[PebblesHD]

Every time this topic comes up I come back to some basic maths. My parents were, in the late 70s and early 80s, able to buy a detached house in a suburb reasonably near public transport to the CBD on their combined teachers salaries with a mortgage repayment at around 35% of their wages. My partner and I are, on paper at least, earning multiples of that even accounting for official inflation figures and we’re left renting around twice as far away from the city for around the same portion of income.

At some point the realisation has to occur that a house 50 miles from anything is not worth $1m and the only reason they can currently sell for that is existing home owners can leverage that asset to buy them. There will eventually be no more existing home owners to sell to and the market should logically come back to sanity, or at least I very much hope it will. That or I’ll be moving my family to a more affordable location overseas creating the same effect for their own first home buyers as I take up a property that would have been used by a local. What happens after a few cycles of that I wonder...

[lukevp]

Where do you live that a house is $1m 50 miles from everything? The valley? You don't have to go overseas for affordable housing. Most of the Midwest is extremely cheap. Heck, I live about 20 miles from downtown Austin and 30 miles from the main tech area and my house is under $250k, and Austin has a booming tech sector. Houston and Dallas are some of the largest cities in the US, have a lot of tech, and are similarly affordable.

[hestipod]

Having to live somewhere where you hate the culture, politics, climate, geography is soul killing. The Midwest is cheap because it doesn't offer the benefits the expensive places do. Most people are here because they were born here. I never met anyone who chose to move here for any reason other than economic or family obligation. They convince themselves its great for a time because their dollar goes a lot farther, but the reality sets in soon enough. People from amazing places don't dream of a grey/beige house in a suburb in Kansas, or having to drive hours into some Iowan "town" to get to even something terrible like strip malls and big box stores, they don't have post cards of these places on their walls and don't visit them on holiday. You can usually find a place that's cheaper than where you are, but it's cheaper for a reason.

[squish78]

It might be inconceivable to the HN demographic but some people truly enjoy the small town/ rural lifestyle

[wyclif]

Hey, I'm one of those people. I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania that was rural until very recently, but it's still only about 20 minutes' drive west of Philadelphia. So it had the charm of rural life (at least when I was growing up–it's become a bit gentrified since then) and if you wanted to get your shot of urban culture it wasn't that far away.

The real trick nowadays is finding the "middle" small town America: places that have good infrastructure, public transportation, universities, libraries, public works, etc but aren't urban. Of course, it helps a lot if you don't have to commute, or you only have to commute to the office a few days out of the week.

[squish78]

That sounds nice. I'm convinced a mid-size college town has the best of both worlds

[hestipod]

There is small town rural life within an hour of any big coastal city. You don't have to move to the homogeneous middle of the country for that. Suggesting people move from a popular place to middle America for a good quality of life is disingenuous in my view because its predicated entirely on the fact that it's "cheaper". Their lives aren't going to be "richer"...only their bank account for a time, but even that will fade as salary and opportunity are less as well. Yes some people enjoy being surrounded only by their race, religion, and politics so that outweighs the losses of accessibility, culture, and experience...and frankly most of the ones who have never experienced anything else don't even know what they are missing...getting away from that gave me the only good parts of my life personally. Once again...people don't put photos or postcards of Topeka or Little Rock or some town nobody knows of in the vast sameness of the Midwest on their dream walls. There is a reason for that.

[arrozconcosas]

There are nice places to live that aren't on a postcard

[selimthegrim]

I believe Branson, MO, Memphis and Nashville, TN, and Fayetteville, AR would like a word with you.

[squish78]

My life is incredibly rich, but I measure it more by my physical/mental health, my community, and time I get to spend with my family

[kbutler]

As a counterpoint, my reaction to big cities has generally been "Nice place to visit, but I sure wouldn't want to live there". And my vacation photos are way more likely to be landscapes than cityscapes.

I do like the ocean, though!

[hestipod]

Are your landscape photos of endless flatness, strip malls, and pavement? Or are they beautiful mountains, forests, seasides? I am not saying liking rural places is "wrong". I am saying you give up a LOT to live in the "cheap" middle because it's the same everywhere you look in nearly all regards and is far from anything "different" in about every use of the word, including those beautiful landscapes.

[thatfrenchguy]

That’s a very US centric view though. If you live in France in a lot of middle-size cities, it’s both cheap and cute. And don’t pretend like California is void of strip mall either, most of the Bay Area is boring-as-fuck strip malls and single family houses.

[kbutler]

Sounds like you have a lot of hostility for "the culture, politics, climate, geography" but I'm not sure you've ever actually been to these places you detest so much. Maybe try getting out and meeting and talking to people that don't think or live the same way you do?

Let's see what the internet can show us:

Kansas: Monument Rocks - totally postcard worthy. https://www.thecrazytourist.com/most-beautiful-places-to-vis... And the Cheyenne Bottoms, largest wetland in mainland US? Even beats Florida & Everglades, wow. And Geary Lake Falls are very nice https://www.thecrazytourist.com/most-beautiful-places-to-vis... And the lavender farms of Topeka https://maps.roadtrippers.com/us/topeka-ks/nature/ingwerson-... OK, I've got things I'd like to see in Kansas.

Little Rock: https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.inarkansas.com/10757/fall-in... that's lovely, and a candidate for a monitor background. (from http://www.metrolittlerockguide.com/post/21127/little-rock-p...)

Endless strip malls and pavement are much more prevalent in and around big cities - and you have lots of traffic to ensure you have plenty of time to enjoy them. And for what it's worth, Florida beats Kansas for flatness by a long shot (and for strip malls and pavement, too, come to think of it).

"the vast sameness of the Midwest"... Just because you haven't heard of landmarks and variation in a place, doesn't mean it isn't there. Many people think of Africa as mostly flat - maybe because we largely see flat maps, and we hear of Kilimanjaro in Africa, see pictures of savannas, and know of the Sahara, and tend to think that's all there is, but there is so much variation.

[CDSlice]

I don't know, as someone who's visited Kansas I honestly think that it's some of the most beautiful country in the US. You can see pretty much everything for miles around. But to each their own I guess. :)

[cgy1]

I mean besides issues like climate or geography I think cities like Chicago, Minneapolis or even college towns like Madison or Ann Arbor certainly offer a lot more than "a grey/beige house in a suburb" or "strip malls and big box stores." This is from someone who's lived in these places in the midwest as well as in San Francisco.

[scarface74]

The US is a big place with lots of metropolitan areas where you can buy a house in the near suburbs for much less. I’m in Atlanta and our 5/3-1/2 3100 square foot house brand new build in 2016 was $330K. We both live and work in the burbs. Depending on traffic, it would take us less than an hour to get to downtown/midtown/Buckhead if we needed to.

It’s just so many people on HN think that they have to live in the west coast or NYC.

[pitaj]

> the only reason they can currently sell for that is existing home owners can leverage that asset to buy them.

Yes, stuff sells for what people are willing to pay for it. The main reason housing is so expensive is that supply cannot meet demand because of onerous government policies. Height restrictions, zoning rules, building permits, NIMBYism, etc are not allowing the market to respond to demand.

[systemtest]

The problem is that your example is anecdotal. I am 31 and have no problem buying the exact same house my parents did at 31. On a single income, just like my father.