5 housing statistics that explain why your generation can't afford a home 🧵
1. In Hong Kong, a home costs 16x the average annual salary.
The old rule: 3x. That world is gone.
2. EU rents rose 27.8% on average from 2010 to 2025.
In Estonia: +220%. In Ireland: +115%.
Salaries did not keep up. Not even close.
3. In 2025, the US home price-to-income ratio was 4.9.
The historical norm pre-2020 was 4.1.
It peaked at 5.2 in 2022. Still well above normal. Still getting worse for most buyers.
4. Zoning restrictions can make homes more than 50% more expensive than the actual cost to build them.
The land is cheap. Building is cheap.
The rules around building are what make housing unaffordable.
5. Rents in major cities now routinely consume 40–50% of median take-home pay.
The global guideline has always been: spend no more than 30%.
Nobody follows it anymore, because it's mathematically impossible in most cities.
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Housing isn't broken by accident.
It's broken by policy.
Follow @stats_feed for the numbers behind the headlines.
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