You're honestly out of touch with the software market. I earn around $110k a year after seven years of working and I'm nowhere near being able to afford a house. The fact that you think everyone is a FAANG engineer is part of the problem; the majority of us are not earning those top end salaries and the fact that you think we can buy a home after 5 years in Seattle is a massive joke.
I think houses are for the duel FAANG income, no kids crowd. Even on a senior FAANG salary, there's no knob I can turn on the calculator that ends up making sense for me to buy at these interest rates (in a part of town that doesn't leave me with a >1hr commute).
I remain a renter. Dump it all into stocks and hope for the best!
That's basically me; I keep a decent chunk in savings in case of emergency / downturn and then the rest in stocks / retirement etc. I hate having to invest in the stock market because most of it is gambling and speculation, but at least I can dump it in an index fund and it'll be fairly safe.
There's a reason why a significant number of millennials and below are cheering on for a housing bust and it's because it's possibly the only way we can afford a home.
My parents just sold their fairly nice large house for something like $170k. Of course it's not in a cool city. Living in a high cost of living area with expensive houses is voluntary consumption. If that's what you voluntarily want to spend your money on then fine, but you get just as much sympathy as the people complaining about how expensive brand new BMWs are.
How exactly is it voluntary between the high CoL cities having the major career opportunities and companies continuing to force people back in office? It's funny that you would even say like that in a thread where people are protesting having to return to the office for that reason.
I lived in Texas for four years. A house in the ass end of nowhere costs $150k-200k. It also comes with a two hour commute to get to my then-office, has literally nothing nearby and I would've been on my own during the next major freeze event.
