I was just talking to my father last week about this exact thing. He built his house about 10 years ago and bought the land close to 30 years ago. He was a steel worker so not terrible pay but nothing amazing. That house today would be well over 1mil. No way he could have built it today. And we live pretty close to the middle of nowhere, Indiana. I pray I can buy my brother out one day, at this rate it’s the only chance I have of owning a nice house. Even with a STEM degree I’m looking at maybe 70k salary right now. Which I thought would be awesome when I started college but now that I graduated, I feel like anything under 6 figures will be hard to live a middle class life on. I guess I’m lucky I spent my 20s broke and homeless, I have learned to really stretch a dollar.