this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2026
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Can you even buy a house with $40 an hour today?
Outside of all the major metropolitan areas, yes. I managed to get a house a few years back at $22 an hour. It's small and a townhouse, but it's mine.
I did the math to afford that home today taking into account increased value and interest rates it would take $30 an hour. It's only been 5 years.
Even after a promotion and raises I still don't make $30 an hour.
Lmao no, I make fucking $50/hr and can't afford a house at the current prices.
varies by state
low cost area you could
I was thinking that. Its way above the minimum wage in the UK and we bought a house a few years ago on that just fine.
Not even that low cost of an area really, just cheaper than around London. Move away from the big cities and its much more affordable. Why would you want to live in a big city anyway with the higher air pollution? Not getting a car also helped save a lot of money, cycle everywhere instead.
"I need to live in London because of the jobs!" - You stack shelves in Tesco, that isn't a job worth living in London for.
Not getting a car and not living in a city is impossible in the US. Also healthcare eats the 1/3 of my income.
We have higher wages, but correspondingly higher expenses offset it.
private equity buying homes has fucked the us housing market even in surrounding suburbs in many states
housing prices nearly doubled from 2010 in many places
I just looked up housing sites in the US, apparently Zillow is popular. Texas is a big state and stuck my house price in as an upper limit.
First result is fucking huge. It has more bathrooms than I have bedrooms. And its in a place I have heard of despite living on another continent. Most people 50+ miles away will have never even heard of the town I live in.
This is what you consider to be a bad housing market?
Edit: scrolling through more. They look very soulless, but are fucking massive. Why do so many have the garage door as the main front and centre of the house with the actual door tucked off to the side?
Assuming you're in the UK:
Your minimum wage is nearly triple ours.
Your median wage is 1.3x Texas'.
You pay less tax than in Texas.
You pay less for healthcare than anywhere in the US.
Your property taxes (council taxes) are lower than Texas.
You have lower interest rates for mortgages than the US.
You have cheaper, more fuel efficient vehicles than the US.
Your car insurance is less than a quarter US car insurance rates.
Your food is literally half the cost of US food.
So yes, your incredibly cheap life with your incredibly high wages makes your housing market much better than ours.
In kindness, perhaps a bulleted list (a * followed by a space on a new line) without the "You" would be more even-toned. 🙇🏼♂️
Most people in USA suburbs leave from and return to their house in a car 99% of the time, so effectively the garage door is the front door of the house, and the actual front door is mostly vestigial, and kept for ritual purposes.
There's a house in my neighborhood that doesn't even have stairs leading to the front door. Like, the door is three feet in the air, no way to actually use it for anything except breaking your ankle while drinking at night.
It is a good way to keep the Jehovah's Witness and the Mormons at bay, to be fair.
Guests enter through the front door
Exactly, that’s one of the ritual purposes I was referring to
the us is relatively spread out, all those cheaper areas no one wants to live there
and distance can be deceptive, growing up 20miles to work could take 1.25 hrs+ each way, check the google estimated travel time during rush hour to the city center / likely work locations
that much time in traffic eats your life
Not really. The nature of my job (semiconductor manufacturing) kinda limits me to specific geographic areas, i.e. where fabs are located. My wife also has specific medical needs which are all located in our current area, plus my parents, siblings, and in-laws all live nearby.
Could being the operative word here.
I make about $50/hour and things are starting to feel real tight even in my low cost of living area. (For context, we paid around $125k for our house 10 years ago and it's not like, a small nothing house and has a yard large enough to need a riding lawnmower.
yea this is fair, that house is probably now over 200k maybe pushing 3
No but I bet you could buy the material and you'd already have the skill
You need the land first. That's the expensive part.