I’ve lived in San Diego and thought finding housing there was hard but it’s a cakewalk compared to the hell that is finding an apartment in Amsterdam. I’ve considered leaving the city at times because finding somewhere decent here that’s also affordable seems close to impossible.
Man its bad everywhere! On the West Coast of the US, most people are paying more than half of their monthly income on rent, whether that is in San Francisco, Los Angeles or Seattle. It is a world-wide phenom. I’m from SF, and the last apartment we rented before moving south, we were paying $700/month for a lovely 1 bedroom. That was in 1998. Today it would rent for up to 4x that amount.
We are lucky because our mortgage is lower than the average monthly rent for a similarly-size home in my LA Eastside neighborhood. If we had to rent our house out today, it would be no problem renting it for more than $5k USD. Because we purchased our home 10 years ago just after the real estate crash and put down 50%, our monthly mortgage payment is around $1800, but it almost doubles after you add CA property taxes.
I truly sympathize with renters having been one for a long time and my heart bleeds for young couples and first time home-buyers that cannot get their leg in the door, and if they do, they are dangerously over-paying for property at great cost and risk.