metro wrote:Omicron wrote:Half a million for that? Um, no.
indeed, what a joke. Could probably buy a luxury penthouse in the US for that.
No, no you could not. At least, not in any of the places that you would want a luxury penthouse. Just last week we were visiting some people who told us about when they lived in Manhattan. Their apartment was a single room, basically a loft, about 40 sq m all up in an old building in Harlem. The bedroom was just part of the main room big enough for the bed partitioned off by a low wall like office dividers. The bathroom had a basin, a toilet, and a shower, and was so tight that the shower curtain went around the toilet ("that was great, because every time we had a shower we cleaned the toilet too"). They were paying $3600 a month, and that was more than 5 years ago. You want midtown? Better have an executive salary. You want a view? Better be a C-level exec.
Yes, you can buy sprawling McMansions and "starter castles" way out in the 'burbs for this money, but downtown living in most of the serious downtowns, especially in a new building, is plenty expensive.
I think that we've got a skewed view of what to expect because the average size of Australian houses has grown so steadily over the last decade (especially when you consider that the average household size is falling). The first house that the Queen and I lived in was an old wharfie's cottage down in Glanville: that was a 2-bedroom place and couldn't have been more than 80 sqm. From there we moved to a 50s brick house in Melrose Park that's about 100 sqm. Even the place that we're about to leave here in Seattle is about 120 sqm if you include the basement. And we've got a pair of kids in tow too. Now it seems that some people expect a house big enough to have a room filled with rarely used exercise equipment, or a self-contained apartment for the two times a year they have visitors.