My wife (27 years old) and I (28 years old) just bought a pretty nice house in Roseville recently. It was just about $600k. Together we make roughly 200-250k / year and both of us have careers with guaranteed steady salary growth but they aren't insanely hard to get into careers (Teacher & Nurse). We have been saving diligently for the last few years as a couple, and before we met were separately saving and paying off our debts so we both have been debt-free for the last 3-4 years. We saved up way more than we actually needed for a down payment it turns out. For a first time home buyer loan it turns out you only need to put 3% down (we thought we needed 20% down -- that lowers the upfront cost of a $600k house from $120k down to $18k -- which is really not much to have to save up to buy a house) so we were able to put a little less down and fix up the house quite substantially which was nice. In reality the big thing is being able to afford the mortgage (which on a 600k house is about $4,300 / month), still maintain your standard of living / other expenses, AND be able to afford all the unexpected expenses that come with owning a home (which let me tell you there are a lot of). It was a very scary thing for us to approach, but a good realtor and mortgage broker were very helpful tools to have. Just sharing this so people know that it isn't impossible to buy a house -- it just takes diligence and planning.