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Comment by concordDance | Hacker News Reader

> If you want to live an hour outside the city and drive everywhere, you can rent a 3-bedroom detached house of a similar size as a US house reasonably easily, for about the same price.

Nonesense. I just checked on rightmove for a three bed in Wallingford (a tiny town in central England a km across that consists entirely of suburbs and is an hour's drive from the edge of London). It's about 30% smaller than the average US residence while costing just under a million dollars.

Heck, Ramsey is in the middle of bloody nowhere and its still >$400k for a three bed half the size of what you can get inside Chicago city for the same price.

Brits struggle to comprehend just how much worse off we are than the Americans. Similar housing (similar type of location etc) costs 3x-6x as much despite Brits earning less.

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I recently visited Denver for work - I have never felt so entirely trapped in my life. That's not better off to me - not having the freedom to walk, to take the bus, because you're surrounded by what I would call a "motorway" and they call a "street" is something I don't understand.

Imagine trying to raise your kids to be independent human beings when they can't walk to the shops, can't visit their friends without mummy or daddy driving them, and can't take the bus to the local swimming pool/cinema/library/whatever.

Anyway, try not looking around London, it's not the only city in the UK, believe it or not. And I mentioned rent rather than purchase price. Nobody in my social circle can buy in either the US or the UK.

> Anyway, try not looking around London, it's not the only city in the UK, believe it or not.

Ramsey is in North England.

> Nobody in my social circle can buy in either the US or the UK.

I could afford to buy a decent place in over 90% of the USA. Not here though (budget of £300k).

Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, is most certainly not in Northern England. Anyone who suggests so probably has suspect knowledge.

However you both have points. But I expect that the houses you’re looking at on rightmove are not affordable, new builds, which typically are not clustered around the kinds of places you used as examples.

And a lot of USA houses are built so very cheaply. You don’t get many thatched houses stateside, right?

Not to say that English new-builds in the last 20 years are stellar examples of construction, but you do generally get a lot more house for your money.

And a lot of USA houses are built so very cheaply.

Hopefully things have substantially improved since I last lived in the UK 20 years ago, but all the places I've lived in the UK where pretty bad. Single pane windows that rattle in the frame when it's windy, drafts from everywhere, damp everywhere, people arguing that a bit of mold in the bathroom is normal, no insulation, 150 years old houses with 120 year old plumbing, no central heating...and no one seemed to see any of this as a problem

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