I think everybody is just stuck renting and can't get on the property ladder.

Half goes to taxes and half of what's left over goes to rent. After that you have to save up for a pretty large downpayment.

Somebody could have bought a house in 90s for 200K, retired and live in the same house, which has appreciated to 2M now, drawing on 60K retirement. Somebody making 180K cannot afford the 2M house even though these two individuals have a median 120K income and the latter makes much more than the former.

> It's not an indictment of capitalism if you choose to live in a desirable area, have a generous salary, and just can't make it work.

It's an indictment of any system that people making twice the median household income cannot afford to buy housing within a reasonable distance of wherever their labor generates that income. It's a terrible situation - communities in which at least half of the necessary jobs do not pay enough for the people who do those jobs to live in the community - and it isn't good for anyone in or around those communities, and probably not for the nation as a whole.

The fact that, yes, yes of course there are other communities where the economics are different doesn't in any way mitigate the fucked-up ness of the situation the GP is describing.

>> Midwest

I recently started the process of moving from my high cost of living California home to a low cost of living, but still on the coast city. Three years ago you'd see homes in this city for $300k. Almost all of them are now approaching $600k. The areas which used to be considered low cost are now unaffordable to everyone currently living there as well as a large swath of people not making huge total comp at FAANG. Other costs are still less expensive but housing is nuts everywhere I've looked.

The only homes I've seen for $200k need to basically be torn down and are too small for a family.

The Bay Area in particular is something of an outlier in that it's pretty hard to reasonably drive out of the expensive area in, say, an hour.

That's much less true of most metros. Even a fairly expensive city like Boston, while there are expensive suburban towns, an hour drive gets you to some small cities, exurbs, and other suburbs where housing prices are--if not cheap--pretty reasonable (e.g. $300-400K for midrange houses--though prices may have risen). And a lot of the professional jobs are well outside the city anyway.