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Comment by polipus | Hacker News Reader

Living in Copenhagen for the last 7 years.

- housing for 80k USD is 525k DKK: no way you can find anything at that price anywhere close to cph. Not sure for other "major" cities, but in cph you can expect to pay 4mil DKK (600K USD) for a ~60 sqmt apartment, prices will fall outside the cities, but nowhere close to 80k USD. Where did you get that number?

- you pay for your unemployment benefit, thought an a-kasse. Its not forever and it might barely cover your bills depending on where you live/your mortgage. If you have family its probably not enough and you need to add an insurance on your salary on top of that.

Just wanted to give my 2 cents.

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That is why I explicitly said major cities and not Copenhagen.

Look 20 minutes out of Odense, Aalborg, Randers, etc.

Don't let yourself believe that a country is nothing but its capital - it is correct, that if you decide to live in a 4mil DKK apartment in the Copenhagen area, then you have also opted out of public help, and you are on your own.

I think it's worth remembering that Hacker News is a global platform and if someone refers to "major cities" in Denmark, for many (most?) readers, the only name that would come to mind is Copenhagen.

Copenhagen: ~1.4M people

Odense: ~190K people

Aalborg: ~120K people

Randers: ~64K people

I've actually spent a week in Copenhagen relatively recently and I literally couldn't have named another city in the country. My bad, I know, but I'm pretty well-traveled and that's the truth.

Again: That is why I wrote major cities - I wouldn't expect anybody to know.

Again - why this extreme focus on the specifics? I merely argued that the housing market in the broader Denmark is reasonable, and you can usually easily commute to jobs in a city while living cheaply - something that is strictly more difficult in the US.

Because from the point of view of the rest of the world, there aren't any major cities in Denmark other than Copenhagen...

Saying that there is cheap housing 20 minutes outside of a town with 64K people doesn't really make the point that it's inexpensive and accessible to live in / near major cities.

Cph is one of the major cities, and the biggest one. It's also the area with most population density and opportunities. I won't say that you are wrong because I'm not familiar with what you can find 20 min of Aalborg, etc, but I find disingeneus portraing a picture where in dk you can buy a house for 80k USD and leaving out the information that you are probably in the middle of nowhere - no jobs, no public transport, no services. It's not that people "decide" to live in cph or in a major city, they are basically forced to if they need to have a job and do stuff. Sure, if you work remote and like being in the countryside alone you have a lot of options, most people don't have that luxury.

If I say that you can get a house for 80K in the US, do you then automatically assume I mean San Fransisco or New York?

> but I find disingeneus portraing a picture where in dk you can buy a house for 80k USD and leaving out the information that you are probably in the middle of nowhere - no jobs, no public transport, no services

The point is exactly the opposite. You can get a house at a reasonable cost, 20 minutes away from a city you can likely get a job in - Even well paid tech jobs (They exists in both Odense and Aalborg).

I fint it disingenuous to pick pick out a very specific situation like this instead of looking at the broader argument.

>Even well paid tech jobs (They exists in both Odense and Aalborg

Can you share what well paid tech jobs exist in such cities? I mean jobs open to foreigners not just Danish citizens.

Yeah, no. Most homes are in the range of 1.500.000 to 2.500.000 kroner. There are some homes closer to 1.000.000 kroner that need repairs or remodeling. You are not buying anything livable for 500.000 kroner, sorry. Those days are in the past. And mind you, these numbers are for medium-sized cities. Not any of the desirable cities, like Copenhagen, Odense, or Aarhus.

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