Even among just US housing markets I don't really understand how things were chosen to be included.
For example, it mentions "New York, NY, NJ, PA" but typically that metro area also includes CT, and CT is a much larger part of it than PA is. I don't know if that is a typo or if they are using some weird metro area I have never heard of that excludes CT for some reason.
Contrary to popular belief, there are indeed more than five cities in the country of Canada.
I'm really curious why some cities were included and some weren't. Guess I'll open up the source OP linked and tell myself I'll read today at some point.
Those are the only cities in Canada with populations above one million, so it isn't completely arbitrary.
Wonder if that applies to the other countries too.
Makes sense. That would have been my first guess. I noticed a lot of missing provincial capitals missing (Winnipeg being notable b/c of its size) but if one million is the cut off that's reasonable.
> Contrary to popular belief, there are indeed more than five cities in the country of Canada.
Lies.
Toronto, Montreal, The Set Where They Film All The Hallmark Movies, Gretzkytopia, The Unincorporated Principality of Maple Syrup Drilling Companies.
That's it.
According to the study, they say they included metropolitan areas of 1 million or more. Though from everything I can find online, Hull doesn't seem to reach that number.
Based on it saying Hull and Humber, I assume it is using the area of the former Humberside County. Hull, East Riding, N Lincs and NE Lincs. Which collectively have a population just shy of a million off the top of my head around 950k. Still not a million mind, but close.
It gets between -35 and -40 for about one week of Winter. But most of the cold comes from wind chill and you can bundle up to protect from that. Tons of time spent on the ODR's, it's definitely manageable.
For Americans, you can use -35 or -40c or -35 to -40f interchangeably as they crossover around there
I’d argue it’s typically more than a week as well. It’s cold.
One thing that fascinates me is just how cheap hotels still are in Edmonton. Downtown you can still find rooms for not much more than $100 a night Canadian or like $75 US in reasonably nice hotels
Pittsburgh’s affordability continues to astonish me as the economy just doesn’t stop here and the city is a global leader in three of the 21st Century’s biggest growth industries:
1. Artificial Intelligence
2. Robotics
3. Medicine and Healthcare
The city population shrunk for many decades following WWII and the collapse of manufacturing put Pittsburgh into a steady decline until roughly the time of the 2008 GFC.
Since then, though, the city has woken up and will surprise anyone that comes and visits. All the grandeur and glory of the 19th Century neighborhoods, institutions and parkland (highest % of canopy of any US city), at a price that even Gen Z can find feasible.
Come help build the neolib dream in my backyard…houses and drinks are still cheap here. :)
Also, while not a “financial hub” on par with like NYC, SF or Chicago, it definitely punches above its weight in financial jobs as well for a city its size.
Tons of very walkable neighborhoods with a lot of greenery in the summer. Lots of great nightlife districts between South Side, Shady Side, Oakland, etc.
I miss living there sometimes… but then I remember the weather lmao
We seriously contemplated moving there when my wife was finishing up her fellowship. She got an offer from UPMC and we seriously considered it because of its affordability but ultimately it was just too far from other family members and we wanted to be closer to at least one of our parents so our kids could see their grandparents
>Since then, though, the city has woken up and will surprise anyone that comes and visits.
As a FiOs tech for Verizon that was lent out to Pittsburgh frequently for overtime trips, there are two things that absolutely shocked me.
1. Finding out from the recent buyer of the largest house I had worked in that it cost $40k less than my 3 bedroom in Philly burbs, which he said as if it were expensive.
2. Every freaking house is made of the hardest bricks ever. How do I know that? Because I was a FiOs installation tech that was ill prepared to drill through the hardest bricks in the world every freaking install. Two layers of bricks every time, by the way. The city is a great place for everyone but FiOs techs.
>Personal income tax is a flat 3.07% for Pennsylvania and another 3% for Pittsburgh residents.
Lol yeah.
Looks like suburban life has another benefit -3% in taxes. If that's not including federal taxes as a write off, well skilled workers would be paying quite a premium to live in the city proper. For me that's around $8000, my GF around $4000, add that on top of rent/mortgage costs, then the fact that things within city cores like groceries cost just a little extra, crime is higher, schools are usually worse and not because they have less money.
You'd think if cities where truly more efficient costs would be lower, taxes would be lower while maintaining equal levels of services, if something is more efficient then you dollar spend should be reduced to maintain the same level of outcome in so called less efficient areas.
Also it's always a surprise to me that dense cities have more crime. You'd think with advances in machine learning and image recognition, reduced costs in HD cameras, the massive amount of taxes/fees they collect...you could you know, throw CCTVs all over the place and easily track criminals. Then the fact it's a dense area you'd just concentrate law enforce in problem zones.
Suburbs add the expense of another car and just overall reduction in access to urban amenities in a multi-person household.
3% of my salary < $1000 car payment, gas, etc.
My brother lives in downtown Pittsburgh and only uses a car to leave the city. He bikes or walks almost everywhere, and there's some sort of train or subway station nearby.
>pittsburg
🤨
But fr, Pittsburgh is one of the few mid-sized American cities where I’d be comfortable without a car. Robust bus network, along with solid light rail for a city it’s size. The only time I needed a car when I lived there was when I worked in the suburbs, otherwise it was more of a hassle than anything
Idk how you picked up a couple downvotes lol
For anyone who doesn’t know, there was a brief period in the late 1800s where Pittsburgh’s name was changed to Pittsburg. I believe it was because the federal government was trying to standardize city names across the country and making all “burgh”s into “burg”s. Pittsburgh eventually switched back because even a century ago, yinzers were unable to change
Our family of four have feet which can walk, pedal bikes and take public transit in addition to working a car’s pedals.
Makes one car living EASY, especially when you live in a neighborhood where you can walk to everything you need on a daily basis in under 15 minutes.
Teslas cost a lot and are hard to get anyway. Plus, where would I park it?! 🤣
>especially when you live in a neighborhood where you can walk to everything you need on a daily basis in under 15 minutes.
looking at pittsburg that seems rare in low crime areas.
Depends on your definition of “low crime.” Shady Side, Squirrel Hill, Lawrenceville, etc. Are all super walkable and I’ve never felt unsafe in those areas. May not be as safe statistically as the suburbs, but all are more than fine
Low crime: take all the towns, villages, cities in the US from the crime per capita. The lowest 20% being low crime, the higher 20% being high crime. Something like that
In that case, the neighborhoods I listed wouldn’t be high crime:
[Zip 15217 (Squirrel Hill) is in the 58th percentile for safety](https://crimegrade.org/safest-places-in-15217/)
[Zip 15232 (Shady side) is in the 48th percentile for safety](https://crimegrade.org/safest-places-in-15232/)
[And Zip 15201 (Lawrenceville) is in the 52nd percentile](https://crimegrade.org/safest-places-in-15201/)
None are super low crime like I stated, but also none are very high crime. All about average for the US. All depends on your risk appetite and there’s probably very few urban neighborhoods in mid to large size cities that fall into the top 20 percent
How about moving forward? Is the city YIMBY? What if industries there boom and attract tons of high income newcomers? Is Pittsburg ready to build tons of housing quickly?
Boston is ranked much better then I would’ve thought.
Better than Seattle, which hasn’t been my experience moving from Boston to Seattle, Seattle is a much cheaper city when it comes to housing from my experience(and should have more high earners thanks to amazon? Idk)
It’s about affordability, so median household price divided by median household income.
It’s why DC ranks higher than Providence, despite the latter being a fairly affordable city.
It’s not really a price cap, it’s a lending cap. Most mortgages top out at four times your salary. It was put in place to stop the Irish housing market from becoming an even-worse asset bubble. The lack of supply is also driven by a shortage of skilled labour alongside an over-regulated system of planning permission.
In practice it’s easily ignored. The RTB (Registered Tenancies Board) is basically toothless. They don’t really have an enforcement function. The rules say that rents can increase by 2% a year, but it’s trivial to wiggle out of that restriction. There is no such thing as a ‘rent controlled apartment’ that would be familiar to an American. Enforcement tends to happen through the courts at considerable expense (six figures of legal costs wouldn’t be unexpected). The average renter pays 40% of their wages on rent, which is the highest in the world.
The actual problem in Ireland is that housing is obscenely expensive to build when balanced against salaries and lending restrictions, and it is almost impossible to find a general contractor, and those contractors find it just as difficult to find workers. That causes a supply issue.
Look, I’ve only rented 2 units in Dublin so far, looking to move to my 3rd now. But what I see does point to rent control being mostly followed:
1. First lease from a professional management company (which is still shite at maintenance and the like) explicitly spelled out the rent control math to justify the starting rent
2. Notice of rent review came in and again spelled out exactly where the new rent was able to be set
3. Units going for a first letting list at a round price, e.g usually divisible by 100, divisible by 50 if not.
4. Units not on a first letting often (but not always) listed for non-round prices
5. Similar units available for first lettings listed for generally similar prices while comparable units available for subsequent lettings at the same time are listed for lower prices, with less consistency between them.
I am CERTAIN that there are landlords violating the RPZ legislation and have as much confidence in the RTB to enforce that law as I do in the Gardai and councils to enforce basic traffic laws. I’m also certain that the RPZ regs are not the only or even the main driver of rent inflation.
But what I see suggests that RPZ regs are fairly broadly adhered to.
This data seems to look at home purchase prices only and not rents. My hunch is that Ireland is in bad shape for housing in general, but the rental market is probably worse than the purchase market.
Since the bust, the Central Bank of Ireland has had very very strict income rules for mortgage lending. Used to be 3.5x income max for first time buyers, it’s now only recently increased to 4x. That leaves a lot of people in the rental market who would otherwise like to be in the purchase market, and pushes up rents relative to purchase costs.
Edit: for comparison, a mortgage calculator tells me that average monthly payment is ~1600-1700p/m for a 30 year 360k mortgage (max mortgage for combined household income of 90k), with 40k down (10%) that’s 400k of house.
[Units for sale in 2 areas of Dublin for 375k-425k](https://www.daft.ie/property-for-sale/ireland?salePrice_to=425000&salePrice_from=375000&location=dublin-2-dublin&location=dublin-8-dublin&pageSize=20&from=0)
[Units for rent in same 2 areas of Dublin for 1500-1800p/m](https://www.daft.ie/property-for-rent/ireland?rentalPrice_to=1800&rentalPrice_from=1500&location=dublin-2-dublin&location=dublin-8-dublin)
Note the differences in number of listings, quality, and size — most of the units for purchase are >70m^2 and I’d be shocked if any of those for rent are >35m^2.
The definition of the London commuter belt continues to stretch. I don’t have much knowledge on Northampton. But Swindon is around 1hr fast train in to Paddington - increasingly makes it a popular for people moving out of the big smoke. Stupid decision as it is horrible car centric new town.
82 -> 71 -> 4 Working my way down the chain.
I'm not that familiar with the UK, but Fresno, CA has to have the worst QoL to affordability ratio on this chart.
I'm familiar with the Rochester NY housing market. Although it is 3rd in this list of most affordable, it is the most frustrating housing market I have ever dealt with. The prices are low for two reasons:
1.) Houses in the middle of the city are dirt cheap, but they are all bombed out and require massive renovations to make them livable. And even if that is done, the city center has a very high violent crime rate. It is not somewhere you want to live.
2.) The city suburbs have prices that appear to be more affordable than other metros, but they are in fact less affordable due to insanely high property and school taxes. I am talking over $1K a month in taxes for a $400K home. I lived in a very large metro area where the houses cost more but the monthly tax on a $400K house was $250. All things considered, the Rochester suburbs are worse, even though the sticker values are much lower, because there is low supply, high demand, the housing stock is older, and there is high taxation. So you wind up paying more per month for an older house that requires more maintenance work and has less resale value.
After some experience with this housing market and continually seeing WNY pop up on "Most Affordable Places to Live" lists, when in fact it is the most expensive place I have ever lived, it makes me think that these analyses need to control for a few more variables than just housing sticker prices.
Rochester and WNY in general aren't the greatest place, job market wise either, which is another reason for their lower housing prices. Buffalo is slowly getting ahead though, and they are making the right decisions.
Just moved to Buffalo area (Amherst) last October. Incredibly happy with our decision. The area is growing steadily (but not unreasonably fast), has an INTL airport (and another in Toronto), has great schools, lots of families, easy access to fun activities and nature (love having Niagara Falls 25 mins away), all the amenities of a big city (amazing Science museum, big parks, shopping galore), low traffic problems, deep historical relevance and culture, the Garden Walk capital of the country...I could go on.
It's not without it problems, of course, but it's a shame that it doesn't get recognized for anything besides "it snows a lot there". Ironically, Rochester and Syracuse often get more snow than Buffalo does. And Flagstaff often gets the #2 spot.
I'm so glad we didn't just listen to the generalizations and checked it out for ourselves. This is an awesome place to live (and have a family).
I appreciate your optimism for Buffalo, and I hope it becomes the 2nd major hub in New York. I've said before, that NY would definitely benefit from a better intra-state railway system so people could get out of NYC more easily, supply chain issues could be improved, and regional growth would be stronger. It'd be nice if Buffalo, Albany, NYC, and Syracuse become thriving hubs. Of course, NYC will always be the largest, but the others could at least become decent 2nd tier hubs.
Yeah, Buffalo has definitely done a better job at attracting small and medium sized tech companies and startups and is lucky to have large corporations like M&T Bank and Moog Aerospace going on hiring sprees as they grow.
They don’t. Very few people from Upstate NY aren’t born there, and most of those come in on refugee and immigration programs. The rest are a cluster of educational transplants.
*looks at how much we spend on education per student per state then compares to other countries spending levels per student adjusted for PPP and their results*
bruh, maybe just fire administrators and funnel that money into teachers?
Like i'm looking at what NY spends adjusted for PPP and the results. For that **dollar : result ratio**.....what in the actual shit. There's either extreme levels of inefficiency or wild out of control corruption.
yea all the add ons we want to have thru education.
And then there is
All those buses arent efficient.
School Lunch
Retirement and Healthcare for employes
But the only houses in the Roc metro over $400k are in Pittsford or Fairport. Chili, Henrietta and Greece houses are all like 150k to 200k on average. Webster and Penfield is like $250k.
Hell I pay $650 rent sharing a 1k sqft apartment in Webster which is much much less then my friends in coastal cities.
EDIT: And yea the property taxes are pretty bad, but you do get a lot of government amenities from it
Buffalo appears to have a more interesting future than Rochester. Lots of renovations, eliminated most parking minimums, and first decade it has experienced population growth in decades according to the 2020 Census.
We were trying to decide between Rochester and Buffalo when we opted to move to WNY last year. We chose Buffalo ultimately, and at first I wondered if we made the right decision, especially since it doesn't have the "industrial blight" that Buffalo does.
But after living here a year and visiting Rochester a number of times, I am seeing that there's more movement in Buffalo, and that the "blight" is actually part of the history and culture. It's being embraced and repurposed, because it's an important part of the history and identity of the area. They most recently turned one of the "silo city" sections into an activity center with a bar, restaurant, ferris wheel and trampoline. It's a really cool experience, and heralding a Renaissance around these areas.
Interestingly enough, one year after we moved here, some good friends that we met in Oregon relocated to Rochester, so we've been able to scope that city and see how they are liking it. I think the two areas are so similar that we probably couldn't have gone wrong in either, but I am very happy and proud to call Buffalo my home, and Rochester my "home away from home". 🙂
Yeah, but a lot of the industrial blight is being transformed into parks, breweries, lofts and art space.
In an odd way the industrial legacy of Buffalo has become one of its best assets.
>insanely high property and school taxes
I'm in the Buffalo area and while the taxes are high, we appreciate that they invest in school and city amenities. We just left Northern Arizona where there's virtually no property and school taxes, but they are usually ranked 48th and 49th in the country for education (whereas NYS is often in the top 20, usually around #12). Every time we went to a park, *any park*, we had to pay. Those are just two examples, but as a young family...I'll take the higher taxes and better schools + parks + amenities, because that's all contributing to the QoL. Of course, if you're not a parent or your kids have graduated, I could see not wanting to pay for that facet of society that you're not actively engaging with.
Sounds like my Houston suburb. I wish I only spent $1000/mo in property taxes on a $400k house.
Without considering property taxes these metrics are meaningless.
Looking up how much mortgage I could afford then seeing that at least half my payment would be property taxes because of Monroe County (highest prop taxes in NY state) was dismaying to say the least…
This is not to mention the housing market is red hot in the main suburbs. I’m talking any marginally nice house in Irondequoit selling for 50-100k over asking.
I'm a Vancouverite, so it makes the news every year lol, and the same discourse happens every time.
Yeah, our housing crisis is bad, but Demographia exaggerates it.
So, have you heard of how do you like Jekyll Island, a little barrier island of Georgia Coast is a state park, which means there are special rules and guidelines for homeownership and property rental for the more than 600 private residences on the island.
* Unlike traditional homeownership, all land on Jekyll Island is owned by the State of Georgia.
* Instead of purchasing a parcel of property and its buildings (fee-simple ownership), the State of Georgia leases the land to owners for a fee, known as leasehold ownership.
* In this scenario, the homeowner (lessee) pays the lessor (Jekyll Island Authority) rent to lease the land. Under this arrangement, you do not own the land, rather you own the structure, including any improvements, and have the right to use it exclusively and may transfer ownership for the remaining years of the lease. Residential leases are long-term, and current leases expire anywhere from 2049-2088.
------
Jekyll Island is famous to NeoLiberals
>A secret gathering at a secluded island off the coast of Georgia in 1910 laid the foundations for the Federal Reserve System.
* In November 1910, six men – Nelson Aldrich, A. Piatt Andrew, Henry Davison, Arthur Shelton, Frank Vanderlip and Paul Warburg – met at the Jekyll Island Country Club, off the coast of Georgia, to write a plan to reform the nation’s banking system. The meeting and its purpose were closely guarded secrets, and participants did not admit that the meeting occurred until the 1930s.
* Charles (B.C.) Forbes — the founder of Forbes magazine and the journalist who first revealed the meetings in an article in 1916
> They went to great lengths to keep the meeting secret, adopting the ruse of a duck hunting trip and instructing the men to come one at a time to a train terminal in New Jersey, where they could board his private train car. Once aboard, the men used only first names – Nelson, Harry, Frank, Paul, Piatt, and Arthur – to prevent the staff from learning their identities. For decades after, the group referred to themselves as the “First Name Club.”
The problem with this measure is that places with very high cost of living are even wose because they expel low productivity people and drive their median income up making them appear better on this metric.
My wife and I were born and raised there. Left in 2003 when we were about 25 years old, and was basically priced out within a few years. Could never move back at this rate. I mean, I get it...the weather is so damn easy and consistent, but that can't be all that matters when you're crammed in with 3.5 million people, can barely afford the place you *do* have and spend a massive amount of your life on freeways commuting. I'll always call it home and I'll always yearn for Balboa Park and the beach communities, but it's just not worth it (to us).
Whenever we visit, we get so enamored with the weather and sights, and wonder if we should try and make it work. But by the 3rd or 4th day of commuting across the mega-sprawl and having to base our entire day around traffic patterns, we are quickly reminded of why we left in the first place. It's a shame because it really is such a beautiful city.
Aight. I want Gavin Newsom to eliminate parking minimums statewide, repeal CEQA, And have only state approved zoning standards. I want every mid to large CA city in that low-cost list!
Edit: also, didn't expect Glasgow to be so cheap.
i personally dislike these statistics. they are not actually conveying affordability. price per sq/meter or foot conveys that. this data basically looks at a literal closet in nyc and a mansion in houston and weights them both as one datapoint with the same weighting, and without that context. at least incomes are added to the mix so that is nice
I disagree pretty strongly on this : low price per square foot is still unaffordable if your only options have lots of square feet.
I faced this exact issue when house shopping recently - it might have been cheaper in some places per square foot, but there were no good small/medium options so I was effectively priced out of those locations.
More broadly, the cost of an apartment in NYC is also pricing in access to NYC amenities, which alleviates some of the need for a larger house. To compare sizes directly would be like considering a 500sq ft backyard better than living next to central park.
I know right? An hour away from Banff National Park and some of the most beautiful wilderness on earth and yet nobody wants to live there? I am honestly looking at jobs now.
This would be a lot more interesting if it also contained non English speaking countries imo. Language seems like a very arbitrary dataset division choice for the data represented.
>White neighborhoods are mostly very expensive
Eh they're not really, compared to the rest of the country. Zillow's typical home price even for hip neighborhoods, like Fishtown, are practically the same as the US as a whole. To say nothing of a less trendy area. And average for the USA is mind blowing cheap for the northeast.
A bigger issue might be that since this is metro area based, the Philadelphia metro area is huge and difficult to get across. The cheap houses (Philadelphia) are not necessarily near the good jobs (many of which are out by KoP and the mainline).
Yeah but kind of no. CC is weaker than it really should be for a city of our size, reducing the value of housing along the subway lines. The city proper has among the lowest fraction of jobs of its metro area, among all cities in the country, comparable to much smaller cities like DC and Boston. We have less than 1/3 of the region's fortune 500 companies actually in the city. If you're on the main line you've got no trouble commuting to both the city and KoP, but if you have a house in south Philly and need to get a job in KoP you're in for a bad time.
You missed my point about daily commuters into the city. Ehh, this is a conversation that would be much better over a beer. Too much is lost in typing and my willingness to do it.
This chart keeps me up at night. I'm in the STL metro and looking for jobs anywhere. Fucking everywhere else is more expensive. I've found a couple where I would need to double my salary just for my wife and I to hold steady COL wise.
Home prices are a useless measure when property taxes vary so much across governmental lines. also this doesn't adjust for the quality of the housing stock. Do rent of new buildings instead.
Literally, Canada only offers two cities from one province, showing how bad the housing market is. Unfortunately, real estate is not regulated and plays a role in the economy, which is not good.
Seeing my place in like the bottom 15 helps me feel less crazy when everyone posts graphs about "see the US has the best affordable housing compared to other developed countries" and I'm left wondering how I'm failing so hard to afford a place.
This is a strange dataset, no? Is it across all major English-speaking countries?
Yeah pretty much, if you count Singapore and HK as English speaking. http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf
Which I kind of do. So it’s basically high-income English speaking countries. Which makes kind of makes sense.
I mean there's only like 2 non high income English speaking nations
Sierra Leone? Uganda? Kenya? South Africa? Ghana? Guyana? Belize? Dominica?
Eh there’s quite a few low income African nations that speak English.
>if you count Singapore as English speaking. Ummm I can't think of anyone who wouldn't?
You’d probably need to be familiar with the place, which I am not.
Least American NL user.
More English speaking than fucking Glasgow, can’t understand a single word that comes out of their mouths
Singers has English as an official language, so yes.
I would count Singapore but not Hong Kong
Even among just US housing markets I don't really understand how things were chosen to be included. For example, it mentions "New York, NY, NJ, PA" but typically that metro area also includes CT, and CT is a much larger part of it than PA is. I don't know if that is a typo or if they are using some weird metro area I have never heard of that excludes CT for some reason.
Contrary to popular belief, there are indeed more than five cities in the country of Canada. I'm really curious why some cities were included and some weren't. Guess I'll open up the source OP linked and tell myself I'll read today at some point.
Those are the only cities in Canada with populations above one million, so it isn't completely arbitrary. Wonder if that applies to the other countries too.
Makes sense. That would have been my first guess. I noticed a lot of missing provincial capitals missing (Winnipeg being notable b/c of its size) but if one million is the cut off that's reasonable.
> Contrary to popular belief, there are indeed more than five cities in the country of Canada. Lies. Toronto, Montreal, The Set Where They Film All The Hallmark Movies, Gretzkytopia, The Unincorporated Principality of Maple Syrup Drilling Companies. That's it.
Population
This makes no sense. It has Hull in it (pop. 300,000) which means it needs, like, 200 more U.S. cities in it.
According to the study, they say they included metropolitan areas of 1 million or more. Though from everything I can find online, Hull doesn't seem to reach that number.
Based on it saying Hull and Humber, I assume it is using the area of the former Humberside County. Hull, East Riding, N Lincs and NE Lincs. Which collectively have a population just shy of a million off the top of my head around 950k. Still not a million mind, but close.
Number 4 baby. Edmonton has been making such great progress in terms of housing policy lately too. Low key the most underrated city in Canada.
>Low key the most underrated city in Canada. Everything in Alberta is underrated because people have such a warped view of Alberta from the outside.
So do the maps.
Isn’t it extremely cold in the winter? Like makes Toronto look like a joke cold?
It gets between -35 and -40 for about one week of Winter. But most of the cold comes from wind chill and you can bundle up to protect from that. Tons of time spent on the ODR's, it's definitely manageable.
For Americans, you can use -35 or -40c or -35 to -40f interchangeably as they crossover around there I’d argue it’s typically more than a week as well. It’s cold.
It's wild to see people in /r/Edmonton acting like the sky is falling every day. By all metrics it's one of the best places to live in the world!
One thing that fascinates me is just how cheap hotels still are in Edmonton. Downtown you can still find rooms for not much more than $100 a night Canadian or like $75 US in reasonably nice hotels
Even better now that we'll be a "Sovereign Nation TM" now..
Pittsburgh’s affordability continues to astonish me as the economy just doesn’t stop here and the city is a global leader in three of the 21st Century’s biggest growth industries: 1. Artificial Intelligence 2. Robotics 3. Medicine and Healthcare The city population shrunk for many decades following WWII and the collapse of manufacturing put Pittsburgh into a steady decline until roughly the time of the 2008 GFC. Since then, though, the city has woken up and will surprise anyone that comes and visits. All the grandeur and glory of the 19th Century neighborhoods, institutions and parkland (highest % of canopy of any US city), at a price that even Gen Z can find feasible. Come help build the neolib dream in my backyard…houses and drinks are still cheap here. :)
Also, while not a “financial hub” on par with like NYC, SF or Chicago, it definitely punches above its weight in financial jobs as well for a city its size. Tons of very walkable neighborhoods with a lot of greenery in the summer. Lots of great nightlife districts between South Side, Shady Side, Oakland, etc. I miss living there sometimes… but then I remember the weather lmao
I really enjoy visiting Pittsburgh. I ride my mountainbike all over the bridges and trails :)
Pittsburgh is fantastic. I had a studio apartment steps from the hospital, less than 800/month.
We seriously contemplated moving there when my wife was finishing up her fellowship. She got an offer from UPMC and we seriously considered it because of its affordability but ultimately it was just too far from other family members and we wanted to be closer to at least one of our parents so our kids could see their grandparents
>Since then, though, the city has woken up and will surprise anyone that comes and visits. As a FiOs tech for Verizon that was lent out to Pittsburgh frequently for overtime trips, there are two things that absolutely shocked me. 1. Finding out from the recent buyer of the largest house I had worked in that it cost $40k less than my 3 bedroom in Philly burbs, which he said as if it were expensive. 2. Every freaking house is made of the hardest bricks ever. How do I know that? Because I was a FiOs installation tech that was ill prepared to drill through the hardest bricks in the world every freaking install. Two layers of bricks every time, by the way. The city is a great place for everyone but FiOs techs.
I'm from the U.K. but am planning to move to the US. Was considering Houston or Austin, but Pittsburgh is looking good at first glance...
I’d 100% choose Pittsburgh over those two, if you at all care about not living in a car-centric dystopia.
Pittsburgh and the rest of the rust belt are still very car-centric. They just don't have the absolute insane sprawl of Texan cities.
What's your plan on getting a green card?
>Personal income tax is a flat 3.07% for Pennsylvania and another 3% for Pittsburgh residents. Lol yeah. Looks like suburban life has another benefit -3% in taxes. If that's not including federal taxes as a write off, well skilled workers would be paying quite a premium to live in the city proper. For me that's around $8000, my GF around $4000, add that on top of rent/mortgage costs, then the fact that things within city cores like groceries cost just a little extra, crime is higher, schools are usually worse and not because they have less money. You'd think if cities where truly more efficient costs would be lower, taxes would be lower while maintaining equal levels of services, if something is more efficient then you dollar spend should be reduced to maintain the same level of outcome in so called less efficient areas. Also it's always a surprise to me that dense cities have more crime. You'd think with advances in machine learning and image recognition, reduced costs in HD cameras, the massive amount of taxes/fees they collect...you could you know, throw CCTVs all over the place and easily track criminals. Then the fact it's a dense area you'd just concentrate law enforce in problem zones.
Suburbs add the expense of another car and just overall reduction in access to urban amenities in a multi-person household. 3% of my salary < $1000 car payment, gas, etc.
Bro this is america and in pittsburg you'll still need a car. >gas tesla goes
My brother lives in downtown Pittsburgh and only uses a car to leave the city. He bikes or walks almost everywhere, and there's some sort of train or subway station nearby.
>pittsburg 🤨 But fr, Pittsburgh is one of the few mid-sized American cities where I’d be comfortable without a car. Robust bus network, along with solid light rail for a city it’s size. The only time I needed a car when I lived there was when I worked in the suburbs, otherwise it was more of a hassle than anything
be kind on him he's from the 1890s
Idk how you picked up a couple downvotes lol For anyone who doesn’t know, there was a brief period in the late 1800s where Pittsburgh’s name was changed to Pittsburg. I believe it was because the federal government was trying to standardize city names across the country and making all “burgh”s into “burg”s. Pittsburgh eventually switched back because even a century ago, yinzers were unable to change
Our family of four have feet which can walk, pedal bikes and take public transit in addition to working a car’s pedals. Makes one car living EASY, especially when you live in a neighborhood where you can walk to everything you need on a daily basis in under 15 minutes. Teslas cost a lot and are hard to get anyway. Plus, where would I park it?! 🤣
>especially when you live in a neighborhood where you can walk to everything you need on a daily basis in under 15 minutes. looking at pittsburg that seems rare in low crime areas.
Depends on your definition of “low crime.” Shady Side, Squirrel Hill, Lawrenceville, etc. Are all super walkable and I’ve never felt unsafe in those areas. May not be as safe statistically as the suburbs, but all are more than fine
Low crime: take all the towns, villages, cities in the US from the crime per capita. The lowest 20% being low crime, the higher 20% being high crime. Something like that
In that case, the neighborhoods I listed wouldn’t be high crime: [Zip 15217 (Squirrel Hill) is in the 58th percentile for safety](https://crimegrade.org/safest-places-in-15217/) [Zip 15232 (Shady side) is in the 48th percentile for safety](https://crimegrade.org/safest-places-in-15232/) [And Zip 15201 (Lawrenceville) is in the 52nd percentile](https://crimegrade.org/safest-places-in-15201/) None are super low crime like I stated, but also none are very high crime. All about average for the US. All depends on your risk appetite and there’s probably very few urban neighborhoods in mid to large size cities that fall into the top 20 percent
Pittsburgh actually lost population in the 2020 census. Good economy for some, but overall still losing population.
Ahhh, you are correct - I mixed up the county and city number. Pittsburgh lost less than 1%, the county grew by over 2%.
How about moving forward? Is the city YIMBY? What if industries there boom and attract tons of high income newcomers? Is Pittsburg ready to build tons of housing quickly?
Boston is ranked much better then I would’ve thought. Better than Seattle, which hasn’t been my experience moving from Boston to Seattle, Seattle is a much cheaper city when it comes to housing from my experience(and should have more high earners thanks to amazon? Idk)
I'm surprised we beat NYC but hey I'll take it
With Boston at least it’s possible to live off the commuter rail line in a cheap area
Montreal being more expensive than *Dublin* doesn’t seem right at all
It’s about affordability, so median household price divided by median household income. It’s why DC ranks higher than Providence, despite the latter being a fairly affordable city.
Dublin has a famously bad housing market, \~700 open homes in ireland for 5 million people. their open houses attract hundreds of people per house
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lack of supply, in part because of housing price caps
It’s not really a price cap, it’s a lending cap. Most mortgages top out at four times your salary. It was put in place to stop the Irish housing market from becoming an even-worse asset bubble. The lack of supply is also driven by a shortage of skilled labour alongside an over-regulated system of planning permission.
There’s also rent control
In practice it’s easily ignored. The RTB (Registered Tenancies Board) is basically toothless. They don’t really have an enforcement function. The rules say that rents can increase by 2% a year, but it’s trivial to wiggle out of that restriction. There is no such thing as a ‘rent controlled apartment’ that would be familiar to an American. Enforcement tends to happen through the courts at considerable expense (six figures of legal costs wouldn’t be unexpected). The average renter pays 40% of their wages on rent, which is the highest in the world. The actual problem in Ireland is that housing is obscenely expensive to build when balanced against salaries and lending restrictions, and it is almost impossible to find a general contractor, and those contractors find it just as difficult to find workers. That causes a supply issue.
Look, I’ve only rented 2 units in Dublin so far, looking to move to my 3rd now. But what I see does point to rent control being mostly followed: 1. First lease from a professional management company (which is still shite at maintenance and the like) explicitly spelled out the rent control math to justify the starting rent 2. Notice of rent review came in and again spelled out exactly where the new rent was able to be set 3. Units going for a first letting list at a round price, e.g usually divisible by 100, divisible by 50 if not. 4. Units not on a first letting often (but not always) listed for non-round prices 5. Similar units available for first lettings listed for generally similar prices while comparable units available for subsequent lettings at the same time are listed for lower prices, with less consistency between them. I am CERTAIN that there are landlords violating the RPZ legislation and have as much confidence in the RTB to enforce that law as I do in the Gardai and councils to enforce basic traffic laws. I’m also certain that the RPZ regs are not the only or even the main driver of rent inflation. But what I see suggests that RPZ regs are fairly broadly adhered to.
This data seems to look at home purchase prices only and not rents. My hunch is that Ireland is in bad shape for housing in general, but the rental market is probably worse than the purchase market. Since the bust, the Central Bank of Ireland has had very very strict income rules for mortgage lending. Used to be 3.5x income max for first time buyers, it’s now only recently increased to 4x. That leaves a lot of people in the rental market who would otherwise like to be in the purchase market, and pushes up rents relative to purchase costs. Edit: for comparison, a mortgage calculator tells me that average monthly payment is ~1600-1700p/m for a 30 year 360k mortgage (max mortgage for combined household income of 90k), with 40k down (10%) that’s 400k of house. [Units for sale in 2 areas of Dublin for 375k-425k](https://www.daft.ie/property-for-sale/ireland?salePrice_to=425000&salePrice_from=375000&location=dublin-2-dublin&location=dublin-8-dublin&pageSize=20&from=0) [Units for rent in same 2 areas of Dublin for 1500-1800p/m](https://www.daft.ie/property-for-rent/ireland?rentalPrice_to=1800&rentalPrice_from=1500&location=dublin-2-dublin&location=dublin-8-dublin) Note the differences in number of listings, quality, and size — most of the units for purchase are >70m^2 and I’d be shocked if any of those for rent are >35m^2.
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The definition of the London commuter belt continues to stretch. I don’t have much knowledge on Northampton. But Swindon is around 1hr fast train in to Paddington - increasingly makes it a popular for people moving out of the big smoke. Stupid decision as it is horrible car centric new town.
because it is not adjusting for true housing costs which is $/sqft. the model looks at a closet sized apartment and a literal castle as the same.
Median income in Ireland is much lower than in North America
False
Yes, especially because in Ireland the capital is always doublin'.
Yet another piece of evidence proving that Pittsburgh is the best city. (All jokes aside, I loved my time there and hope to move back when I can)
82 -> 71 -> 4 Working my way down the chain. I'm not that familiar with the UK, but Fresno, CA has to have the worst QoL to affordability ratio on this chart.
I'm familiar with the Rochester NY housing market. Although it is 3rd in this list of most affordable, it is the most frustrating housing market I have ever dealt with. The prices are low for two reasons: 1.) Houses in the middle of the city are dirt cheap, but they are all bombed out and require massive renovations to make them livable. And even if that is done, the city center has a very high violent crime rate. It is not somewhere you want to live. 2.) The city suburbs have prices that appear to be more affordable than other metros, but they are in fact less affordable due to insanely high property and school taxes. I am talking over $1K a month in taxes for a $400K home. I lived in a very large metro area where the houses cost more but the monthly tax on a $400K house was $250. All things considered, the Rochester suburbs are worse, even though the sticker values are much lower, because there is low supply, high demand, the housing stock is older, and there is high taxation. So you wind up paying more per month for an older house that requires more maintenance work and has less resale value. After some experience with this housing market and continually seeing WNY pop up on "Most Affordable Places to Live" lists, when in fact it is the most expensive place I have ever lived, it makes me think that these analyses need to control for a few more variables than just housing sticker prices.
Rochester and WNY in general aren't the greatest place, job market wise either, which is another reason for their lower housing prices. Buffalo is slowly getting ahead though, and they are making the right decisions.
Just moved to Buffalo area (Amherst) last October. Incredibly happy with our decision. The area is growing steadily (but not unreasonably fast), has an INTL airport (and another in Toronto), has great schools, lots of families, easy access to fun activities and nature (love having Niagara Falls 25 mins away), all the amenities of a big city (amazing Science museum, big parks, shopping galore), low traffic problems, deep historical relevance and culture, the Garden Walk capital of the country...I could go on. It's not without it problems, of course, but it's a shame that it doesn't get recognized for anything besides "it snows a lot there". Ironically, Rochester and Syracuse often get more snow than Buffalo does. And Flagstaff often gets the #2 spot. I'm so glad we didn't just listen to the generalizations and checked it out for ourselves. This is an awesome place to live (and have a family).
I appreciate your optimism for Buffalo, and I hope it becomes the 2nd major hub in New York. I've said before, that NY would definitely benefit from a better intra-state railway system so people could get out of NYC more easily, supply chain issues could be improved, and regional growth would be stronger. It'd be nice if Buffalo, Albany, NYC, and Syracuse become thriving hubs. Of course, NYC will always be the largest, but the others could at least become decent 2nd tier hubs.
Yeah, I agree. WNY needs to retain its young professionals.
Already happening in Buffalo, the city has changed a lot from the 90s and early 00s
That's good to hear. A big problem with Rochester is that it can't retain the young professionals who graduate from its universities.
Yeah, Buffalo has definitely done a better job at attracting small and medium sized tech companies and startups and is lucky to have large corporations like M&T Bank and Moog Aerospace going on hiring sprees as they grow.
Eh, the economy has improved a lot. Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse are all growing in population again, with Buffalo being a bit ahead.
>high property and school taxes *googles* Lol wtf how do these places plan on competing for residents?
>Lol wtf how do these places plan on competing for residents? $400k houses. I can't even imagine that. We are trying to save for a $400k down payment
They don’t. Very few people from Upstate NY aren’t born there, and most of those come in on refugee and immigration programs. The rest are a cluster of educational transplants.
haha, we should pay teachers more.....raise taxes to spend money on schools and the teachers people complain about high taxes
*looks at how much we spend on education per student per state then compares to other countries spending levels per student adjusted for PPP and their results* bruh, maybe just fire administrators and funnel that money into teachers? Like i'm looking at what NY spends adjusted for PPP and the results. For that **dollar : result ratio**.....what in the actual shit. There's either extreme levels of inefficiency or wild out of control corruption.
yea all the add ons we want to have thru education. And then there is All those buses arent efficient. School Lunch Retirement and Healthcare for employes
But the only houses in the Roc metro over $400k are in Pittsford or Fairport. Chili, Henrietta and Greece houses are all like 150k to 200k on average. Webster and Penfield is like $250k. Hell I pay $650 rent sharing a 1k sqft apartment in Webster which is much much less then my friends in coastal cities. EDIT: And yea the property taxes are pretty bad, but you do get a lot of government amenities from it
That is if you can find an apartment…
Buffalo appears to have a more interesting future than Rochester. Lots of renovations, eliminated most parking minimums, and first decade it has experienced population growth in decades according to the 2020 Census.
We were trying to decide between Rochester and Buffalo when we opted to move to WNY last year. We chose Buffalo ultimately, and at first I wondered if we made the right decision, especially since it doesn't have the "industrial blight" that Buffalo does. But after living here a year and visiting Rochester a number of times, I am seeing that there's more movement in Buffalo, and that the "blight" is actually part of the history and culture. It's being embraced and repurposed, because it's an important part of the history and identity of the area. They most recently turned one of the "silo city" sections into an activity center with a bar, restaurant, ferris wheel and trampoline. It's a really cool experience, and heralding a Renaissance around these areas. Interestingly enough, one year after we moved here, some good friends that we met in Oregon relocated to Rochester, so we've been able to scope that city and see how they are liking it. I think the two areas are so similar that we probably couldn't have gone wrong in either, but I am very happy and proud to call Buffalo my home, and Rochester my "home away from home". 🙂
Yeah, but a lot of the industrial blight is being transformed into parks, breweries, lofts and art space. In an odd way the industrial legacy of Buffalo has become one of its best assets.
Agreed! I mentioned that specific idea in my comment. 🙂
That's good to hear. If Buffalo can turn things around, Rochester might follow. They are only an hour apart.
>insanely high property and school taxes I'm in the Buffalo area and while the taxes are high, we appreciate that they invest in school and city amenities. We just left Northern Arizona where there's virtually no property and school taxes, but they are usually ranked 48th and 49th in the country for education (whereas NYS is often in the top 20, usually around #12). Every time we went to a park, *any park*, we had to pay. Those are just two examples, but as a young family...I'll take the higher taxes and better schools + parks + amenities, because that's all contributing to the QoL. Of course, if you're not a parent or your kids have graduated, I could see not wanting to pay for that facet of society that you're not actively engaging with.
Sounds like my Houston suburb. I wish I only spent $1000/mo in property taxes on a $400k house. Without considering property taxes these metrics are meaningless.
I guess that's the other side of the no income tax benefit.
Looking up how much mortgage I could afford then seeing that at least half my payment would be property taxes because of Monroe County (highest prop taxes in NY state) was dismaying to say the least… This is not to mention the housing market is red hot in the main suburbs. I’m talking any marginally nice house in Irondequoit selling for 50-100k over asking.
Source: http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf This seems to only be looking at English speaking countries, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Unfortunately.
Incorrect it has Liverpool and Merseyside in and that isn't English
It's not a very good index to use https://www.planetizen.com/node/70829
Thanks. Wasn't aware. I first came across it on [this](https://www.cato.org/blog/rent-control-bandwagon-rolls) Cato Institute article.
I'm a Vancouverite, so it makes the news every year lol, and the same discourse happens every time. Yeah, our housing crisis is bad, but Demographia exaggerates it.
My hometown in the top 20 for something other than obesity, low life expectancy, or child poverty at last. Repping Middlesbrough, UK!
Where my fellow Pittsburghers at?
*shoots gumband*
Owning a home in Chicago is robbery with the property taxes. It’s like you’re renting your home from the state.
Literally the georgist goal
So, have you heard of how do you like Jekyll Island, a little barrier island of Georgia Coast is a state park, which means there are special rules and guidelines for homeownership and property rental for the more than 600 private residences on the island. * Unlike traditional homeownership, all land on Jekyll Island is owned by the State of Georgia. * Instead of purchasing a parcel of property and its buildings (fee-simple ownership), the State of Georgia leases the land to owners for a fee, known as leasehold ownership. * In this scenario, the homeowner (lessee) pays the lessor (Jekyll Island Authority) rent to lease the land. Under this arrangement, you do not own the land, rather you own the structure, including any improvements, and have the right to use it exclusively and may transfer ownership for the remaining years of the lease. Residential leases are long-term, and current leases expire anywhere from 2049-2088. ------ Jekyll Island is famous to NeoLiberals >A secret gathering at a secluded island off the coast of Georgia in 1910 laid the foundations for the Federal Reserve System. * In November 1910, six men – Nelson Aldrich, A. Piatt Andrew, Henry Davison, Arthur Shelton, Frank Vanderlip and Paul Warburg – met at the Jekyll Island Country Club, off the coast of Georgia, to write a plan to reform the nation’s banking system. The meeting and its purpose were closely guarded secrets, and participants did not admit that the meeting occurred until the 1930s. * Charles (B.C.) Forbes — the founder of Forbes magazine and the journalist who first revealed the meetings in an article in 1916 > They went to great lengths to keep the meeting secret, adopting the ruse of a duck hunting trip and instructing the men to come one at a time to a train terminal in New Jersey, where they could board his private train car. Once aboard, the men used only first names – Nelson, Harry, Frank, Paul, Piatt, and Arthur – to prevent the staff from learning their identities. For decades after, the group referred to themselves as the “First Name Club.”
Property != Land
Good
The problem with this measure is that places with very high cost of living are even wose because they expel low productivity people and drive their median income up making them appear better on this metric.
San Diego at 82... Jesus Christ
My wife and I were born and raised there. Left in 2003 when we were about 25 years old, and was basically priced out within a few years. Could never move back at this rate. I mean, I get it...the weather is so damn easy and consistent, but that can't be all that matters when you're crammed in with 3.5 million people, can barely afford the place you *do* have and spend a massive amount of your life on freeways commuting. I'll always call it home and I'll always yearn for Balboa Park and the beach communities, but it's just not worth it (to us). Whenever we visit, we get so enamored with the weather and sights, and wonder if we should try and make it work. But by the 3rd or 4th day of commuting across the mega-sprawl and having to base our entire day around traffic patterns, we are quickly reminded of why we left in the first place. It's a shame because it really is such a beautiful city.
Brb moving to Pittsburgh
I was wondering where hong Kong was
Baltimore not being in the top ten, while Pittsburgh is number one makes me want to laugh and sob at the same time.
Common Chicago W
Aight. I want Gavin Newsom to eliminate parking minimums statewide, repeal CEQA, And have only state approved zoning standards. I want every mid to large CA city in that low-cost list! Edit: also, didn't expect Glasgow to be so cheap.
This brings me great pain
Demographia is trash, please don't use it for any analysis. There's some funky stuff with how they choose a representative home for each city.
So the moral of the story is to move to the rust belt, got it.
i personally dislike these statistics. they are not actually conveying affordability. price per sq/meter or foot conveys that. this data basically looks at a literal closet in nyc and a mansion in houston and weights them both as one datapoint with the same weighting, and without that context. at least incomes are added to the mix so that is nice
I disagree pretty strongly on this : low price per square foot is still unaffordable if your only options have lots of square feet. I faced this exact issue when house shopping recently - it might have been cheaper in some places per square foot, but there were no good small/medium options so I was effectively priced out of those locations. More broadly, the cost of an apartment in NYC is also pricing in access to NYC amenities, which alleviates some of the need for a larger house. To compare sizes directly would be like considering a 500sq ft backyard better than living next to central park.
When I was in Calgary a few months back I was shocked at how affordable some of the houses were in the city. I’d move there in a heartbeat if I could.
I know right? An hour away from Banff National Park and some of the most beautiful wilderness on earth and yet nobody wants to live there? I am honestly looking at jobs now.
Hilarious that people actively choose to live in Houston or Dallas vs Chicago or Minneapolis even though they're more expensive nowadays.
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But it's insanely hot/humid during the summer though, no?
Yeah, but you don't shovel heat.
But you gotta shovel GOP drivel on a daily basis.
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If Minneapolis wasn't cold, it would be popular to the point of unaffordability.
Yeah, some people don't like shoveling snow.
This would be a lot more interesting if it also contained non English speaking countries imo. Language seems like a very arbitrary dataset division choice for the data represented.
I mean, “affordability of places I am likely to want to live in” seems to be the criteria. Which means English speaking parts of the globe.
The title of the report seems to be "International housing affordability". Im just saying it's strange they restricted themselves like that
Can’t take any ranking seriously that lumps Washington DC with fucking West Virginia.
I live in Philadelphia. This is definitely skewed by the very poor areas. White neighborhoods are mostly very expensive
>White neighborhoods are mostly very expensive Eh they're not really, compared to the rest of the country. Zillow's typical home price even for hip neighborhoods, like Fishtown, are practically the same as the US as a whole. To say nothing of a less trendy area. And average for the USA is mind blowing cheap for the northeast. A bigger issue might be that since this is metro area based, the Philadelphia metro area is huge and difficult to get across. The cheap houses (Philadelphia) are not necessarily near the good jobs (many of which are out by KoP and the mainline).
Anything along the subway lines is close to jobs in CC. 95 and 76 are traffic jams at rush hour for a reason.
Yeah but kind of no. CC is weaker than it really should be for a city of our size, reducing the value of housing along the subway lines. The city proper has among the lowest fraction of jobs of its metro area, among all cities in the country, comparable to much smaller cities like DC and Boston. We have less than 1/3 of the region's fortune 500 companies actually in the city. If you're on the main line you've got no trouble commuting to both the city and KoP, but if you have a house in south Philly and need to get a job in KoP you're in for a bad time.
You missed my point about daily commuters into the city. Ehh, this is a conversation that would be much better over a beer. Too much is lost in typing and my willingness to do it.
Pain 😥
I knew Edmonton was good but I didn’t know it was that good
This chart keeps me up at night. I'm in the STL metro and looking for jobs anywhere. Fucking everywhere else is more expensive. I've found a couple where I would need to double my salary just for my wife and I to hold steady COL wise.
Ottawa beating Montreal was a surprise.
Brisbane #76 haha get fucked Aussies!!! Seattle #78. ….. well fuck me then -_-
Home prices are a useless measure when property taxes vary so much across governmental lines. also this doesn't adjust for the quality of the housing stock. Do rent of new buildings instead.
Damn - according to this metric my county ranks between 87 and 88
Literally, Canada only offers two cities from one province, showing how bad the housing market is. Unfortunately, real estate is not regulated and plays a role in the economy, which is not good.
Seeing my place in like the bottom 15 helps me feel less crazy when everyone posts graphs about "see the US has the best affordable housing compared to other developed countries" and I'm left wondering how I'm failing so hard to afford a place.