I have a lot of thoughts about this. The basic fact is that there are very few opportunities where I'm from. However, people do get by. Now, suppose that I was graduating high school in a rural WA area now... I'm reviewing houses in "the nowhere" right now, just out of curiosity, and 500K is very normal. I don't understand how this isn't going to cause a massive political upheaval in the next decade. People have got to have places to live.