I just had to reply to this thread. Housing in Norway is incredibly expensive. A friend of mine looked at a 1 bedroom apartment of 50m2 from 2008 which is in a town 35km from the nearest "big" city (which in Norway terms is 50k+). This apartment went for $354.000.

The house me and my wife just bought is 1,5km from the same city. It is completely new, about 185m2 with 3 bedrooms. Cost us $690.000. 20 years down payment.

The worst I have read about in the papers is 19m2 "apartment" going for $310.000 which is smack dab in the middle of the city of 50k people.

Young people cannot afford to buy something and are destined to live with their parents until old age or forced to rent apartments which sucks most of their monthly income. Older, already established people with houses/apartments are living the good life with insane increases in value.

Edit: Forgot to add that my yearly income is about $69.000 before taxes (which is 36%) and every good/product one can buy in this country has VAT of 25%. My salary is not very good and education does not mean as much (higher education does not equal higher pay) as it does in other countries.

Things have changed a lot since 2004. I live in Perth, Western Australia. Our economy is one of the few left not yet hit by the global financial crisis. Realistically here, $500,000 would not get you a very nice place. Housing is overpriced.

Depends a lot on age, condition, location and who sells. In town where I leave price per square goes from under 1k € up to 3k+ € (new single room apartment around 36 m3 size costs bit under 100k whereas old 70's-80's apartment in same size range can go for under 30k. Actually a 36 m3 apartment was sold next door for mere 30k despite the apartment block having just gone thru major renovation so it was in very good condition. I would've bought it had I the money or income to be able to take a loan.) in an apartment block. In capital and other big cities prices can reach well over 10k per square.

You can get on to the 'property ladder' in this London neighbourhood for around $270,000, but your apartment would be tiny.

Upwards of $100k unfurnished if you want to live in one, not counting land. $30k for two rooms and an outhouse in the yard.

http://www.inni.fo/Default.aspx?ID=6136&city=100,160,175,176,177,270,180,186,187,188&type=3

That is the capital area. It is a lot less expensive in other places. So in another island:

http://www.inni.fo/Default.aspx?ID=6136&city=358,360,370,380,385,386,387,388

The text is all in Faroese but "Prísuppskot:" is the listed price. It is all in DKK so divide by about 6(5.75 currently) to get USD. So we are talking about approximately 140.000 USD to 260.000 USD for areas outside the capital to about 260.000 USD to 520.000 USD in the capital area. This is for typical "regular" people homes with the upper ends of those ranges being for the upper end of what you call "regular" people and the start of what might call rich people.

Edit:

Depending on location and size you can go both cheaper and more expensive than the ranges I have provided. But that would usually not involve "normal" houses.

I doubt you guys have it as bad as us though, since we pay 200k for a jailcell.:D

Is it a nice jailcell? In "Goodfellas" that had a full kitchen, entertainment center, 24/7 poker game going on. I'd pay 200k for that. :D

Lol, I wish. It's just the apartment and the 4 walls.

Too-fucking-much.

In my city it varies by how far you are willing to live from of downtown. But a nice middle of the road house will cost around 500-600K near downtown, 300k to 400k in the city and 200k to 300k in the suburbs. (US $)

I got mine for insanely cheap but I did a short sale in the middle of the US recession. The plummeting housing prices were bad for a lot of people but it was good for me.

Around here you're probably looking at a minimum of a $250k, and even something fairly modest like my parent's house is going to be more like $400k.

In other words, houses are basically unaffordable unless you're making substantially more.

OTOH, in other parts of the country like South Dakota, you can have a house for $25k. Or at least you could last time I looked into it several years ago.

Last time i looked the UK average was about 245K

But if you look at London you can easily pay 700k for a 2 bed flat, where as where I live 700k will get you a 5 bed country house with a few acres of land and still have change left over for a new car, you can get a 2 bed terrace for 75k near where I am

The effect of the GFC in Australia is drastically overstated. In Melbourne the prices stopped increasing for around 6 months, then went back to climbing (though admittedly not as extremely as before). Investors complain because they are not getting the unsustainably high returns on property that they got last decade.