Yes, houses are incredibly expensive relative to income. And they always have been, just not in the same way. I paid 9% interest on a 30 year mortgage in 1985 or so. As far as I'm concerned interest rates are so low and have been for years they have been just been giving money away. And I was in a heavily taxed neighborhood. 30% of my mortgage was land taxes and school taxes. I bought way more a house than I possibly could and I struggled hard. And my monthly house nut was 1800. It cost about $180K and according to you guys I got an incredible deal.

Mortgage interest is front loaded. I spent about 15 years paying almost only interest and when I sold the house I had almost no equity. It was worth it. That was when I left Barbara. I have had three total financial resets since then.

I just bought a house half the size of that house for 300K. And while it's in a great tourist town, it's distant to everything. So nobody who needs to commute can live here.

Also, keep in mind that interest rates indicate risk. It is the amount of risk that the lender is willing to take on. This is a very risky world and I'm sure they're being far pickier now and upping people's interest rates because they are riskier.

Until I got to that point in my life I couldn't possibly expect to have bought a house. I had years of ever-increasing stable income in technology. I was highly paid for my age. So I was a good young bet for a bank.

So to start off with I don't understand why people who haven't crossed a certain level of stability and income expect to own a house on land. Where do these expectations come from?

What is the costs that go into that structure (and try to really allocate for the people's time that worked on putting that house together for you) and what is the value of the land versus what these guys are willing to pay. Sure. The houses are crazy expensive now and the multiples are probably about 50% higher than when I bought it. But buying a house is a top life achievement, not an expectation.

Reasonable dense apartment housing that have good walls and no rats, on the other hand is a reasonable expectation. Housing is, while not a right, damn close.

Double wide tiny houses are great. People b**** about not being able to buy their McMansions. Factory built and delivered and slapped together. But a brick or stick house? That's real money and real time and real skills that you have to pay for.

Don't forget the underlying infrastructure that a house needs to attach to the neighborhood. Let's say you bought a plot of land in a little coastal town next door to me. It's one house length off the main road but it's got a dirt road to it. And you got to get electricity and water and sewage or septic tank depending on what is possible. And then the town tells you in order to do any of this you have to build a road. You are responsible for paying for the sewer main and the water main coming in. How much did that all just cost?

Town plan says roads will be paved. Town was initially laid out and paved. Everybody involved in the town pays for everything. Then someone new shows up and says I want to build something on a plot of land that's not on the infrastructure and I want the town to pay for it. Citizens tell them to go f*** themselves and pay for it themselves.

Next door is great to see this play out.

But cheap real estate? No. Nobody's building more real estate. It's only going to get more expensive unless it's in a depressed area that you don't want to be in any way. That's an ever-increasing price in any area that anybody wants to live in.