£593,369 – the average price of a house in London in January! (That’s about $829,000.)
$1 million plus – what 400 square foot condos go for in Vancouver!
$1.5 million – the cost of a median house in San Francisco!
$20 million – for a 2,000-square foot penthouse condo with a view of Central Park!
Who the hell can afford prices like these?
And the situation isn’t much improved in the less glitzy suburbs. Home prices have increased twice as fast as income growth.
It can’t, and won’t, go on like this for much longer.
In my five-city tour in Australia in February, I kept asking the audiences: Why do you think super-high real estate prices are good for your economy? After all, it raises the costs of office space and salaries for businesses. It forces households to spend more of their incomes on mortgages and rents, leaving less for everything else.
In a recent poll, 49% of adults said they would never be able to afford a home in Australia.
How can that be a good thing?!
Aging Baby Boomers are sitting on their real estate to milk every last drop of price appreciation out of it that they can (keeping inventory off the market in the process). And Millennials can’t afford to buy what homes are available.
Who is more important to our future? Rising workers or retiring and dying people?
Here’s how kooky it’s gotten out there…
There are 66 square foot “closet” condos – I’m talking starter homes – in cities like Hong Kong and Shenzhen in China. That’s basically a bed and a toilet… or a prison cell!
Is Hong Kong so great it’s worth living in that small a space??
I was there earlier this year and I say NO!
A few years ago, I was in Vancouver – my favorite city in North America. It’s also the favorite city for the affluent Chinese who are busy laundering their money out of China into major English-speaking cities around the world.
