[achenet]

while I agree that basically any news outlet owned by Rupert Murdoch is heavily untrustworthy, I'd like to point out that property values are not necessarily correlated with quality of life.

Within a given city, yes, the nicer bits are more expensive. Between different cities, however, it is totally possible to find one city is both cheaper and nicer than another (with the possible caveat of being smaller, and perhaps if you can't WFH, not as many jobs).

To use an example I know well, basically every city in France outside of Marseille is nicer to live in than Paris, but Paris has real estate prices that are 2-4x most other cites.

I imagine you could find similar things in other countries as well - Amsterdam vs Eindhoven in the Netherlands, for example.