I'm guessing they can afford better in general, just not for real estate, because real estate is generally speaking completely fucked.

Is it, though? Nowadays we keep asking for higher standards, better infrastructures, better access to utilities, communications, commute, etc. Me parents could easily afford a house just after getting married... a house I'm weary of setting foot in, not even remotely built to code, with infrastructures cobbled together over the years.

Maybe a 4x price increase is indeed excessive, but building a house like it was possible 50+ years ago, would be just illegal.

That's mixing realities though. Building a house from 30 years ago is pretty much up to code today. It was a modern house in all the ways you'd expect.

You are right if we go older. But we don't have to go far to prove the point.

There are a lot of places in SV that literally haven’t been seriously renovated since they were built in the 40’s and 50’s going for $1.5M+. 0% interest rates along with NIMBYism and high tech salaried have seriously inflated land prices in CA, at least. I think the first two factors have had a more universal effect, and just multiply the locally available salary range to yield the limits of purchasing power, which becomes the market clearing price of the local homes.

I get the feeling they were talking about something comparable to what their parents had at their age, in location, size, etc. In my experience, this isn't new construction--especially if the location is similar. In the desirable areas (I can't speak specifically to Vancouver, but I imagine it is) they're the same houses; now a generation older.

I could barely afford a house built as a hunting bungalow in 1918, expanded multiple times, in the 60s-70s a lot of unpermitted work was done. Trying to get work done was a nightmare because nothing was to code (some reputable contractors refused to do work). Sure, the appliances were fairly new, the pipes and some of the electrical had been updated, but all of those were relatively minor expenses and most of the upgrades were aesthetic.

Your insurance splits out the cost of the land and "improvements" (the structures) because you're only insuring the house because a flood/fire won't destroy the land. In my case, the cost of rebuilding the house dwarfed the cost of the property itself.

Land value, which is a proxy for better infrastructure, has dramatically increased.

The cost of improvements on land has decreased.

Mostly yes, but it does depend on what you like. Hardwood floors, handmade brick (as opposed to the 9 variations that come out the factory), hardwood weatherboards and nice stonework are not in my price range. Labour used to be cheap and it’s the labour that makes a place somewhere I’d like to be.

That's also why a lot of that antique furniture is so nice, which the current stuff is crap.

Sometimes it’s the exact same home from 50 years ago that’s still out of reach.

Except there are a lot of places where housing is quite affordable. You can argue that economic value has tended to centralize and you'd mostly be right. OTOH, I have plenty of colleagues living in all manner of relatively low-cost small cities all over the place. (Not a lot who are truly rural but that has a lot to do with communications infrastructure and easy access to airports.)

Now I’d like a place where houses are affordable, and jobs are plentiful. Have we found a place like that yet?

You might be surprised if you don't require living in a highly walkable downtown core. In many places, such as Eastern Massachusetts, the jobs are pretty distributed around the area; it's only fairly recently that tech jobs have started to be located in the city at all. And you get an hour outside of Boston and there's quite a bit of housing in the $300-$400K range in many towns. That's not Midwest cheap but it's not $1.5M for a teardown either.

Of course, Cambridge and many areas of Boston proper are quite expensive (as are some of the tonier suburbs like Concord).

Silicon Valley is a bit unusual in that you can't really escape from high prices, in spite of being suburban sprawl, because of the geographical constraints.

I would have said the area I live was that a year ago. We saw the most job growth and lowest unemployment in the country, all while my house was likely worth no more than $150,000.

But the most job growth in the country requires that people move there (here) and they require houses when they arrive. With that surprising increase in demand, I expect I could get $250,000 for my house now, which is a staggering increase in a fairly short period of time.

On the other hand, if you're coming from a place where houses are selling for $1,200,000 (the 4 * $300,000 suggested above), then maybe you still see $250,000 as being affordable. We certainly have jobs. Every place of business in the area seems to be hiring.

Correct. Everything else is trivially cheap. Except houses. As I said, the house I grew up in quadrupled in value.

Too bad it’s too cold in Canada to live in a van.