The point of my comment was not really that there are no cheaper options. The point is that I should be, by most measures, firmly middle class and should be able to afford to buy a house around the place where I work. It’s not Munich or Hamburg, and I was not looking for something close to the city center. I was just looking for a decent house for my family.

I fixed a typo in the title:

How Inflation Putin stole Christmas across Europe.

I have lived in Germany for 7 years. I hold a STEM master‘s degree and was working an industry job that paid market rate salaries. With 50k€ in savings I was still denied mortgages because 50k was just barely covering the additional purchase costs (such as realtor and notary fees).

For a modest condo with a small garden in a small-ish city in central Germany I would’ve had to work and pay the mortgage until I retired, because the average house was 600k EUR. And most of the properties sold at that price still needed significant renovations.

If that is not f^cking crazy, then I don’t know what is.