It’s housing that’s the anomaly there though, not SWE salaries.

It is both IMO.

No, it's housing. Housing is expensive b/c there is no supply, and you can't fix a supply side problem by putting more money on the demand side: that just enables people to bid higher than they already are, and the people selling what scant supply exists will pocket the additional cash. The same amount of people that today are below the point where supply meets demand will remain below it.

SWE salaries are anomalously high whereas they would need to be anomalously low to fit in to the parent up-thread's comment.

Not outside of a small number of US tech cities and certainly not outside the US. My first coding job paid about $30k for example.

I am currently a senior engineer earning less than a SV graduate. My pay has been largely comparable to a plumber for my whole career. Not for lack of trying.

I suspect if whatever red tape os preventing US companies from remote hires world wide happening en masse, then non-MAGMA employees will see deflation in their wages.

Similarly if more people are let in on unrestricted working visas that last a while.

> Not outside of a small number of US tech cities and certainly not outside the US.

I live in London and graduated from a reputable university (so most of my friends have decent jobs). I make considerably more money than any of my peers except for those in a few select careers such as finance and law. I make a lot more than those in other technical career paths like mechanical engineering. And certainly compared with "generic graduate jobs" such as consulting companies or the civil service.

My first job wasn't well paid either (about £19k), but that quickly increased over 2-3 years in a way that salaries in other careers didn't seem to.

How do you make money from owning and living in a house?

It goes up in value. Also interests rates decreasing means more immediate money in lower living costs.

It’s a rather abstract view of making money. Other houses also go up in value. You only make money from the difference between how much houses in your area are going up, and how much houses in the area you want to move to are going up. And that difference may well be negative.

The alternate is not owning the house and instead paying rent, which means your rent would have to be far lower than the appreciating asset (house) and the cost of servicing the debt (interest part of the mortgage)

That's certainly not the case in the UK. I'd be surprised if it were in the US

The primary reason buying a house is better is because the government has put it's thumb on the we scale to allow you to leverage the fuck out of your assets.

If you could get a loan of the same amount and yolo it into the stock market, I am not sure buying a home would come out better.

There's another piece of government interference that's a lot more relevant: it's a lot easier to get legal permission to start a company than to build a house anywhere remotely desirable.

If you live in a major metro area it is the opposite: the price of where you want to live to escape the rat race gets relatively cheaper

A lot of people are doing a cash our refinance so they can capture the gains from their house value.

I don't recommend it, but many people do.

You can't pay for groceries with those unrealized gains. You'd have to sell your house. Wait, where will you live?

You can take out a loan on the house with the house as collateral. That's a tactic wealthy people use with their stocks. Also having a home equity loan is a good padding for rainy days.

True but you can borrow against the house to invest, for example

* by ensuring that others pay more in property taxes

* by ensuring that others cannot build, increasing value of your investment

* by leveraging the deduction for mortgage interest

The system is working as designed.

Buy a house, live in it, sell it for more than you bought it for