[engeljohnb]

This is all real numbers from ny recent job search. It was in a rural area in Indiana, a reportedly low COL state. So anything close to a city would've been way more expensive.

> You've forgotten electricity, depreciation and the need for the house to be wired up to support all the gear. The figures you're quoting are just the price for a one-off purchase, not the total cost of ownership.

Cost of total rewire was quoted $30,000. We didn't end up buying that house, but 30k is honestly a drop in the bucket when you're talking about numbers as huge as 180k. So no, the inclusion of electrical wiring is not some big expense that's making housing unaffordable. And houses had electricity in the mid-to-late 20th century... You know, back when it was reasonable to expect to be able to buy a house on one income without even a college degree.

Our electricity bill is usually ~$200/month. This is not what eats most of our paycheck. Our mortgage is far and away our biggest expense.

If houses still costed 20k (a price that many older folks have told me they bought a house for), even with a full rewire bringing it up to $50k, some kid working at Walmart could own a house. Now both renting and buying are prohibitively expensive, and it has nothing to do with modern amenities.

Housing costs are outrageous, far beyond the rate of inflation. That's why many can barely pay their bills. Not because we have electricity and washing machines and and microwaves.

[roenxi]

> Cost of total rewire was quoted $30,000. We didn't end up buying that house, but 30k is honestly a drop in the bucket when you're talking about numbers as huge as 180k

It's 15%. That is a substantial chunk of the whole.

> Our electricity bill is usually ~$200/month. This is not what eats most of our paycheck. Our mortgage is far and away our biggest expense.

Your mortgage is what, 20 years? $200 x 12 x 20 ~= $50,000, and around 25% of the mortgage principle. We've found 43% (almost a half house) of the cost so far in the electricity alone. Wiring it up and running the grid aren't cheap. I've always suspected it is illegal to build & sell a house without electricity otherwise there'd probably be a brisk market in them as a cheap option, the savings potential is there.

But that isn't the point, I can't tell if $180k is large or small without a median income to compare it to. If people in the area are earning $90k/yr then it might technically be cheap. A ratio of 3 I think is usual for the 70s.

[engeljohnb]

You said

> If they're happy to do it to 1970s standards, probably most of them [could support a family on one income with an ordinary job].

Our house has the same electrical wiring that it did in 1969. The couple that sold us the house told us they bought it for $20k, which means a cashier could have afforded it back then, but now it's too expensive. Therefore, the fact that it has electricity has no bearing on whether it's prohibitively expensive for most people, and I can make a similar argument for any house built in the mid 20th century.

>Your mortgage is what, 20 years? $200 x 12 x 20 ~= $50,000, and around 25% of the mortgage principle. We've found 43% (almost a half house) of the cost so far in the electricity alone. Wiring it up and running the grid aren't cheap. I've always suspected it is illegal to build & sell a house without electricity otherwise there'd probably be a brisk market in them as a cheap option, the savings potential is there.

Practically all houses had electricity in the 70s. So this is already contradicting what you said earlier if you're citing electricity as the reason no one can afford a house on one income.

>It's 15%. That is a substantial chunk of the whole.

It doesn't matter if it's substantial. I'm only saying it's not so much that it's the reason no one can buy a house and support a family with an ordinary job.

Median income doesn't matter to my point. Housing prices have skyrocketed to the point that most people can't buy a house on one income. No one who's paying attention can deny this fact with a straight face, and your claim that it wouldn't be true if people lived by "1970s standards" is easily proven false by the fact that houses that were built in the 1970s with all the exact same amenities are still overpriced way beyond inflation.

The fact that a Victorian house that's falling apart to the point of being dangerous was listed ANYWHERE for $180,000 serves my point.