The days when a house might cost one year or at most two years income are long gone.
Back then a common scenario was buy a house, fix it up a bit, save, use first house's equity and the savings as down payments on a second house. Next thing you know (if nothing goes wrong) you own a bunch of houses and have a semi-passive income stream to live on.
There are very few places in the USA where that is even remotely possible any more.
And real estate has been the most common path to wealth for a century or more.
Median income in FL is 58k. That's 3-4 years of income. Not much different.
the only places where housing prices have gone nuts are the coastal cities, which 'everyone'[1] wants to live in for cultural reasons.
[1] everyone is in quotes because it's abundantly clear that there are two classes of people in the us, those that matter to the elite and those that don't, and only those that matter want to live in the coast cities.
Back then a common scenario was buy a house, fix it up a bit, save, use first house's equity and the savings as down payments on a second house. Next thing you know (if nothing goes wrong) you own a bunch of houses and have a semi-passive income stream to live on.
There are very few places in the USA where that is even remotely possible any more.
And real estate has been the most common path to wealth for a century or more.