If BuddhaBing's post is an example of average salaries between the US and UK (double the average salary), what is the difference? $20k salary in US with $200k house and £20k salary in UK with £200k housing. Any difference?
Yes, there is very few people who hit that £20k marker, and with the cost of living being what it is here (last time I added it all up we're paying around $8 a gallon for fuel), most mortgages are above what people can afford to spend.
We got this house for £14,000 because it was a repo case and the bank wanted to make a quick sale, it was valued at £100,000. At the time my dad was making £10,000 a year for a family of 7 so even the cheap mortgage (had to get one because the house was in a bad state, and needed lots of stuff fixing) was too much to pay and keep food on the table.
The lower end of the scale is a bigger deal, I think. There are very few places in the UK where you can still find cheap housing, and even there "cheap" is usually too expensive for the locals, and we're talking about seriously iffy places to live (like Toxteth in Liverpool). The UK is a tiny island (about the size of Florida) with 60 million people living on it, the USA is a vast expanse of land with... 180 million (Google says 300M)? I forget. Anyway, you can see how the economics of that would work.
Also, in my experience, the cost of living in the USA is also considerably lower than in the UK, although I'm willing to concede I'm wrong on this point if anyone has any firm numbers to demonstrate otherwise.
I think comparing average house prices is a bit pointless because the average house can be very different in different countries. What you should compare is price per area. At least I'm under impression that people in UK and Europe live in very small houses in compared to Americans.
living in germany i find that rather amusing
in my city the average price for the ground alone is ~380€/m^2 and youll have to pay for the house on top of that ... finding anything remotely good under 2-300k is sheer luck ... and im talking about a city which isnt especially wealthy or exclusive
plus its not like theyve gone up much over the years ... theyve always been like that
not to mention the fact that americans like to call a shack built from a few pieces of wood a house (can you tell my parents are both civil engineers ?)
I live about half an hour east of Toronto, right on Lake Ontario in a town called 'Ajax.' (Hooray for probably being the only town in the country with an X in its name!) In all honesty, if you are planning on coming to Canada, and you can afford it, go to BC or Alberta. The have the best parts of this country (Mountains, clean air, lakes, beautiful places all 'round).
Our house I believe was $84K, but that was back in 1983. Now it's up to about $280 000, but the town has grown immensley; even in just the last 5 years. we're up at 90 000 people in a very small area.