re: Salary of $115,627 needed in order to qualify for a mortgage on a typical American home

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Boomers are basically telling us to work 80 hours a week, don't spend money on cell phone, internet, food other than beans/rice and drive a 20 year old car with no air conditioning to our job 2 hours away because the only home we can afford is in the middle of the forest.

Meanwhile they had 3 kids and a stay at home wife/mom, went on 3 vacations per year had 2 cars and a house, no debt all while being a VCR salesman who would get a pension.

But don't worry about all that. The current economy is exactly the same... The younger generations are just lazy.....

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The boomers are starting to die off. Their small businesses and their houses will be on the market soon. Just saying.....

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Yes in “flyover states”. Not everybody gets to live in a major city/coastal area and never have. The entitlement to think 90% of the country isn’t good enough for you because it doesn’t have a Starbucks or pickle all Court lol

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That doesn’t mean it’s significantly cheaper when you add up travel and commute for a job that is likely outside of that area. Especially with the cost of gas and automobiles today.

Shelbyville is about 40 minutes from downtown Louisville without traffic. That increases to over an hour in traffic on 64 (add about 15 more minutes if you don’t take 64).

This what you’re getting under $200k there. And it’s barely under.

With the median household income in Kentucky at around $55k, they’re likely not working jobs making enough to sustain a decent life (we’re not talking extravagant) just to have a decent home outside of the city.

That northshore search you keep posting includes land for sale. Those aren’t all houses.

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You really think city life is that much happier than rural/ Middle America life? Man some of y’all are soft

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Once you hit a certain age....city life isn't worth it anymore anyways.

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You can move to rural areas, small towns and even medium size cities and it would literally take half of these salaries to own a house.

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What you need is that salary to just own a house in the rural area, if you want to be on reasonable terms. If you only make even half that salary, you better find a shack in the middle of no where to be able to afford it.
Only a stupid fool would make the stats reported in OP though. Purchasing a 420k home at today's interest rates on only 115k a year sounds like torture.

I grew up in a town of 11k people and saw the 08 recession wipe out all the businesses. Those towns are almost dead now.

Not a house. If we're talking about condos/town homes... completely different

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Sounds about right, knowing how the price of our house skyrocketed shortly after we bought it (right at the beginning of COVID).

And for shits and giggles, here in Kentucky, the median household income is $55,880 (2022). I imagine much of the South is similar.

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It is the same for most of the country...and the problem is that rent is also outrageously high and climbing. If single family homes go up in cost rental units do also.

The changes in building codes over the last 20 years or so has drastically changed the costs to build a home without adding any additional value or safety to the consumer. People are completelt unaware because most of these changes were done under the guise of safety and put in place by contractors to increase the cost of building and that is the only benefit anyone enjoyed. It is not all of the increase in recent years but it is a big part of it. That and zoning laws that drive up the cost of housing pushed through by real estate inverstors is almost all of the increases in costs.

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Here's the 200k and under offerings in Atlanta and the metro. These areas tend to make the local news frequently...

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Atlanta is full. So is Nashville. Those are HCOL islands in the a region that is otherwise fairly affordable.

Try Jacksonville, Memphis, Little Rock, Birmingham, or the areas outside of the larger Louisiana cities (maybe a bad example - La home prices are jacked up). Plenty of jobs in those towns, and some of them are very lucrative.

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The myth that in boomer times there where zero connection to where you could afford to buy and income level is simply that, a myth.

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My parents built a 2,600 sqft home in Addison, TX in 1989 for 180k. That same house is 750k now.

And don’t respond with “muh anecdote” this is hardly an unusual example of what has happened in this country.