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

[Arrian]

A tiny town hardly anyone has heard of in central/eastern Connecticut. It's great. People who live less than 1/2 hour away have never heard of it.

-Arrian

[Dinner]

I'd guess mid-Atlantic states.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Arrian
$420,000.

There's a one-storey ****hole of a house the size of your garage thirty feet from my town's train tracks that went for about that price. Don't live in Montgomery County.

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by Arrian
Um... a lot. And since I've put in how much it is as a function of our household income, I'm not sure I really want to say. Edit: then again, I've told lots of people.

$420,000.

second edit: the house is not only newish, but very well constructed (our building inspector was gushing) and on nearly 6 acres of land, with a good chunk (perhaps 1/2 or 2/3 of an acre) fenced. The backyard is, for lack of a better word, perfect. So I think it was worth every penny.

-Arrian

Ah, to live in a more rural area and think of that as alot....

If I sold my 1200 sf condo, I could buy your place and do some pretty impressive renos.

A very nice house, though.

[Arrian]

Or Fairfield County (where I grew up). $420,000 would buy an old, 3-bedroom, 1 bath cape on a 1/4 acre of land. Maybe.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Kontiki


Ah, to live in a more rural area and think of that as alot....

If I sold my 1200 sf condo, I could buy your place and do some pretty impressive renos.

A very nice house, though.

Yeah, well, that's the way it is. My 1/2 nephew lives out in Cali and did rather well by himself in a recent corporate buyout, so he basically works for fun now and buys what he wants, whenever he wants. His townhouse in SF was, IIRC, $750k, and then he put ~$300k of work into it. Talking to him about real estate is always good for some laughs.

It's absurd, but then again somebody from Kansas would probably think paying what I paid for my house was tantamount to being robbed.

-Arrian

[onodera]

A family of four (us) living in a three-room private apartment in a high-rise block pays around 120$ per month for stuff like electricity and water.
My colleagues, who are not from Moscow and have to rent, have to pay upwards from 800$ per month for a single bedroom apartment.
And buying an apartment is even more expensive: it can be 3, 4, 5 or even more kilobucks per square meter.

[Zoid]

Russia is ****ing expensive!!

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Arrian
A tiny town hardly anyone has heard of in central/eastern Connecticut. It's great. People who live less than 1/2 hour away have never heard of it.

-Arrian

I've heard of Stepford.

Or is it Stamford. It's been a long time since home was marked by Exit 5 on the I-95.

[Donegeal]

Is it somewhere next to Stars Hollow?

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Dauphin


I've heard of Stepford.

Or is it Stamford. It's been a long time since home was marked by Exit 5 on the I-95.

Oooh!

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Donegeal
Is it somewhere next to Stars Hollow?

Sounds a bit like Hebron, the next town over, yeah.

-Arrian

[onodera]

Originally posted by Zoid
Russia is ****ing expensive!!

Nah, it's Moscow that is ****ing expensive.

[Zoid]

According to CNN Moscow is actually the most expensive city in the world And Oslo and Copenhagen is actually more expensive than New York City!

World's most expensive cities 2007

1. Moscow
2. London
3. Seoul
4. Tokyo
5. Hong Kong
6. Copenhagen
7. Geneva
8. Osaka
9. Zurich
10. Oslo
11. Milan
12. St. Petersburg (Russia)
13. Paris
14. Singapore
15. New York City
16. Dublin
17. Tel Aviv
18. Rome
19. Vienna
20. Beijing

[Cort Haus]

Wow. The best teh mighty USA can manage is 15th, fighting off the soaring Dublin.

Yay! We're no 2.

Oh wait ....


My GF and I have just spent an insane £310,000 on a one-bed flat in the rougher end of Islington, North London. It's a cool flat and a decent size though, for cramped London, and in an architecturally unique block (19th century church conversion). It even has a small gravel courtyard, from which we can observe the building's gothic splendour.

Converting to dollars that's what, ~50% more expensive that Arrian's palace. Still, we have some nice gastro pubs around, Karl Marx lives around the corner, my GF can walk to work, one of the finest football teams in Europe is also within walking distance, as are the music spots of Camden, and the rest of the city's central attractions are not far away.

Too bad there's gonna be a house-price crash.