Is American struggling to buy a house ?
Posted by Top_Document7437@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 114 comments
I don't know why i'm asking this, but in Vietnam, young ppl are struggling to buy a house. Imagine salary around 400$/month, trying to buy a small house for 800k - 1 mil $ , is American struggling to buy a house ? Do ya have the same problem ?
Natural-Compote4096@reddit
Everyone is struggling to buy a house. It’s a global cost of living crisis.
FreeKevinBrown@reddit
Its more like a global housing crisis. Nobody is putting up affordable single family homes anymore... Affordable being the keyword.
Sensitive-Issue84@reddit
More like a bunch of billionaires screwing all the normal people out of a nice life, no matter where you live.
MechanicalGodzilla@reddit
Incorrect.
NekoMao92@reddit
Most homes in the Denver area start at $500k-600k no matter the age or area, and go up from there.
angrysquirrel777@reddit
There are still tons of home for sale for sub $450 or even sub $400 in Aurora, Lakewood, Westminster, etc but yes there are large areas you can't live in Denver for that price.
LeafyWolf@reddit
It's more that institutions are buying up all the affordable single family homes so they can rent them out for profit. I get several offers a day for a family property.
AleroRatking@reddit
Dear Lord. You are talking less than 3% of the entire market.
Memento_Viveri@reddit
The number of single family homes in the US owned by large companies (companies that rent 1000 or more units) is very small, around 3-4%.
Around 25% of SFH are rentals, and 80% are owned by individuals/small companies that rent between 1 and 10 units.
So the claim that SFH prices are driven by large companies buying homes doesn't seem correct.
MajesticBread9147@reddit
Only in places that make building newer, denser housing difficult in the places that people want to live.
Which is most places because homeowners are incentivized to keep their asset scarce. They prefer higher housing values over higher prosperity.
GhostOfJamesStrang@reddit
Show me what major metropolitan areas do not have concerns about housing affordability for this reason.
Apprehensive-Log3638@reddit
Austin, TX is very affordable.
If you allow new construction, housing supply does not become scarce.
No_Entertainment_748@reddit
And if that new housing isnt affordable you get overstock in which nobody can afford
GhostOfJamesStrang@reddit
Austin is higher on the cost of living index than Houston and the median house sold price is also significantly higher.
That is within it's own state. Nevermind if you go outside of Texas.
Austin also has a low rate of owner-occupancy.
Apprehensive-Log3638@reddit
Houston is also the most dangerous city in Texas. It is not exactly a desirable location. Austin is a relatively safe Metro with access to Higher Education and economic opportunity where individuals can purchase housing for sub $200k. They build new luxury and high end housing constantly, but that frees up supply, either for rentals or new home purchases.
If you have a 200k and you build a $1M home, you can either rent out of the $200k or sell it. If you sell it, now 2 people have a home. Not all the supply is sold, some will be rented. This is to say Median house price statistics tell a very incomplete story. Listings are publicly available. Looks at the houses for sale right now.
MajesticBread9147@reddit
Houston is huge. The majority of Houston would be considered suburbs in other cities and not included in city COL metrics.
This is true for most of Texas and the sun belt, but Houston is an extreme.
MajesticBread9147@reddit
I don't know your definition of "major" but Austin has basically flooded their local market with housing and prices have gone down multiple years in a row despite seeing massive growth.
Although unfortunately in the sun belt they tend to build "out" rather than "up" and infill which only works for so long before people are 2 hours from downtown and it makes public transit and walkable neighborhoods much less feasible.
Jersey City is a small city and has limited control over their metro area, but they saw double digit median rent decreases recently because they have been building disproportionately more than neighboring New York, although this was somewhat muted by New York not building enough and people moving to Jersey City instead.
San Jose, and basically every major city in Canada are the worst examples of the opposite. They don't build housing, and when people need to compete with each other for housing, somebody is always outbid.
Cheap_Coffee@reddit
Who are the "they" building houses? Most cities don't build housing. At best, they can make it easier for developers to building housing.
MajesticBread9147@reddit
Within the realistic constraints that exist in America you need to make it easier for developers.
I would love a social housing system like they have in other countries so that people aren't incentivized to vote based on how things affect housing values, but it's unfortunately out of the realm of possibility in basically any jurisdiction.
Also there's a federal amendment passed a bit over 25 years ago called the Faircloth Amendment that capped how many public housing units could exist in the United States.
Cheap_Coffee@reddit
You're painting with two broad a brush. There aren't any real constraints to building single-family homes. What you seem to be looking for is mutli-unit public housiing the development of which is driven by the local governments.
MajesticBread9147@reddit
It doesn't need to be public housing to help.
Even a duplex where there used to be a SFH means that 2 families can afford to live where only one used to before.
Cheap_Coffee@reddit
Duplexes wouldn't offer enough of an expansion to solve the housing crisis.
You're talking about public housing.
MajesticBread9147@reddit
Rowhomes and condos would be helpful too.
Any bit helps. Public housing is ideal but unfortunately the Overton window has shifted heavily away from supporting public housing, and a half measure that gets implemented is better than an ideal solution than never does.
Wodan11@reddit
That's what OP meant. The local council simply changes the zoning, and passes tax incentives. It flows from there.
GhostOfJamesStrang@reddit
They may have gone down for a few years, but they're still very very high.
Not to mention having an owner-occuoancy rate that is well below the national average.
MajesticBread9147@reddit
Austin isn't that expensive? It seems on par with other mid-size metro areas.
charcoal_kestrel@reddit
Homeowners don't care about scarcity keeping their asset prices up, they care about disamenities like traffic and parking or even nonsense like whether their backyard garden will get enough sunlight. That's why homeowners block housing in their neighborhood (which affects local disamenities) but are usually indifferent to building housing in other neighborhoods in the same metropolitan area (which affects their asset prices). Very few people go to a city council meeting to protest a building permit ten miles from their house even though this would provide a demand substitute for the resale value if their home but lots of people will object to construction a block away. This is why hyperlocal governance tends to inhibit housing supply and why YIMBYs have been taking a strategy of state preemption of local zoning.
MajesticBread9147@reddit
If traffic were a major concern, more places would get rid of parking minimums for new housing. And dense development generally decreases traffic because it means more people can live close to work (less miles clogging roads) and more people can get to work via non-car transportation like transit and biking.
When people have to live 30 miles away and sit an hour and a half in traffic because that's all they can afford, that's significantly worse than driving 2 miles from one neighborhood to the next, even if they drive in their own car.
Cheap_Coffee@reddit
People generally prefer to live in suburbs rather than in cities. This can be considered an existence proof.
MajesticBread9147@reddit
This is often because of the limited amount of housing that exists in cities. It's often a circumstancial "I can more easily afford a 3 bedroom home in a suburb vs the city" rather than preferring it outright.
And there's no reason that suburbs can't have similar qualities to cities. My hometown was a few miles outside of DC, and has a higher population density than the city of Los Angeles, and there is a huge amount of demand for housing there, especially by transit stations.
If there wasn't legitimate demand to live in urban or urban-like environments, then it realistically wouldn't be built to a meaningful degree because the developers would go bankrupt and you wouldn't need stuff like single family zoning to enforce low density and limited housing stock.
charcoal_kestrel@reddit
You're both right. It is both true that most people prefer detached suburban housing and that the supply shortfall relative to demand, and therefore high prices, is for dense urban living (at least in areas that have density but also have low crime). This is slightly less true than it was before covid, as work-from-home increases demand for square footage and decreases the importance of commute time, but it's still basically true.
Ultimately there are enough people who will decide between city and suburb based on price that urban and suburban housing act as demand substitutes. And like MajesticBread said, there's a market solution to this if we reduce regulatory barriers (which is not just zoning but also environmental review, IZ mandates, prevailing wage, etc) to infill development.
charcoal_kestrel@reddit
If you tell the average person "good news, the apartment building being built across the street won't have a parking lot" or even "it will only have half as many spaces as it does units," the average person doesn't think "great, because if we can increase housing density in town people who currently live in the exurbs will have shorter commutes." Rather, they think "that means they'll all be parking their cars in front of my house and no way am I accepting that."
I am not arguing that we should have parking minimums. Rather I am arguing that if you want more housing supply and more housing density, you need an accurate model of NIMBY psychology and/or policies that make these desires less politically relevant, like state pre-emption.
TantricEmu@reddit
My town in southeastern PA is building so much new, dense housing and it’s still astronomical prices. The places that could conceivably fill new, dense housing are the places people want to move to and pricing is competitive to say the least.
Auro_NG@reddit
The rich are having no problems buying their second or third homes.
TheJokersChild@reddit
Not as drastic as your situation, but yes, definitely.
It was easier during covid. Interest rates were around 2 or 3%, so there was a big rush on housing. Lately the rate has been 6-7% (don't...) and supply has dried up because a lot of those buyers are unwilling to leave and jeopardize their low monthly payments - "golden handcuffs." So, higher mortgage rates and lower supply have priced a lot of would-be buyers out of the current market.
AdministrationTop772@reddit
Not as extreme.
Suspicious_Dust_6939@reddit
Yes 100%
NeonPlutonium@reddit
“As of early 2026, the U.S. homeownership rate is approximately 65.2% to 65.7% of households. While exact, up-to-the-minute numbers of individual homeowners fluctuate, this rate equates to over 83 million owner-occupied housing units. Roughly 37% to 40% of these homeowners own their homes free and clear, without a mortgage.”
“The U.S. homeownership rate stands at approximately 65.7% as of late 2025. Rates rose from under 50% before WWII to a peak of 69.2% in 2004, then dropped to a low of 63.4% in 2016 following the 2008 housing crisis. Despite recent fluctuations, the rate has generally remained between 61–65% over the past 50 years.”
AndrasKrigare@reddit
And
https://eyeonhousing.org/2025/02/homeownership-rate-for-younger-households-declines/#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20homeownership%20rate%20inch,occupied%20households%20(783%2C000%20increase).
RoryDragonsbane@reddit
WOAH, why are you bringing statistics into my echo chamber?
KartFacedThaoDien@reddit
Its not even close to the level that it is in Saigon & Hanoi. Not even when looking at San Francisco, DC & NYC.
CaptainAwesome06@reddit
It has been difficult to break into the housing market for a long time now. But it's getting more and more difficult.
We really stretched our budget to buy our first house during the 2009 recession. Since then, it has been a lot easier to upgrade, which is dependent on the market. We got lucky a couple times.
Bear_necessities96@reddit
Yes specially in big cities you have to live 1 hour away from the city to barely afford a house
balthisar@reddit
There are plenty of places to buy a house at a reasonable price. The larger issue is would-be buyers not being reasonable in their expectations. If you're working part time and going to community college, you're not going to buy a home near Central Park in New York or anywhere in the city limits of San Francisco.
Hell, our net worth and income are in the top something-something percent in the United States, and we'd have trouble buying a house in a popular area.
Oh, popular areas are popular for a reason? Yeah, sure, millions of people in the midwest are living in abject misery because they can't enjoy the reasons that Manhattan or San Francisco are so popular. Oh, poor, poor, us.
notsosecretshipper@reddit
I don't think most young American can buy a house. I think most rent, and that is also getting hard.
Apprehensive-Log3638@reddit
I understand for Americans living in HCOL areas, but we live in Ohio. We can both buy nice houses all day long for $200k.
Then-Skill2421@reddit
Nice house at $200k in ohio? Where?
Apprehensive-Log3638@reddit
In Ohio I would have to answer that question inverted IE where can you not find $200k houses. Example Fairborn.
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/371-Morris-Dr_Fairborn_OH_45324_M46128-47405
Move in ready home, within a major economic hub. $229k turn key house. You can consistently get $150-180k houses that need updated, but move in ready. IE need carpet or paint.
Then-Skill2421@reddit
We're talking "nice" houses, not just any sub $200k house. What's that neighbor like in terms of safety?
FlashConstruct@reddit
Why is that listing not a good starter home for someone? If the neighborhood is safe it's a great house. How many bedrooms and extra rooms does a first time home buyer need? I didn't buy my first house till I was in the 40s but if I was younger and had the opportunity for a house like that as a starter home I would have jumped on it!
Then-Skill2421@reddit
To each their own.
Personally, 1200 square feet and no garage is not nice
This is all subjective
AleroRatking@reddit
I don't know anyone with a garage anymore. Certainly no one under 40. The few that had them converted them
Then-Skill2421@reddit
And I don't know anyone without a garage? See how it's all subjective
AleroRatking@reddit
My point is that a nice house absolutely does not need a garage.
Like what a crazy parameter.
Then-Skill2421@reddit
Nice is subjective
What do we not understand about that?
AleroRatking@reddit
But your the one who initially disagreed with the commenter who showed actual proof
You claimed you can't get a nice house for that price. How isn't that subjective.
Then-Skill2421@reddit
The first person said "nice" house and then in their second comment asked a silly question about showing "any" house under $200k. That's what I called out because we're not talking about any house
AleroRatking@reddit
What makes those houses not "nice".
Once again. You attacked them first. They then showed great examples. You then created unfair parameters like needing a garage of all things to be a nice house
Then-Skill2421@reddit
They changed the question. They said nice first. Then asked me to show them proof of where you can't find a house for sub $200
I can find plenty of crap for sub 200 but that's not what we're talking about
FlashConstruct@reddit
Guys and gals, he's a bot. 12 day old account with blocked comments. Hi Putin!
Then-Skill2421@reddit
Or I made this account after being off reddit for 8 years and any time I wanted to scroll I'd be forced to sign up
Apprehensive-Log3638@reddit
Lets not move goal posts.
I answered your question with an example. As far as safety fairborn is fine. Most crime in Ohio is concentrated to specific areas. You are not going to get into trouble in fairborn unless you go looking for it. US military Base is right there with thousands of extremely high paying contracting positions to various DOD contractors.
Then-Skill2421@reddit
I'm not moving goal posts?
Nice is subjective. I can show you a mansion for a million dollars you don't think is nice. I can show you a studio apartment for $500 you don't think is nice
Apprehensive-Log3638@reddit
You are being pedantic.
I answered your question. Unless you have anything else to add, I do not see a point in continuing this thread.
notsosecretshipper@reddit
I don't have a spare 200k lying around, unfortunately. We're barely making rent.
Apprehensive-Log3638@reddit
There are various programs that allow financing, especially in Ohio. USDA loans allow $0 down. Then there is first time home buyers etc etc. If you actually want a home, you can do it.
Then-Skill2421@reddit
That's assuming you qualify for those loans and programs. Not everyone can, will, or does.
So a blanket statement such as everyone can do it, is disingenuous
Apprehensive-Log3638@reddit
Outside of a one off, the average person can qualify for a home financing program. USDA for example is specifically for low-middle income borrowers. We also have programs in Ohio outside of USDA for low-middle income borrowers that will cover the down payment. Then there are traditional 3.5% FHA loans. People who cannot finance generally cannot due to poor credit. That is something that they have agency over. It might take effort and a few years, but they can purchase a home. I do not subscribe to the woe is me, life is terrible, I cannot purchase anything nonsense. It is not difficult to achieve a 640 credit score.
AleroRatking@reddit
I have a four bedroom house that I bought for 100k 8 years ago. It would now cost about 160k here in CNY from recent evaluation
My grandma's 2 bedroom house just sold for 110k.
There are places where housing is cheaper.
notapunk@reddit
Not exactly young and am resigned to never owning a house.
thingsbetw1xt@reddit
I can't even afford to rent lol. You need roommates for that here.
heelstoo@reddit
A good portion of young Americans are also still living with their parent(s), even into their 30s.
Snawer_brillant@reddit
Yes, I hope House prices in California need to go down fast. We’re not leaving this amazing state.
LazyBoyD@reddit
This can’t be a basic house for $1M? Those prices are only seen in Boston,NY or San Francisco in the U.S. But salaries are high in those cities. Professionals buying these homes can earn about 30 times the Vietnam salary — so think 12,0000 a month. That’s still not enough to afford a home for a single person in these cities….
Top_Document7437@reddit (OP)
we have to pay 1m$ for a basic nothing special house in Ho Chi Minh city
FLOHTX@reddit
$150K USD. Is this not a normal house there?
https://www.dotproperty.com.vn/en/2-bedroom-house-for-sale-in-go-vap-district-ho-chi-minh_6920961
_CPR__@reddit
What about outside a major city? In the US, if you want to live right in a city, you're going to pay a lot more. I assume it's the same in Vietnam.
Sukiyaki_88@reddit
I'm 37M, my wife is 36F. We bought our first townhouse in 2025 for $400k. Our combined salary is approx $14k/month ($10.5k/month after taxes) & our mortgage, home tax, insurance & HOA are approx $2700/mo. Housing is expensive for first time home buyers but not prohibitively expensive like you're describing Vietnam housing prices. We make almost 2x the median household income for our city.
AleroRatking@reddit
Is there a single country without a housing crisis right now?
Equivalent_Working73@reddit
I’m in my mid-40s, married for 20 years. We bought our house in 2009, and we were still able to live comfortably. But it was at the peak of the Great Recession and real estate was cheap. In retrospect (hindsight being 20/20), we were extremely lucky; our daughter is about to enter high school and I have absolutely no idea how she’s going to be able to afford a house (whether mortgage or rent) when she’s of age; it’s no wonder no one wants to have kids anymore.
tawzerozero@reddit
As a 40 year old American, the only people who I know that could buy houses either: a) had money from their parents to do so, or b) have jobs that pay 300k USD per year or more.
RhinoPillMan@reddit
I’m homeless and have become content with it, knowing I’ll never afford a house unless I go to my property on the other side of the country and build a shack on it.
Spirited_Season2332@reddit
Definitely not to that extreme.
I live in the countryside and work remote so buying a house was relatively easy for me but even living in the city you aren't getting paid 400 per month while trying to buy a 800k house
TempAcct724@reddit
My parents bought a house when my mom was 22 and my dad was 27 on a combined salary of about $50k.
I couldn’t afford my own home until I was 35 and my wife and I made nearly $300k combined and we had to move to a much lower cost of living state to do it.
If I tried to buy the exact same home I live in today I couldn’t afford it due to price and interest rate increases.
PeanutterButter101@reddit
People where I live are either selling at a loss or are letting them sit empty. My condominium (apartment style condos) have people struggling to sell their unit but you also have owners that own more than 1 unit just letting them sit vacant.
thingsbetw1xt@reddit
The average age of first time home buyers in 2026 is like 40 years old. Yes young people absolutely are struggling to buy homes. Hell a lot of us can't even afford to rent.
rockettaco37@reddit
As a Gen Zer, I have serious doubts that I'll ever own a home
Folksma@reddit
I do know one of our peers that just bought a home
Their parents gave them the money to buy it..but I guess that still counts
ryguymcsly@reddit
Yes, because we hit peak population a while ago and lifespans are increasing combined with lending practices and laws restricting construction.
In the US this has been particularly brutal because we stopped making low cost apartments a long time ago. So not only are houses unaffordable but so is rent. I imagine the same thing is true in Vietnam and most other places.
MajesticBread9147@reddit
Yup.
Not to mention fewer families and more singles.
So the population might be roughly the same, but fewer families of 4 living in 1 housing unit, and more indivials in 2 bedroom apartments with a home office.
MajesticBread9147@reddit
Housing is expensive as hell where I live. Also I'd need to have a roommate or two if I bought my own place, and something irks me about having a roommate in a place that I own, I don't know why.
Although I do want to move to a bigger city long term so being tied down is kind of contrary to my long term goals.
You can also find other ways to avoid losing your buying power to inflation. I try to put about $500-$1000 a month into stocks outside my retirement accounts.
Once I hit a six figure net worth in a year or so I will think about using that as a downpayment on a condo, but I'll probably keep renting for the flexibility.
river-running@reddit
Many of us are, yes.
Apprehensive-Log3638@reddit
It is a local and regional issue here. Plenty of affordable houses, it just depends on where you want to live. Especially with the shift to WFH, a lot of dormant supply in the interior of the US is now feasible. You used to have to move to major metros for work, now you can basically move anywhere. People still understandably want to live in LA, NYC etc. For those folks it is awful. If you are able to WFH and willing to move anywhere, there is plenty of cheap housing.
Working-Emergency-34@reddit
It does not appear to as bad as you describe in the U.S.; the threshold of earning is much higher. Median household income and the income needed to own a home differ by $30,000/year.
plimpieteach@reddit
We are! In general it seems to be that our down payments are hard to get for younger generations. Historically they have either more attainable because homes were cheaper or family would help out with the payment. But our home values are also sky high. For example a house that was 80k in 2019 in 2026 is 167k and needing significant repair. And that is in not the best school districts and neighborhoods if you want good schools and nice areas you're looking at waaaaay more.
OpALbatross@reddit
Our house was sold for $61,000 in 2016. We bought it late last year for $194,000. And that is after they had tenants that damaged things. It also needs work / upgrades since it was built around 1950.
Schools are okay (significantly better than what we could have afforded in the next city), but my husband has a 35 minute commute.
I keep worrying we overpaid, but almost everyone we talk to seems to think we did really well.
ilovjedi@reddit
Yes. People are even struggling to rent a house. We have so many homeless people here in Maine.
Barkerfan86@reddit
Since late 2021- early 2022 the housing market absolutely blew up. My family got lucky and we bought in the summer of 2021 right before it went sideways. If we were to try today to buy the exact house we are in we would not be able to afford it. We bought for 194k in September of 2021, but by mid 2022 the “value” had already gone up to 240k, and is now up to 280k.
Ok_Art4661@reddit
Gave up. I just end it when have to move out
RawAsparagus@reddit
Yes, but it sounds like Vietnam has it worse.
ZaphodG@reddit
The US housing market was impacted by the government messing with the mortgage market to make interest rates extremely low 5 years ago. Lots of people are locked into 2 1/2% fixed rate mortgages and would never consider selling their home and losing that low interest rate. New construction stalled in 2008 at the Great Recession and has never recovered. There has been enormous inflation in the cost of home construction. Building materials are much more expensive. Labor costs are much higher. The tariffs made material costs even worse. The immigration policy eliminated a supply of labor.
The US has a shortage of around 4 million housing units. The supply is restricted for the reasons above. Entry level wages for people entering the workforce have stagnated or declined. Unions were eroded. Companies make employees sign non compete agreements. The percentage of 30 year olds who own homes has declined considerably. Prices up. Supply down. Income down. Corporate profits are up and the rich are doing very well while the median person is seeing a declining standard of living. The absurd thing is that people vote for the political party that has caused this. That political party uses lunatic fringe issues like gun control and abortion rights to get people to vote against their economic self interest. They own the media. Fox News mind control has a huge influence on elections.
Penguin_Life_Now@reddit
Yes, but keep in mind the great variation of home costs in the US. Around the major cities in Texas one can still buy a relatively new 3 bedroom house for under $250,000, by comparison an equivalent house would be 5 to 10 times the price in southern California
Mr_Pockets-@reddit
I personally am struggling to buy a house. I'm making the most amount of money I've made in my life, working long hours to make as much as I can, and still struggling to put money away from a potentially future home
cyvaquero@reddit
Like all things U.S. - very location dependent. I have an 1800sqft 3/2/2 on two acres around a 30 minute drive from the Alamo (San Antonio city center) that is valued in the $400Ks, we bought it in 2013 for $220K. I can’t imagine what it would be worth in Austin much less someplace like L.A. and it doesn’t exist in Manhattan below 8 figures (if at all).
Aly_Anon@reddit
Yes, the houses here are more than four times my annual wage.
Mobile homes cost what a house used to be six years ago.
rockmediabeeetus@reddit
I will never be able to buy a house. I’m 35. That will not change. I’m fine with it.
No-Lettuce-5783@reddit
American's are struggling to find a job.
CharlesDickensABox@reddit
It depends. You can buy a house for pocket change if you're willing to live out in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, the jobs are mostly in cities, so the only way for a working person to do that is to be a remote worker. So young people who are in the prime of their careers often still can't afford it — even though there is plenty of cheap housing — because the the jobs and the houses aren't anywhere near each other.
Louisianimal09@reddit
Yeah, basically two and a half generations will probably never own a home and be perpetual renters if we stay the current course
ThingFuture9079@reddit
Starter homes which are those that are smaller and usually cost less are basically nonexistent these days unless you're in an area with a cheap cost of living and even then when you try to find something under $250k, you would still think the market was like how it was during Covid where all houses sold quickly and I still get out-bidded even when I have gone 10% over asking price.
Outlaw_Josie_Snails@reddit
Yes, it has become very expensive for Americans to buy homes in certain states.
ramblinjd@reddit
Yes but not as bad as what you describe.
Rokmonkey_@reddit
Yes,, but not as extreme as you describe. It is also location dependent. There are still places in the US that has supply available to make the homes relatively reasonable.
tarebear577557@reddit
No