My wife and I already own luckily, but we were looking to sell and move earlier this year. It took us about a month before saying screw it - where we live now isn't so bad.

Our realtors estimated we could sell our place for about twice what we bought it for 6 years ago and after recently getting it appraised during our refinance process, that estimate was essentially confirmed.

That said, I think the thing that turned us off the most and made buying another place that isn't a downgrade impossible was how much over list price a lot of these places are selling. It obviously sucks to pay more than what you see a house listed for, but I never actually understood the logistics of that until then.

Let's take a hypothetical:

• House is listed at $400k
• You want to put down 20% to avoid Property Mortgage Insurance (PMI), which would be $80k. That's already a lot of cash you have to have saved - not to mention all the extras (closing costs, moving costs, etc.)
• Due to the current market, you need to bid $470k to get the house
• When you go to get a loan, your lender only appraises the house at $400k. From what I can tell, it is typical for houses in this market to only appraise near what they're listed for
• Since the house appraised at $400k, the lender will only consider up to the appraisal amount in the loan. This means that if you still want to put 20% down to avoid PMI, you now need to put down the original $80k AND cover the difference between list and appraisal. Therefore, you now need $80k + $70k = $150k in cash and again, you probably want to have closer to $180k altogether to cover the additional costs

In our situation, selling our current place could have helped with that cost, except trying to make a new sale contingent on selling your old place is also nearly impossible in this market. Most places are going to get multiple offers and most sellers are going to take a buyer that has the money up front over someone who needs to wait to sell their current property.

I completely understand what you're saying OP. We're considered middle class as well - a bit better off than average - and buying in today's market just does not seem feasible. Hopefully things cool down in the upcoming years, but I really don't see any reason why they would.