dhi-ix2005q3.pdf

[Krill]

Any decent places to work in canada that need Chemistry teachers?

[Dinner]

Many places have very strict laws to limit new construction. The natural result is that housing prices spike and young people get scewed as they can't afford to buy anything. Remember that next time the NIMBYs start protesting against new construction.

[Donegeal]

1486 sq ft (138 sq m)
3 car garage, 3 bed 2 bath (slowly adding another 1200 sq ft (110 sq m) 2 bed 1 bath in the basement w/2 stairwells)
$170,000 (€120,000)
$120/sq ft (€870/sq m)

Household income is around $80,000 (but MAN do I have ALOT of expenses!)

So for me, it's just over 2x. Not bad.

So looking at the census, it says that the median Wisconsin household income is only 57,000 (which I find hard to believe) and that the median house price is 112,000 (which I also find hard to believe) which makes it just under 2x. Looking at my numbers and looking at yours, I think I miscalculated somewhere (or I got faulty numbers).

(I like my house)

[Arrian]

We bought at 2.5X household income, which based on the 2005 numbers for our county (posted above) is actually below average.

What we paid was almost as far as we'd have gone, but we're pretty conservative with money. We have no other debt, and were able to put down a touch more than 20% on the house without touching savings (it came from the prior house sale).

-Arrian

[Donegeal]

BTW...