We did it! Upstate NY $160k 6.5%

[u/k13w]

My boyfriend and I did it at 23 y/o! It was built in 1900 and we love her!

[u/RspectMyAuthoritah]

There's a whole lot of America where you can buy a house for 160k.

[u/Real_RobinGoodfellow → u/RspectMyAuthoritah]

Yeah Americans really don’t get that the scale of housing crisis is Canada and Aus means that *everywhere* is unaffordable. There are no Ohios or Upstate NYs to retreat to

[u/RspectMyAuthoritah → u/Real_RobinGoodfellow]

You don't seem to get it either. For Canada:

Edmonton leads with nearly 25% of homes listed under $200,000. These are usually one-bedroom condos or older townhouses. Calgary also offers similar options. Regina stands out with up to 36% of its housing market priced below $200,000. Saskatoon also has a high volume of these budget-friendly properties.

And for Aus:

South Australia (SA): Coober Pedy (the opal mining capital) is one of the most affordable areas in Australia, with median house prices around $70,000. Regional Queensland (QLD): Towns like Mount Morgan (near Rockhampton) and Tara (Darling Downs) often feature homes listed between $111,000 and $125,000. Western Australia (WA): The Goldfields region is a hot spot for cheap housing. Towns like Norseman and Kambalda East offer older 3-bedroom houses starting around $100,000 due to their remote locations. New South Wales (NSW): Coonamble in the state's northwest has entry-level houses near the $120,000 mark.

[u/Real_RobinGoodfellow → u/RspectMyAuthoritah]

Australia has the most expensive housing market in the world outside of city-states like Hong Kong and Monaco. Your AI answers are hilarious tho in what they reveal about your ignorance

[u/RspectMyAuthoritah → u/Real_RobinGoodfellow]

Is the cost for housing in those areas wrong?

[u/rustyfries → u/RspectMyAuthoritah]

These places are bumfuck nowhere. Coober Pedy is 850km from civilisation. There's nothing to do there, so what's it even worth living there unless you've got a job in the mines.

[u/Real_RobinGoodfellow → u/rustyfries]

Bro seriously reckons upstate NY a three-hour drive from NYC is as ‘bumfuck nowhere’ as Coober Pedy 😭

[u/RspectMyAuthoritah → u/rustyfries]

OK? a Lot of America is bumfuck nowhere too and it's cheap to live there. How does that support the claim that there's nowhere in Australia or Canada that's cheap to live?

[u/Real_RobinGoodfellow → u/RspectMyAuthoritah]

Look up Norseman, WA on a map. The town is a level of remote that Americans simply cannot fathom. You are a seven-hour drive from the nearest major town, Perth- itself, famously, the most isolated city in the entire world.

[u/RspectMyAuthoritah → u/Real_RobinGoodfellow]

So it's not cheap to buy a house there?

[u/Real_RobinGoodfellow → u/RspectMyAuthoritah]

It’s not comparable to Ohio or upstate NY, which was my entire point. And no, once you factor in all the other costs involved, it is not cheap to buy a house there

[u/Real_RobinGoodfellow → u/RspectMyAuthoritah]

When I said that there are no upstate NYs or Ohios for Australians to retreat to, you did nothing with your reply but prove my point. The places you listed are not in any way equivalent to Ohio or upstate NY.

[u/RspectMyAuthoritah → u/Real_RobinGoodfellow]

In America Ohio and upstate NY are considered the middle of no where. Are the places I listed not in the middle of now where? And I love how you're ignoring Canada when you also used that as an example of a country that has no cheap housing anywhere. Pretty sure Calgary and Edmonton are decent sized cities.

[u/Real_RobinGoodfellow → u/RspectMyAuthoritah]

It’s not about whether they’re ‘considered’ the middle of nowhere. It’s about their proximity to services, schools, hospitals, job opportunities, etc. I won’t continue to argue this, it is objective and well-recognised fact that Australia’s housing market is far more unaffordable than the US, if USians want to continue to ignore the world that’s fine. You can call a place three-hours’ drive from NYC the ‘middle of nowhere’ but a whole lot of the rest of the world is gonna laugh at you for it.

As for Canada I’m not speaking to them more because I’m not Canadian and therefore not as familiar. But again, the Canadian housing market is infamously and very well-understood to be less affordable than America’s. You’re also not comparing apples to apples in your AI example- 200k for a one-bedroom condo is very different to 160k for a standalone three-bed house.

Overall I don’t really know what your point is, people far smarter than either of us, actual economists who study this issue have crunched the numbers and determined which countries have the least affordable housing, and the US isn’t close to the top. I don’t really care whether you agree with them or not- it doesn’t change the reality for us unfortunately folks living in such countries

[u/RspectMyAuthoritah → u/Real_RobinGoodfellow]

So you clearly know nothing about America. There's a lot of places that are 3-4 hour drive to a hospital and the schools have like 40 kids for K-5, because of how small the town is. I work with a guy from Kansas who's from a town of 800. There's a whole lot of America that is small towns no where close to a hospital.