Hacker News Reader

Comment by wing-_-nuts | Hacker News Reader

I used to have a lot of financial anxiety when I was younger. These days I thought I was pretty well set but the increase in prices for everything has been kind of a wake up call, especially housing! Kind of shocking when SFH's in my southern suburb went from costing ~ 400k in 2017 to ~ 800k now. What blows me away is that it appears to have no bearing to what people can actually afford? I make multiples of the local median household income and even I'm starting to worry about affordability if I ever needed more space.

View on HN

> What blows me away is that it appears to have no bearing to what people can actually afford?

If the houses aren’t sitting on the market, people can afford them. I think what actually happened is people realized that housing was underpriced. Which is insane in terms of the raw numbers, but it’s the truth: lack of supply along with increasing numbers of buyers means that the market really is that hot.

Sucks to be late to this party.

Building a little cabin out in the woods with starlink is looking increasingly tempting honestly...

Even easier and more mobile... buy a campervan and hang out in national forests.

Gotta have my owner shower and shitter. There's a certain level of basic hygiene I refuse to go below.

I don't buy this at all. There are shoddy houses in my area that were sold in 2021 for $100k that are now on the market for $250k in 2023. We're in a bubble.

Looking at China's experience, we're in a situation where demand is increasingly coming from investments.

HouseCoin if you will.

This:

> There are shoddy houses in my area that were sold in 2021 for $100k that are now on the market for $250k in 2023.

Does not imply this:

> We're in a bubble.

When things get to the point where the average person living in a zip code cannot afford to buy a house in said zip code, it usually is.

Imo because the rich get richer, they inevitably need to store that wealth somewhere. Cash would be stupid because inflation, so they can buy property over market rates as a “safe haven”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com