In America most can afford a large house and car, but only the top 1% can afford to live in walking distance to a pub

I don’t think space universally equates to wealth

I'm not sure if its a 1 to 1 comparison. Its primarily about available land (and the implications of that)

US is mainly housing in suburbs, that means driving into town center.

Europe has lots of housing in city center, which means more local shops and restaurants.

So there are trade-offs.

2800sqft wat is utah smoking

It's just that Area and population difference is huge.

The United States is almost two and a half times bigger the size of the Europe.

The United States has a population of over 327 million people, while Europe is home to more than 741 million individuals.

Poverty is not being able to walk anywhere nice from your house.

Real estate value is usually transferred into cost per square foot (meter). 1 sq. ft on Rodeo Drive in California is not equal to 1 sq. ft in Tennessee.

Is space really the defining factor? Wouldn't access to amenities, taxes and interest rates be more of factor on affordablity and the value you're getting?

I can't remember where I heard this but there's a saying a home should be around x3 your annual salary and in many of the big cities its 8-12 and I think thats based on asking price not what you pay after your term which is even more

It's been pretty eye opening learning so much about Europe over the past few months.

I see a lot of comments criticizing this particular metric, but try to find one that doesn't make Europe look much poorer (materially) than America.

Europe being roughly half as wealthy as America is right in line with the data @TomK's been sharing.

This is trolling, right?

Otherwise, I feel sorry for you.

Are housing units small in Switzerland?

European homes are typically constructed with bricks and mortar, while American homes are usually built with wood and drywall. This makes it quicker and less expensive to build larger homes in America.

I think you are projecting your values on others. I’d rather have a smaller house in walking/biking distance of a supermarket, kindergarten, school etc. than a bigger house and needing two cars. I once lived in a 1200 sqft apartment with another person and we ended up not using one of the rooms. I‘d prefer a 800–1000 sqft with a nice cut in a better location any day of the week at least until there are more than two people to be housed.

That makes a lot of sense.

There is a reason why american homes are so expensiv, though.

Perhaps they do not like showing off their wealth with their houses.

But who has more debt?

Hahahahaha, what is even that! European cities are so different from the USA cities, also it's really meaningful how you used "americans" to indicate only US citizens ;-D

Moreover, averages are not really statistically meaningful if you model data that isn't normally distributed (aka, somehow gaussian).

Last time I checked I saw that things like house size (btw, is it really a measure of wealth? Like the zeros in a fiat bank account, I suppose) are not normally distributed...in fact are more right skewed. Thus, you're better off using median.

PS. Since you're referring to americans, what's the average house size in Mexico, Canada, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Brazil, Argentina, Cile, ....

I'm assuming this is just house size, and not square feet per person? That would be an interesting number. I believe I just read that in Sweden, the MAJORITY of people are living alone now.