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If home ownership is ones primary goal and one is willing to make the sacrifices to achieve it then yes they can. Most people want a home but aren't willing to make the sacrifices.
Reality is probably somewhere in between you guys.This is so full of s*** man. I can't even begin to tell you. The median income in the city where I live is 40,000. This is not a rich area by any stretch of your wildest imagination. There are rich neighborhoods and there's upper middle class neighborhoods where I live and then there's middle class neighborhoods and then there's poor neighborhoods. The cheapest homes are going for over 400,000 in the poor areas......
You are just full of s***. You have been listening to liars.
Obviously the cheapest homes in poor areas aren't $400k. That's the median for the entire country, so there are lots of homes much cheaper, and a friend making $80k and having to live in a van suggests truly horrific spending choices.
The problem is that what living frugally entails and the payoff for doing it is unreasonable imo. It would be one thing if living frugally meant stop buying luxury cars and taking expensive vacations and eating in restaurants every night, or stop wasting money on expensive entertainment, but if you have to not have a family, fast for days at a time, live in a crappy studio in a high scrime neighborhood and wear a coat at home so you don't freeze, and maybe you can buy a crappy place in the same high crime neighborhood a few years later, that's more than just being frugal.
The economy is pretty unstable if the house price to income ratio isn't even close to the recommended amount. Recommended amount is a house valued at 2.6x your income, and we're now almost at 6 for median house to median, so "affordability" now means median income matches you with a shit tier house for the next 30 years.
Not to mention that even if you got in when it was more reasonable just a few years ago and already bought a house, your property taxes keep climbing for something you allegedly alredy own.