[swiftcoder]

This sort of assumes one lives someplace where rents are cheap. If you rented that basement apartment in the first place, it's a pretty good sign you were in need of somewhere extremely cheap... And in markets like NYC where you need a minimum of 4x the monthly rent just to move in, it can be hard to climb out of the basement (both metaphorically and literally)

[joefife]

Ah got you. I live in the Scottish countryside where property is cheap. Forgot about insane city prices.