But that makes the assumption that the higher interest rates aren’t lowering supply by keeping homes off the market. I have a decently sized home (2300 sq ft) but had wanted to move onto something around 3500 sq ft and pay a new mortgage in proportion to the bigger home. Of course the interest rates increase would have been paying like 2.5 times what I’m currently paying so it is a no brained for me to stay put. On the other hand, no one in my neighborhood is moving anymore so nothing is available and prices remain pretty close to their peak. So at least where I am, we now have high purchase prices and even much higher monthly mortgages.

I'm curious as a non-American.

How big is your family? I can't fathom needing a 360 sqm house except if I had 3+ kids.

Also... how do you clean it all? How much is heating, cooling, etc?

Generally, heating and cooling are a lot cheaper in USA (thank you cheap natgas, and solar if you can do it).

Cleaning… a lot of the space goes unused or just stores stuff so it doesn’t get too dirty or people don’t care as much outside core areas. Central HVAC helps keep the dust down a bit vs. dead air and radiators.

Speaking for myself, the primary draw of larger houses are more spaces dedicated to particular tasks/hobbies/etc. So it might not be square footage that's the goal but the higher number of rooms that usually comes with that.

For example my house is ~1800sqft which is very comfortable and a massive upgrade over the apartments I used to live in that were half as large, but as someone who works from home it'd be nice to have one more room than my house has to use exclusively as an office to maintain mental partitioning between work and downtime. Similarly it might be nice for my garage to be a bit bigger so I could better fit in a "workshop corner".

Is that sort of thing needed? Absolutely not and many get along just fine with far less, but it'd still be a welcome quality of life upgrade.

The average size of a new build in the US is almost 260@ square feet.

https://www.nahb.org/blog/2022/03/new-single-family-home-siz...

The smallest home my builder was building when we were looking was 3100 square feet. It was $335K in 2016.

As far as what a family did with a 5 bedroom 3.5 bath house. Bedroom for me and my wife, bedroom for my son, guest bedroom with a bath, office, and gym. There was another room that was converted to a dance studio for my wife.

We did downsize late last year and now we stay in a 1300 square foot condo.

I don’t understand why anyone needs 3000sf unless they have 3+ kids. That’s a lot of maintenance on space you don’t use

What “maintenance” do you think is more for a 3000 square foot house than a 1500 square foot house?

I just mentioned it.

1. Master bedroom

2. Son’s bedroom

3. Gym with three pieces of cardio equipment and weights

4. Office

5. Guest bedroom

The 6th room was a dance studio for my wife. She taught online fitness classes during Covid.

It’s not like we paid millions of dollars. I qualified for it when I was only making $115K and put 3.5% down - less than $12K. In 2016.

It’s now worth twice that (we rent it out to our son and two of his friends at a discount).

My wife and I have since moved to a condo in a resort area where one fee ($650) pays all utilities, access to a decent gym, 3 pools, a running trail, three restaurants on site and a lake. It’s the same price that our house was in 2016.

Do you pay someone from cleaning or do you clean it yourself?

That looks like a lot of work, probably 1 full day per week (probably more) to:

- vacuum everything (including the skirting boards)

- mop the floors

- dust everything else

- clean all the windows

- change/wash/dry the linens/towels

- clean the kitchen

- clean the toilets

- most of the carpet is covered by “stuff” and doesn’t get vacuumed,

- it took maybe an hour to take care of the hardwood.

- having a larger house doesn’t mean you have more to wash. How much you have to wash is a function of how many people live there.

- you would have a kitchen either way

- one bathroom only got used when guests come, one was our sons (and his responsibility). That left only two - the one in attached to our room and the half bath.

The gym got sanitized with everything being wiped down and air freshener after every use.

> - you would have a kitchen either way

I'm fairly sure your kitchen in the 360sqm house is bigger than my kitchen in the 90 sqm apartment :-)

It’s a kitchen with a stove, a sink, a microwave and a dishwasher. What does the size of the kitchen have to do with how hard is to clean? That’s a function of how much you cook and what you use to cook.

> vacuum everything (including the skirting boards)

My house is mostly wood floors but I maybe Swiffer and vacuum once a week (probably a lot less) for about 15-20 minutes. I run Roomba once or twice a week to take care of the rest.

> mop the floors

I can count on one hand how many times I mop floors per year in any size house.

> dust everything else

I definitely don't do the blinds/baseboards/etc enough. Wife usually does the furniture once a week and the rest is on demand.

> clean all the windows

Only when I get a wild hair.

> change/wash/dry the linens/towels

Size of house doesn't change this. See above.

> clean the kitchen

Still only one kitchen.

> clean the toilets

Same number of people

My home is 3300 sq ft/306 sqm on 2.5 acres or 10,000 sqm.

My kids each have their own space. My wife has her own space. I have an office/space for myself. We have a guest bedroom (well 2, if we pick up the playroom).

It keeps the kids clutter out of the common areas. Gives us each a place to escape to.

For example I play music a lot. That would be obnoxious in the living room all the time. Though I do play in common areas here and there.

Utilities cost about 200-300 USD month. Repairs we keep stashed away as they can cost more. For example our well pump died and it was 3k. Our ac died before that and it was 8k to replace. We live well below our means though and pay cash for stuff like that.

Except that there are far fewer houses to buy because nobody who already has one is willing to sell it for such a loss.

And the problem for that is most people can only have "wealth" if they have a home. Because the salaries have been stagnant since the 70s and the cost of living/existing has sky rocketed. So for most people they only way/dream they have to at least maintain the standard of living is to either inherit their parents home or sell it.

And all this is sponsored by the banks and governments because of interest payments and money from taxes.

It's absolutely ridiculous some 80yo shack costs half a million dollars/pounds/euros. There is no justification for it from a technical perspective.

A lot of the value is tied up in the land, because they aren’t really making any more of it, and location is everything. You could maybe move out to the middle of the desert surrounded by miles of nothing and get cheaper property, but then you have to figure out where you get the basics of life, like food, water, electric.

Remote work has disrupted countryside housing markets too, since workers moving in make much higher salaries than locals, who often lack the skills for picking up those jobs. A trickle out of metro areas in the millions is a tsunami for towns with population in the thousands.

> Because the salaries have been stagnant since the 70s and the cost of living/existing has sky rocketed.

I couldn't find info about salaries per se, but average hourly wage in the US increased by around 800% since 1970.

and the median nominal US home value is up 1728% since 1970[1].

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

does that count for inflation?

according to below, its gone up by 2 inflation adjusted dollars compared to 1979...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/185369/median-hourly-ear...

With how easy investing in index funds is these days, that's no longer true.

You can build wealth more reliably and cheaply with automatic transfers to a target date fund than hoping any given real estate market takes off.

Automatic transfers of what?

I think you misunderstood my point, I was talking about most people barely keeping it together most months and not having income to ever afford buying a home and have a “comfortable” life. It’s not about investing in real estate but inheritance of a house when their parents die.

A percentage of every pay check.

Investing into index funds regularly is pretty much always gonna be a better investment strategy with higher returns and lower risk than hoping for an inheritance.

Also, local zoning and permitting in most big cities in the US keeps the supply of new homes at a tiny trickle, so there's no chance for prices to go down from increased supply.

Except the prices haven't actually lowered meaningfully. They're sitting at March 2022 levels, which is still way, way up from Jan 2020.