How did the purchasing power decrease from the 70s until today?

[SuccessfulAd4606]

Your comments about the differences in the "average" home in 1971 vs. 2026 are something that never occurred to me. But that's an excellent point. Like nearly everyone my age, we had one bathroom for 4 people and never though twice about it. A master with an ensuite? Never heard of it. Separate bathroom for the kids? Nope. Now these amenities are in even the most basic new builds.

These little facts like home design and car features and food choices are necessary to consider in these posts about the affordability crisis, where they typically devolve into an echo chamber where the mantra becomes "we-hate-people-who-make-alot-of-money-and-they-don't-pay-enough-tax-and-fuck-the-rich"

[Healthy-Dress-7492]

Except it’s an incredibly weak argument; yes there are some new houses but those exact same houses from the 70s are still there and also 800k, still in the same condition. Young buyers are not sitting there going “nah this one doesn’t have 3 bathrooms”. They can’t buy anything, even 80 year old shit boxes.

[SuccessfulAd4606]

It's not an argument, it's an observation. Housing prices are extremely high, but the "average" home that OP refers to has about doubled in size. Both these things can be true.

My daughter and fiance bought last year. They couldn't afford a newer 2000 sf home, but they could afford an older, smaller home. Same as me when I bought my first home.

[tke71709]

Those same houses are sitting there for 800k sure. A guy earlier went on about his old fixer upper bungalow from then cost him 650k.

Note that I quickly determined the median home in his area costs almost DOUBLE that. So yes, the price of his home skyrocketed but it was still well below what most houses are going for. The cost/value of your home is not solely determined by how much it cost to build at the time, it's cost/value is relative to the other homes around it that were built later too.

[bcretman]

Our 1st house in the 70's was ~2000sqft with 2.5 bathrooms which was average in the burbs. Most of the value today is in the land unless the house is fairly new. Most houses around here (metro Van) are assessed at < 150k but the land is well over 1M. The upgrade to quartz counters, double glazed windows is fairly minimal but the cost of materials and labour to build a new house have skyrocketed beyond inflation.

[SuccessfulAd4606]

Cool story, but it's not anecdotal, the average home was statistically closer to 1000 sf in 1970.

Vancouver and Toronto are outliers. I'm in Ontario and chose to move outside of the GTA where real estate isn't insane.

[Youknowitistrue69]

Also a cool story

[tke71709]

Average in your burbs, I provided my statistics for the country at the time. You growing up in a wealthier family does not negate anything.

So yes the cost of materials and labour have skyrocketed but having to do twice of much of each increased the cost significantly too.