Only because of how insane housing in SF is.

For comparison I own a 2br apartment in Melbourne, Australia. It takes about 15 minutes to walk from here to the heart of the city. My mortgage repayments (including interest) are about $700usd/month.

> My mortgage repayments (including interest) are about $700usd/month.

Melbourne is not cheap, there must be more to this story. The average house price in Melbourne is $855,428. A $600k unit, 20% deposit, 25y mortgage, cheap 2% rate is $1.4k or USD 1k. + strata fees

Yeah, this person lives in a shoebox in the outer suburbs. We pay double that for a 1920s apartment (so very spacious, but cheap) in a suburb walking distance from the CBD, right next to a tram line.

No I don’t. I’m not in the sticks - it’s a ~20 minute walk to southern cross station from here. I’m not saying how much I paid but it was noticeably less than $600k. My apartment is small for a 2br (It would be uncomfortable with a family) but I live alone and it’s great. It’s bigger than any studio apartment you’d find in SF for $3k/month.

The numbers work out because I had a decent deposit when I bought - which I should have mentioned above since it certainly brings the repayments down. And (I think) let my mortgage broker negotiate for better rates.

30 Yr Mortgage would be 2.75%-3.1% with very good credit right now

Right, I think the parent was quoting an absurdly low rate to point out that even with unrealistically ideal financing, the monthly payment would still be higher than the grandparent's claim.

I'm calling BS on this. I lived in Melbourne for the past 5 years (left 8 month ago) and never saw any 2br apartment that would be that cheap with a standard P+I loan with 10% down.

I guess it's possible if you took out an interest-only loan for only a fraction of the purchase price, but then you've painted a highly misleading picture.

To clarify they don't live "in Melbourne", they live in the outer suburbs. Sure, you can buy a 2BR apartment in Dandenong. Do you really want to?

Better coffee and no human excrement on the sidewalks too.

I live in SF and no excrement on the sidewalk where I live.

Problem with SF is some neighborhoods are being neglected. There’s no penalty for lawless vagrancy, not even a “shoo shoo”. I’ve seen portapotties set up next to tent camps. I guess that’s better than street shitting but it’s a major disappointment to see tent cities encouraged.