Except, you know, money. In DE/AT houses are insanely expresive relative to net pay.
Looked around Munich you can find options between 500k and 700k around 20km. I wouldn't be surprised if houses inside the city would cost ~1Mi (but we're talking about suburbs right? and cities grow differently)
Around Dublin you can find for that range or even less, inside the city (in liveable areas)
For comparison, searching around Chicago it's probably a bit less (though with bigger surface area) - excluding the foreclosures or fixer-uppers.
Buying a house in SV is also insanely expensive even with SV salaries, so.
At least you can actually buy a house here. A friend of mine is a teacher and just bought a 180 m² house plus garden in the suburbs of Munich, 20 minutes from the city center.
And a friend of mine works with the president and took me on a space ship to the moon. Is this how this game works? How much is his teacher's salary and how much did the house cost? Those are important details worth mentioning to form an argument. Otherwise, without stating any facts, we're just making stuff up.
I worked with Munich devs and they all said you can't afford a house in the suburbs without an inheritance due to how insane the Munich housing bubble has gotten with houses going for over a million Euros, so I doubt your friend could buy a house just on mortgage based on his salary.
> you typically pay for things anyway (dental care)
Ah yes, dental care. The thing that's literelly not included in healthcare in most places.
> I would rather commute from a suburb and have a house with a garden.
Literally nothing prevents you from doing that in Europe. Houses might be smaller depending on the country, but this exists.