Yep and salaries aren't even high though to justify that. Even high skilled workers in IT etc can't afford these places!

It's also the byproduct of countries being much smaller. So lands are expensive in general especially in central/western European countries.

Buying a house like that you mentioned even outside of major German cities won't be much cheaper.

Welcome to Europe! It's not NA. These would cost you at least 500K Euros in any big German city.

I am talking about actual city also. Berlin and Hamburg are in a different color shade (70-80) from Munich (90-100). The color gradient isn't great though.

EDIT: you're right about Munich city (71 sq.m.) vs Munich region (96 sq.m.)

It's 96 sq.m. Yeah not the highest but in comparison to Berlin with 70 sq.m., it's still high. Berlin is supposed to have slightly cheaper per sq.m. price.

You can go to the attached link in OP's source and see different cities. I would have highlighted the state capitals though in the plot.

It just averages over all living space in that region. So apartment and houses, not people. The data source says so. It's in German.

So south and west live in bigger space. Surprised to see Munich having larger average living space given how expensive the living space is there.

EDIT: Munich city itself is only 71 sq.m. vs region which is 96 sq.m.

Is this like what they show in some of the Hollywood movies? I kind of found it calming. But yeah I can understand living there for 20 years can wear you down.

Although it's Euros. And the map shows in dollars. Currently 3.99 euros is 4.21 dollars which isn't very far off 4.49 dollars you see on the map.

Here on Google map you can see a screenshot of a starbucks menu in Berlin.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/8ra9DQL8QzXFV4bUA

Can be said about lot of other prices - gas, housing, electronics, clothing.

Are you sure it was tall latte? I remember paying 3 euros for some small coffee. Even outside of Starbucks a cappuccino in normal Cafe in Berlin will cost you 3 euros. So unless you ordered an espresso, 3 euros at the airport sounds bit unbelievable.

You can check here but their median house price calculation is something like this

  public double calculateMedianHousePrice() {
    return (calculateMedianHousePriceCityCentre() + calculateMedianHousePriceOutsideOfCentre()) / 2;
  }

Also

> Price to Income Ratio is the basic measure for apartment purchase affordability (lower is better). It is generally calculated as the ratio of median apartment prices to median familial disposable income, expressed as years of income (although variations are used also elsewhere). Our formula assumes and uses: > * net disposable family income, as defined as 1.5 * the average net salary (50% is assumed percentage of women in the workforce) > * median apartment size is 90 square meters > * price per square meter (the formula uses) is the average price of square meter in the city center and outside of the city center

I suppose never ending war and poverty would be the big cause.

In general what we see here is even with all the exorbitant housing prices in most of developed countries, the situation is much worse in poorer part of the world. Iraq and Palestine seem to be the only odd country in bottom 20.

Source: Numbeo

Tools: R/ggplot2