You would be wrong. I just pulled up Metro Detroit (4.5 million people) on Zillow and set my filter to $200k or less and there are hundreds of homes available within the metro area. Hmmm...maybe that's cheating let's check again with - Cincy, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, St Louis, KC, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Albuquerque etc. Working my way down the list of metro areas exceeding a million and there are tons of homes under $200k in every single one of those.

You left out the "within 20-30 minutes of a high paying job" limitation. I looked on Zillow as well, it wasn't uncommon for those houses (if they were within 30 minutes) to be in such disrepair they needed to be leveled and rebuilt. It's disingenuous to look only at a sticker price.

But yeah, within the hour and a half commute zone of a metro area, you can find affordable housing.

>You left out the "within 20-30 minutes of a high paying job" limitation.

Nope, again using the Detroit example you have Warren, Oak Park, Southfield etc literally sharing its border and within a 20-30 minute drive of anywhere in downtown Detroit or further out in ritzy Oakland county. Same goes for Arlington, Irving and several other suburbs of Dallas. I'd keep going down the list, but you get the point. Pretty much every major metro areas has housing under $200k with less than a 30-minute drive of downtown or major job centers in suburbs.

I know California is a different world, and that's fine. But the US is quite large with many large cities where you can find good careers and affordable housing. It just may not look as cool to post on Instagram...which I guess is the bigger problem.