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Comment by screye | Hacker News Reader

It's insane how the 3 countries with the most space per human & least historic infrastructure: USA, Canada & Australia also have the worst housing crunch in the world right now.

Housing is not an investment. It is a depreciating asset. The anglo-world has done to housing what Singapore has done to cars. It is no wonder that a Toyota Camry costs 150,000 USD there.

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The physical structure is not that valuable in Australia. It's the land its on. You can get a house of some description in Australia for very cheap. It just won't be in the nice inner city areas. It'll be an outer suburb with dismal public transport access so very few people want to live there. The majority of Australians would rather live in a crumbling shitbox if it's within 20 minutes train distance to the CBD over a large house in the outer areas which involve a 2 hour train trip each way.

International students in particular will only consider the CBD as acceptable and will pay whatever it costs to live in this roughly 1 square kilometer area.

Not true as of late - there is a construction slowdown, so even lower grade houses in rural areas with no services are going for unattainable prices. 700k for Albury is insane. We have a supply issue.

There's not really a housing crunch in small town USA, more broadly space isn't the issue, the concentration of economic activity is the issue.

Like small towns don't necessarily do a good job of managing development, but you can buy a very reasonable house where I am for $150,000 (and pay a lot less if you want).

Similarly I'm sure that in the Australian outback one can find an affordable home, or in the Yukon. The problem is housing prices in the places people want to live and are able to find work.

There is something in between. There are places that are accessible--if not every day conveniently commutable--to reasonably-sized cities that are pretty reasonably-priced. But that's not a great tradeoff for someone who wants to live in the core of a relatively major city where they can walk to restaurants and twee coffeeshops--or does need to commute into the city most days.

Yeah, that's what I was getting at, it's not the abundance or lack of space that is the issue. Thanks for emphasizing!

The Yukon is insanely expensive. A single family home is C$639K. A condo is C$416K. Maybe better than Vancouver (C$1.9M), but still crazy compared with incomes (median is C$100K).

https://yukon.ca/sites/yukon.ca/files/ybs/fin-yukon-real-est...

The houses will be cheaper in the outback for sure, but they will be less plentiful. Good luck finding a decent rental outside of cities.

To be fair, it’s a very intentional policy on SG’s part, since the low land area puts a brake on how many cars can be accommodated while maintaining free flow traffic.

A quick search suggests cars are expensive in Singapore because of the taxes. I don't see how that relates to housing in the mentioned countries, but maybe I misunderstood the sources about Singapore.

Singapore guarantees you a house. They don't guarantee its cheap, or nice. But they do have a social housing commitment. Their superannuation is phenomenal as well. The downside is you have to be a LOT more socially conformist, although thats loosening up a bit too.

Well, Singapore also has a proudly racist immigration policy which is unlikely to ever change.

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