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After having hung out with many Europeans for this recent years. I have learned a lots from them and also managed to help them to understand more about my country especially culture and lifestyle. However, there were times i couldn't answer to some specific questions i.e why do many Cambodian like sharing disgusting pictures of road accidents on Facebook? Every time we hung out together, i always asked them a lot of questions and they did the same, so that we could learn more from one another.

Interestingly last week, i found out that many people who live in the mega cities in Europe don't own the house. Most of them don't have their own house, they just rent the house or apartment. I was shocked as it is completely different from Cambodian. As a Cambodian, we try hard to own the house. We would try to own as many houses as possible, because we want have something to leave behind for our younger generation.However, after listening to their explanations why Europeans don't prefer owning the house, i kinda agree with them as it is really reasonable. It is the matter of lifestyle and way of thinking. People in Europe likes moving around. They don't just live in one specific city or place like Cambodian.

There's two things that people mean when they say they "own" a house.

1st: They bought a house with a loan. The bank lends them the money and they pay back little by little every month. From my experience, most people (in the U.S. at least) that "own" their own home, have bought it this way.

2nd: They have their own outright, meaning they bought it with the money they saved up. These are much fewer and far between, even amongst professionals and "rich" people to my surprise.

Personally I have my own home, would like to sell it (it's been for sale for a while), but in my experience most people my age don't get homes (I was 23) because they'd prefer to not settle down like your friends mentioned.

Re: Homes in the center of town, that's usually prohibitively expensive. I remember talking to a friend who lived in Manhattan and they were talking about prices of small condos, some of which even though they had just 1 bedroom and bathroom, were upwards of $1,200,000. [Admin edit: changed 12,000,000 to 1,200,000]

i "own" my own home where i live

in America i would bet less than 2% brought their own home outright, and another 5% that own after spending 30 years paying it off

Homes/land in Cambodia is cheap (with gf we own a small home and land) were as in America it cost a lot.

IN fact homes are so expensive u have a large group of people that '"buy" mobile homes an their are mobile home parks around the us

In the UK it's incredibly hard to get on the housing ladder... if I could buy land and build a house at home for $25,000, I'd have about two dozen of the bloody things (I'd rent them out and use the income to fund more over time) but I can't. I have friends in London living on 6-figure salaries (either earned individually or as part of a couple) who can't afford to save for a deposit and by UK standards - they're loaded, the average wage is more like £25,000. A small home in London is now verging on £500,000 in many areas. That means they need a deposit of around £100,000 (20% down - it used to be less but... banking crisis) and to take on mortgages of between 4x wage and 16x wage (banks see those numbers as very high risk nowadays). Buying a home is simply beyond them... saving for the deposit would take years and mortgages would have to be passed on to their children (and possibly their children's children) for them to be able to pay them off. It's not that people don't want to own a home - it's simply beyond their capabilities.

Europe is different, renting is more normal there and by and large - rents are much more reasonable in the UK, there's less incentive to buy because it's socially accepted that people rent - something that is not really the case in the US, the UK, and Australia (for example).

Most western counties have a reasonably good social safety net such as free medical, pension, unemployment benefit etc so it isn't as important to have material wealth for the next generation or old age as there's little chance of starving or not having a roof over your head. Owning land or your own home in developing countries carries far more importance or significance to protect the financial security of family and your self into old age.

I'm on my phone so won't comment extensively, but AE gave a good summary. I'll just add that also worth noting that in some markets, it's better to rent than to own. Meaning, the interest from the loan (which is MUCH smaller than interest on loans in Cambodia, but is usually spread out over a much longer period), the maintenance costs, taxes and so forth sometimes end up making home ownership more expensive than simply renting. It depends on the city though. Also, some people simply don't want the hassles associated with home ownership. I never owned a house in my home country, but strangely enough own a few houses and some land in Cambodia.

If I went back, I might try to buy a house. I wanted to buy a condo before moving here, but life took a different path which made buying a bad idea, and now I live here and going back isn't on the agenda at all...

I bought a house when I was 23 and sold it when I was 27, right as I moved to Cambodia. Broke even on it. But managed to get a nice check from Obama for just buying the damn thing.

Sir_Quality_U_Feel wrote:I bought a house when I was 23 and sold it when I was 27, right as I moved to Cambodia. Broke even on it. But managed to get a nice check from Obama for just buying the damn thing.

would love to know how the fuck u had enough $$ or credit at 23 to do that?
fuck i was still in college (but not broke ) but buying a house was not even in my thoughts

When I was younger, the thought of having a house and land seemed great. But, what it takes to get it in the US was just not worth it for me. The thought of being tied to a 30 year loan(pretty much the only way possible) was disconcerting. With the rocky employment climate now, forget it.

Also, In the US even if you "own" your home or land(meaning you don't owe money on a loan), it can be taken away at any time for at least two reasons:
1. Many counties have something called "eminent domain" where the government can take your land for public use. They give compensation, but I doubt it's a favorable amount to the home owner. This practice is dubious and often crooked, but it is also not an overly common occurrence.
2. If you don't/can't pay your taxes. In places like New Jersey a lower-middle class household may have to pay $10k/year in property taxes. It's less in rural places, but the point is you can't just own land in the US. You have to keep paying on it whether you're there or not.

phuketrichard wrote:

Sir_Quality_U_Feel wrote:I bought a house when I was 23 and sold it when I was 27, right as I moved to Cambodia. Broke even on it. But managed to get a nice check from Obama for just buying the damn thing.

would love to know how the fuck u had enough $$ or credit at 23 to do that?
fuck i was still in college (but not broke ) but buying a house was not even in my thoughts

I opened up 2 credit cards at age 18, paid them off every months + auto loans. I think I was like a 765 credit score. Money? Decent salary position in Marketing. Not like the monthly payment was outrageous on this small home.

The entire process taught me that credit is so much more valuable than money in the US.