Note that some of the entries here are clearly outdated. I've cycled through some "global south" countries that I'm familiar with and what's shown may have been true maybe 15-20 years ago. GDP has 4x since then and at the same salary level the lifestyle is either equivalent or better than the richer countries.
Typically in developing economies, economic growth is very unevenly distributed. I would expect that in an economy that has grown 4x, many people would not experience any economic growth at all. I would be very surprised if that didn't happen - if rapid economic growth was that evenly distributed. And governments, especially in developing countries with little accumulated wealth and little credit, cannot afford to raise the standard of living of large numbers of people through welfare programs.
I observed the same. There are "poor" countries listed here that would make large swaths of Americans look like they still lived pre-WWII, and were destitute.
Edit: Sorry, to be more explicit: by global standards large swaths of Americans DO live pre-WWII lives and have poorly constructed homes and lifestyles.
I've generally loved this site. Wondering what other distributions could be made so visual, where people near the top complain about the people just above them.
To give context on my other comments, where I live in Scotland, median full time wage is around $55k.
You can live a perfectly comfortable life on that; you don't have to worry about bills or medical expenses, and you can afford to get a mortgage and buy a house (probably costing around $300k or so)
That's why I'm surprised about people from a richer nation saying they can't afford things.
> That's why I'm surprised about people from a richer nation saying they can't afford things
If you had the same salary in Switzerland or Luxembourg which, believe it or not, is not impossible, there would be a lot of items that you can't afford. Salary is important but cost of living matters as well. Granted, inside the same country, figures could change drastically but people tend to live where there are lots of job opportunities where it's more expensive.
Long mortgages are a really really bad idea with high interest percentages. Unless you've locked in a low percentage from before corona you're going to pay almost as much in interest as you'd be paying for the house...
To pay off 300k within 30 years at current mortgage interest of 4% you'll have to pay 1432/month (215k of interest will be necessary)
Depending on the amount of taxes you have to pay, thats likely > 50% of netto wage
The median income in Southern England is comparable, but house prices are 2-3x higher. Not surprising that we moan about tax subsidies getting paid to folk with a better lifestyle.
In developed countries, people buy (or rent) the things they need. Most financial transactions are recorded, taxed, regulated, and with 3rd parties involved at every step (who also expect to get payed). Car insurance, home insurance, electrical bill, etc etc. Grocery prices go up, you pay more. Renting, and rents are raised? Tough.
But in less-developed countries it's not rare for people to grow their own food. They could be living on 0 income & still have food on the table. Swap produce & services with other people in town. No 3rd parties, no taxes (see: informal economy). Build their own home on family-owned land. Insurance? What insurance?
TLDR; there's many flavours & angles on what "poor" or "rich" means in practice.
Concepts based on this take no account whatsoever of the differences in currencies and local/national economies that lead to incredibly different costs of normal life in different towns within a state, let alone between different countries around the world. If it were somehow possible to magically level USD incomes of all families depicted in this chart, perhaps to an arbitrary median of $2500/mo, many of the poorest families would be very wealthy — or at least very well-off — by their local standards, while many of the high-income families would lose their homes, healthcare, and means of income due to their local costs of living. It’s always so strange to me that people seem unable to comprehend this simple fact that nearly all of our international economics today are predicated on exploiting.
what is your point? as far as i can tell the pictures only show the reality. they don't explain why. the interpretation is up to the reader.
my personal experience suggests that cost of living vs living standards is pretty uniform globally if compared on a national level. (at least in the places i have been to. higher cost of living in a country always also meant higher living standards, and vice versa. differences only mattered within a country with popular locations being more expensive, and there mostly it affects the cost for homes.). so your idea that raising poor families to $2500/mo would make them wealthy is only true if they don't try to change their living standards.
and what does that have to do with international economics being based on exploitation? again, that's an interpretation of the things we can see here. i don't disagree with the interpretation, it's just that the photos do not themselves make the interpretation, they only observe.
It depends. In a ridiculously cheap country like India where food prices are hilariously low you can get quite far on $200/month. Fresh vegetables (tomatoes, potatoes, onion, garlic, spinach, squashes, gourds, eggplants etc) are literally an order of magnitude cheaper than what you would find in a cheap American grocery store. You can also get full meals from restaurants for about 30-40c. Medical care is also dirt cheap with most regular doctor visits costing between $1-$2. High end medical care and surgeries for less than $1000 for the whole procedure and stay. The PPP multiplier is something like 6-7x.
> Expecting to own a high end house in a dense metro are on its own, is a pretty insane expectation.
High salaries and an industry boom over the last decade created a sort of whiny arrogance amongst software developers, and particularly those of Silicon Valley. They desperately want to see themselves as the elite.
Of course the elite get their mansion where they want. They are entitled to it.
You have it backwards. Housing is astronomically expensive in San Francisco precisely because there are so many people with high incomes bidding against each other.
When you have a highly inelastic supply (constrained by zoning laws, density limits, and geographical boundaries), prices rise to the maximum margin of what the highest-income buyers are capable of paying.
Regarding taxes: Since taxes apply to all local high-earners equally, it doesn't change their relative purchasing power against one another in the local housing market. If taxes were suddenly halved, that extra liquidity would be priced into the next bidding war, driving home prices even higher.
I promise you not. Houses here cost $2M+ for something livable and $1M for something with mold and other safety issues.
When half that $50K gets taxed, half of what's remaining has to be saved up for retirement in a place that deeply discriminates against age, you don't have much left to save up for buying a $2M house.
> half of what's remaining has to be saved up for retirement in a place that deeply discriminates against age, you don't have much left to save up for buying a $2M house.
Buying a $2M house is saving for retirement. Owning your own home in retirement is a massive financial win. And if you own a home in an expensive market, you can sell it, buy one in a more affordable market, and then the difference is unlocked retirement savings.
It’s untrue. Unstated assumptions are the quality of housing desired and location desired. In practice, because of the rent/price ratio being low here in SF most people will be taking a downgrade when going from rent to 1.25x that as mortgage after putting down $300k for a $1.5m.
It is true that the marginal rate can be very high, though, so heuristics based on pre tax income break down at these numbers. The place we live in costs $7k/mo but to buy it we’d have to spend $450k and then $9.5k/mo.
Nah it's the reality here. I'd say minimum income to safely own housing here is $100K-150K/month. OR cash already saved for the home, in which case income doesn't matter.
Yes, lots of households make that much, especially people at e.g. Nvidia with unvested appreciated RSUs.
Yes, the US economy is that badly fucked.
And the people on mortages were brainwashed into buying something they can't afford, and in for a foreclosure disaster when the economy corrects.
In every thread about housing people on HN post wildly outlandish claims about expenses that belie their totally out of touch perspectives. If you make 100K a month (the lower bound of what you just wrote). Let's say you put 25K into retirement. You eat out every meal so 4K food/living budget. That leaves 60K (I'll give you 10K slush fund for savings money or as a general keeping-up-with-the-jones' fund).
60K per month will pay a 4.5 million dollar mortgage. 4.5 million will buy you some of the nicest houses in the bay that aren't mansions. See:
You are either insane, or out of touch in a way that makes you insane. Of course, you can get a much cheaper very nice condo and "safely" squirrel away phenomenal amounts of cash savings. Expecting to own a high end house in a dense metro are on its own, is a pretty insane expectation.
Thanks for your comment. It makes a little sense that the average person might struggle with costs in the US, but it doesn't make sense that the highest earners do.
SF property tax on a $4.5M property: 1.18268325% for a total of about $53,220.75
Total: about $493K for an effective tax rate of about 41%, assuming this hypothetical SF resident is single and just purchased their $4.5M property this year.
No. There are many, many more taxes besides what your "effective" tax calculator reports. Every time it seems people have to come out of the woods to educate about "effective tax", but it's not really how it works, and it's how the system has poisoned people into thinking they are paying less tax than they are. Besides your tax return you have all these taxes:
* Self-employment taxes: Lower-income people are usually 1099, and are typically subject to additional 7.5% tax
* Sales taxes: Lower income people typically spend most of their dollars on sales-taxable items, so an additional 10%+ on post-tax amounts, which figures out to additional 15%-ish on pre-tax income
* Health insurance: Lower income people typically have to buy their own health insurance, something that should have been provided by the country but isn't, and is effectively a systematic tax on everyone
* Health deductibles: Insurance sold to lower income people doesn't even cover the first few thousand dollars a year, while higher income brackets pay close to zero deductibles. In many other countries "deductibles" isn't even a thing; they too are an effective systematic tax on lower income brackets fueled by the oligarchy of government and financial powers
* Car registration fees: Registration really only requires paperwork done once; recurring annual "registration" is a tax rebranded as a registration
* Property taxes: Even if you don't own, you pay them -- your landlord passes them through to you
The list goes on and on. Taxes are split up like this only because there would be an uprising if they lumped it all together, so they split it up and tax you in pieces and chunks (April 15 is only one chunk) so that you think you're paying less, psychologically.
But yeah, 50% is about the right number for that income.
> 60K per month will pay a 4.5 million dollar mortgage
A mortgage is NOT owning! So many people are poisoned by this propaganda promoted by American society and banks. They prey on the masses by infiltrating the public with this live-on-borrowed-money ideology.
Your 60K/month may end NEXT month and become 0/month if you are subject to the next round of Zuck's layoffs, or you end up stack ranked and PIPed at Amazon due to internal politics. One of these things happen and poof you're in the 0th percentile of income.
In the bay area, if you want a $4.5M home, you need to have $4.5M in cash or liquid assets. Period. Otherwise you're risking a foreclosure disaster if you accidentally say something wrong in a leadership update meeting, or if this AI heyday comes crashing down.
Borrowing money does not mean you own something, and is a very American way of doing things.
You’re playing with words here. Mortgages are considered ownership around the world.
It’s only fair I throw a creative wrench in your idea of ownership then: eminent domain. You can never own something if it can just be taken away even if you are compensated.
> Mortgages are considered ownership around the world.
Only because the people in power have successfully brainwashed everyone into thinking so. I don't care what brainwashed people consider it to be. I only consider it what it actually is.
From first principles, it is objectively not ownership, if the bank has rights on it.
I don't believe in paying "towards" anything. Either you buy it or you don't, in full. Anything else is financially irresponsible, unless you have the collateral but are only preferring not to liqudate.
fair enough, but that's a different argument. and when it comes to a mortgage your alternative option is renting, and the worst case scenario that you can't pay rent or your mortgage is the same.
it's not like a car where you have the option to do without, you can't do without a place to live. i am pro renting, but unlike a car loan i don't see a mortgage less financially responsible because you can almost always just repay the mortgage by selling the house, in other words unlike any other loan mortgage is unlikely to put you into a debt that you can't repay because the house is your collateral. (unless the housing market crashes maybe)
Then don’t worry your pretty little fingers informing us of your uninformed opinion. You get what you give.
You also cowardly avoided my last remark, or just have no idea what that is. Eminent domain says that your government can decide to take something you think you own, thus proving you don’t own it no matter where you put your name on it or how you paid for it.
You can't make many national judgements based on the economics of the Bay Area. It's much more sane in nearly every other area (with some other outliers, such as New York City).
Man, that's nicer than houses in Redmond for the same money (though the SF one is a touch smaller), and you won't get that view. Bay Area house prices are insane, ya say?
Does the website reference net or gross monthly income?
Edit:
So the numbers are not a direct exchange rate to USD.
Q: How were dollar values assigned to households?
A: The households’ door numbers represent the consumption values (US dollars) that each adult in the household has per month. This figure comes from a combination of the household’s self-reported consumption and income levels. We then checked the official cost of living data in each country to adjust the values for purchasing power parity (PPP) and converted the value into US dollars. Read more about how we assigned the Dollar Street values here.
The housing market is highly dependent on the job market so no, it’s not “being fussy”, it’s “I need to live here so I can have a job and income”. Unless you’re suggesting that people should quit their jobs and go get that cheap house in the middle of nowhere?
Depressingly, they bought a house in 1995 before the prices exploded. You need a 94th percentile income in Toronto to barely qualify for the average house.
I'm not familiar with the situation in San Francisco. But in Santa Cruz, the cost to own with a 20% down payment is ~50% higher than the rent for the same unit. If you can't afford a substantially higher down payment, you're not really in the market for a home.
With $7k/month after tax, you would probably be renting an 1br, or maybe a cheap 2br. But your income is not high enough to buy anything, unless you start looking for homes well outside the town.
You're not going to save up for a $1-2M house very fast on $7000/month, when you also have to live off that $7K, pay rent, pay medical bills, and save up for retirement expenses.
Note that some of the entries here are clearly outdated. I've cycled through some "global south" countries that I'm familiar with and what's shown may have been true maybe 15-20 years ago. GDP has 4x since then and at the same salary level the lifestyle is either equivalent or better than the richer countries.
yeah some things are old - but still important documentation of how some people live.
Typically in developing economies, economic growth is very unevenly distributed. I would expect that in an economy that has grown 4x, many people would not experience any economic growth at all. I would be very surprised if that didn't happen - if rapid economic growth was that evenly distributed. And governments, especially in developing countries with little accumulated wealth and little credit, cannot afford to raise the standard of living of large numbers of people through welfare programs.
I observed the same. There are "poor" countries listed here that would make large swaths of Americans look like they still lived pre-WWII, and were destitute.
Edit: Sorry, to be more explicit: by global standards large swaths of Americans DO live pre-WWII lives and have poorly constructed homes and lifestyles.
I've generally loved this site. Wondering what other distributions could be made so visual, where people near the top complain about the people just above them.
Click the Families dropdown. There are many other things, including beds, pets, toys and teeth.
To give context on my other comments, where I live in Scotland, median full time wage is around $55k.
You can live a perfectly comfortable life on that; you don't have to worry about bills or medical expenses, and you can afford to get a mortgage and buy a house (probably costing around $300k or so)
That's why I'm surprised about people from a richer nation saying they can't afford things.
> That's why I'm surprised about people from a richer nation saying they can't afford things
If you had the same salary in Switzerland or Luxembourg which, believe it or not, is not impossible, there would be a lot of items that you can't afford. Salary is important but cost of living matters as well. Granted, inside the same country, figures could change drastically but people tend to live where there are lots of job opportunities where it's more expensive.
How can you afford a 300k mortgage at 55k a year. That would be a very large percent of monthly pay right?
Yes, houses are expensive, but it's not out of reach. You can afford a mortgage on the average home.
Mortgages are generally paid over 30 years.
Long mortgages are a really really bad idea with high interest percentages. Unless you've locked in a low percentage from before corona you're going to pay almost as much in interest as you'd be paying for the house...
To pay off 300k within 30 years at current mortgage interest of 4% you'll have to pay 1432/month (215k of interest will be necessary)
Depending on the amount of taxes you have to pay, thats likely > 50% of netto wage
The median income in Southern England is comparable, but house prices are 2-3x higher. Not surprising that we moan about tax subsidies getting paid to folk with a better lifestyle.
If it helps, think of it less as Subsidy and more as Tribute!
What's missing in comments:
In developed countries, people buy (or rent) the things they need. Most financial transactions are recorded, taxed, regulated, and with 3rd parties involved at every step (who also expect to get payed). Car insurance, home insurance, electrical bill, etc etc. Grocery prices go up, you pay more. Renting, and rents are raised? Tough.
But in less-developed countries it's not rare for people to grow their own food. They could be living on 0 income & still have food on the table. Swap produce & services with other people in town. No 3rd parties, no taxes (see: informal economy). Build their own home on family-owned land. Insurance? What insurance?
TLDR; there's many flavours & angles on what "poor" or "rich" means in practice.
Whoa, nice reminder of how filthy rich I and almost everyone I know are.
Concepts based on this take no account whatsoever of the differences in currencies and local/national economies that lead to incredibly different costs of normal life in different towns within a state, let alone between different countries around the world. If it were somehow possible to magically level USD incomes of all families depicted in this chart, perhaps to an arbitrary median of $2500/mo, many of the poorest families would be very wealthy — or at least very well-off — by their local standards, while many of the high-income families would lose their homes, healthcare, and means of income due to their local costs of living. It’s always so strange to me that people seem unable to comprehend this simple fact that nearly all of our international economics today are predicated on exploiting.
what is your point? as far as i can tell the pictures only show the reality. they don't explain why. the interpretation is up to the reader.
my personal experience suggests that cost of living vs living standards is pretty uniform globally if compared on a national level. (at least in the places i have been to. higher cost of living in a country always also meant higher living standards, and vice versa. differences only mattered within a country with popular locations being more expensive, and there mostly it affects the cost for homes.). so your idea that raising poor families to $2500/mo would make them wealthy is only true if they don't try to change their living standards.
and what does that have to do with international economics being based on exploitation? again, that's an interpretation of the things we can see here. i don't disagree with the interpretation, it's just that the photos do not themselves make the interpretation, they only observe.
Modern lifestyle seems to start at $700-$800 per month per adult pretty much everywhere and doesn't get much better even at few k.
It depends. In a ridiculously cheap country like India where food prices are hilariously low you can get quite far on $200/month. Fresh vegetables (tomatoes, potatoes, onion, garlic, spinach, squashes, gourds, eggplants etc) are literally an order of magnitude cheaper than what you would find in a cheap American grocery store. You can also get full meals from restaurants for about 30-40c. Medical care is also dirt cheap with most regular doctor visits costing between $1-$2. High end medical care and surgeries for less than $1000 for the whole procedure and stay. The PPP multiplier is something like 6-7x.
> Expecting to own a high end house in a dense metro are on its own, is a pretty insane expectation.
High salaries and an industry boom over the last decade created a sort of whiny arrogance amongst software developers, and particularly those of Silicon Valley. They desperately want to see themselves as the elite.
Of course the elite get their mansion where they want. They are entitled to it.
It's interesting that $14000/month is "rich" on this website, and some people earning $100/month actually own houses.
Meanwhile people making $50000/month in San Francisco can't afford a house because half of it is taxed away and housing is astronomically expensive.
You have it backwards. Housing is astronomically expensive in San Francisco precisely because there are so many people with high incomes bidding against each other.
When you have a highly inelastic supply (constrained by zoning laws, density limits, and geographical boundaries), prices rise to the maximum margin of what the highest-income buyers are capable of paying.
Regarding taxes: Since taxes apply to all local high-earners equally, it doesn't change their relative purchasing power against one another in the local housing market. If taxes were suddenly halved, that extra liquidity would be priced into the next bidding war, driving home prices even higher.
I promise you that someone in SF making $50k/month can comfortably afford a very nice house.
I promise you not. Houses here cost $2M+ for something livable and $1M for something with mold and other safety issues.
When half that $50K gets taxed, half of what's remaining has to be saved up for retirement in a place that deeply discriminates against age, you don't have much left to save up for buying a $2M house.
> half of what's remaining has to be saved up for retirement in a place that deeply discriminates against age, you don't have much left to save up for buying a $2M house.
Buying a $2M house is saving for retirement. Owning your own home in retirement is a massive financial win. And if you own a home in an expensive market, you can sell it, buy one in a more affordable market, and then the difference is unlocked retirement savings.
Ok, I made my other comment before seeing this but I find it very difficult to believe you can't find something reasonable for far less.
It’s untrue. Unstated assumptions are the quality of housing desired and location desired. In practice, because of the rent/price ratio being low here in SF most people will be taking a downgrade when going from rent to 1.25x that as mortgage after putting down $300k for a $1.5m.
It is true that the marginal rate can be very high, though, so heuristics based on pre tax income break down at these numbers. The place we live in costs $7k/mo but to buy it we’d have to spend $450k and then $9.5k/mo.
Nah it's the reality here. I'd say minimum income to safely own housing here is $100K-150K/month. OR cash already saved for the home, in which case income doesn't matter.
Yes, lots of households make that much, especially people at e.g. Nvidia with unvested appreciated RSUs.
Yes, the US economy is that badly fucked.
And the people on mortages were brainwashed into buying something they can't afford, and in for a foreclosure disaster when the economy corrects.
In every thread about housing people on HN post wildly outlandish claims about expenses that belie their totally out of touch perspectives. If you make 100K a month (the lower bound of what you just wrote). Let's say you put 25K into retirement. You eat out every meal so 4K food/living budget. That leaves 60K (I'll give you 10K slush fund for savings money or as a general keeping-up-with-the-jones' fund).
60K per month will pay a 4.5 million dollar mortgage. 4.5 million will buy you some of the nicest houses in the bay that aren't mansions. See:
https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/midcentury-modern-...
You are either insane, or out of touch in a way that makes you insane. Of course, you can get a much cheaper very nice condo and "safely" squirrel away phenomenal amounts of cash savings. Expecting to own a high end house in a dense metro are on its own, is a pretty insane expectation.
Thanks for your comment. It makes a little sense that the average person might struggle with costs in the US, but it doesn't make sense that the highest earners do.
Don't forget taxes. In that bracket, in California, you're paying 50% of your income in taxes, and so $100K/month is actually $50K/month.
I think OP is overselling the point, but not by nearly as much as people think.
That's not how tax brackets work.
The effective tax would be about 26%.
It's quite a bit more than that. I get total taxes paid of:
Federal: 1240 + 0.12 * (50400 - 12401) + 0.22 * (105700 - 50401) + 0.24 * (201775 - 105771) + 0.32 * (256225 - 201776) + 0.35 * (640600 - 256226) + 0.37 * (1200000 - 640601) = 399938.83
State: 0.01 * 11078 + 0.02 * (26264 - 11080) + 0.04 * (41452 - 26265) + 0.06 * (57542 - 41453) + 0.08 * (72724 - 57543) + 0.093 * (371479 - 72725) + 0.0103 * (445771 - 371480) + 0.0113 * (742953 - 445772) + 0.0123 * (1200000 - 742954)
SF property tax on a $4.5M property: 1.18268325% for a total of about $53,220.75
Total: about $493K for an effective tax rate of about 41%, assuming this hypothetical SF resident is single and just purchased their $4.5M property this year.
Sorry, I'm used to people quoting annual salaries and misread the GP.
No. There are many, many more taxes besides what your "effective" tax calculator reports. Every time it seems people have to come out of the woods to educate about "effective tax", but it's not really how it works, and it's how the system has poisoned people into thinking they are paying less tax than they are. Besides your tax return you have all these taxes:
* Self-employment taxes: Lower-income people are usually 1099, and are typically subject to additional 7.5% tax
* Sales taxes: Lower income people typically spend most of their dollars on sales-taxable items, so an additional 10%+ on post-tax amounts, which figures out to additional 15%-ish on pre-tax income
* Health insurance: Lower income people typically have to buy their own health insurance, something that should have been provided by the country but isn't, and is effectively a systematic tax on everyone
* Health deductibles: Insurance sold to lower income people doesn't even cover the first few thousand dollars a year, while higher income brackets pay close to zero deductibles. In many other countries "deductibles" isn't even a thing; they too are an effective systematic tax on lower income brackets fueled by the oligarchy of government and financial powers
* Car registration fees: Registration really only requires paperwork done once; recurring annual "registration" is a tax rebranded as a registration
* Property taxes: Even if you don't own, you pay them -- your landlord passes them through to you
The list goes on and on. Taxes are split up like this only because there would be an uprising if they lumped it all together, so they split it up and tax you in pieces and chunks (April 15 is only one chunk) so that you think you're paying less, psychologically.
But yeah, 50% is about the right number for that income.
It's 2026 on a self proclaimed big brain forum and people still don't understand basic things like tax brackets... A sight to behold
> 60K per month will pay a 4.5 million dollar mortgage
A mortgage is NOT owning! So many people are poisoned by this propaganda promoted by American society and banks. They prey on the masses by infiltrating the public with this live-on-borrowed-money ideology.
Your 60K/month may end NEXT month and become 0/month if you are subject to the next round of Zuck's layoffs, or you end up stack ranked and PIPed at Amazon due to internal politics. One of these things happen and poof you're in the 0th percentile of income.
In the bay area, if you want a $4.5M home, you need to have $4.5M in cash or liquid assets. Period. Otherwise you're risking a foreclosure disaster if you accidentally say something wrong in a leadership update meeting, or if this AI heyday comes crashing down.
Borrowing money does not mean you own something, and is a very American way of doing things.
Pretty sure lending is common thw world over
Never go full crazy.
You’re playing with words here. Mortgages are considered ownership around the world.
It’s only fair I throw a creative wrench in your idea of ownership then: eminent domain. You can never own something if it can just be taken away even if you are compensated.
> Mortgages are considered ownership around the world.
Only because the people in power have successfully brainwashed everyone into thinking so. I don't care what brainwashed people consider it to be. I only consider it what it actually is.
From first principles, it is objectively not ownership, if the bank has rights on it.
i don't think this is helpful. it is pay towards ownership, whereas rent isn't.
I don't believe in paying "towards" anything. Either you buy it or you don't, in full. Anything else is financially irresponsible, unless you have the collateral but are only preferring not to liqudate.
fair enough, but that's a different argument. and when it comes to a mortgage your alternative option is renting, and the worst case scenario that you can't pay rent or your mortgage is the same.
it's not like a car where you have the option to do without, you can't do without a place to live. i am pro renting, but unlike a car loan i don't see a mortgage less financially responsible because you can almost always just repay the mortgage by selling the house, in other words unlike any other loan mortgage is unlikely to put you into a debt that you can't repay because the house is your collateral. (unless the housing market crashes maybe)
> I don't care
Then don’t worry your pretty little fingers informing us of your uninformed opinion. You get what you give.
You also cowardly avoided my last remark, or just have no idea what that is. Eminent domain says that your government can decide to take something you think you own, thus proving you don’t own it no matter where you put your name on it or how you paid for it.
You can't make many national judgements based on the economics of the Bay Area. It's much more sane in nearly every other area (with some other outliers, such as New York City).
You're shifting the goal posts, but I'll bite... what is 'safely' owning a home, to you?
I am not even sure if you are being sarcastic.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/80-Prentiss-St-San-Franci...
check this out.
Man, that's nicer than houses in Redmond for the same money (though the SF one is a touch smaller), and you won't get that view. Bay Area house prices are insane, ya say?
If your net pay is $7000 per month you absolutely can afford to own a house, you're just being fussy about the house you want.
Does the website reference net or gross monthly income?
Edit:
So the numbers are not a direct exchange rate to USD.
Q: How were dollar values assigned to households? A: The households’ door numbers represent the consumption values (US dollars) that each adult in the household has per month. This figure comes from a combination of the household’s self-reported consumption and income levels. We then checked the official cost of living data in each country to adjust the values for purchasing power parity (PPP) and converted the value into US dollars. Read more about how we assigned the Dollar Street values here.
The housing market is highly dependent on the job market so no, it’s not “being fussy”, it’s “I need to live here so I can have a job and income”. Unless you’re suggesting that people should quit their jobs and go get that cheap house in the middle of nowhere?
What does the person who fixes your toilet do? Or prepares your meal? Or basically lives the Fight Club life?
If they didn't tax everyone so damn much, it would work out.
They fix the toilet for $200, I need to earn $400 to have that $200, and the toilet repair person gets to keep $100 after their taxes.
$400->$100 in one go. Government keeps $300. Make that make sense.
Depressingly, they bought a house in 1995 before the prices exploded. You need a 94th percentile income in Toronto to barely qualify for the average house.
Its more about where you want to live.
I'm not familiar with the situation in San Francisco. But in Santa Cruz, the cost to own with a 20% down payment is ~50% higher than the rent for the same unit. If you can't afford a substantially higher down payment, you're not really in the market for a home.
With $7k/month after tax, you would probably be renting an 1br, or maybe a cheap 2br. But your income is not high enough to buy anything, unless you start looking for homes well outside the town.
You're not going to save up for a $1-2M house very fast on $7000/month, when you also have to live off that $7K, pay rent, pay medical bills, and save up for retirement expenses.
If you’re gonna have kids, fussy means: * have decent schools * not covered in lead or asbestos * not next to a highway
+
* in an area not going to get shot or mugged
* structurally earthquake safe so that we don't die
Globally, $14k/mo is unbelievably, obscenely rich.