I’m from Hawaii. During the episode shot there, the couple was looking on the eastern tip of the island, in an area known to be very expensive, and had a budget of $2m.
I’m used to high housing prices and costs of living, but that was silly. That is nowhere near typical of the average home price there. Last I checked, the median home price was just over half a mil.
Don’t discount selection bias, either. It’s more interesting to see $500K-1M homes, so the producers choose people with the means (or at least desire) to purchase such a home.
When my wife, then girlfriend, was shopping for a house in 2004, she was making next to nothing in terms of salary.
They approved her for up to $300,000.
She looked at them and said “are you crazy?” It was a pretty simple thing to do the math and realize you can’t afford the monthly payments. And she was right. If she had said “screw it” and gone ahead and got a house worth what she was approved for, we’d have lost it by now and been bankrupt.
But as simple as the math is, most people don’t do it. Even the smart ones who manage to make it that far into the equation forget to factor in the taxes, the insurance, the PMI, yearly maintanance and upkeep, etc. etc. etc. Those can easily be an extra $500 a month.
So you’ve got two newlyweds earning a total of, let’s say, $80,000 a year on these shows. They get approved for $500,000 and damned if they aren’t going to get that $500,000 home (or maybe a little more if there’s a bidding war and this is the house they fell in love with). The concepts of starter home and budgetting are completely foreign to them.
Twenty-five years ago when I was just out of school at my first job, a co-worker at the same level as I was showed me pictures of the house she and her husband had just bought. I knew approximately what she made, and knew her husband and approximately what he made, and yet there house was about 3 times as much as my guestimate of what they could afford.
Nine months later the two of them were arrested for embezzling from husband’s employer. That’s how they paid for their house.
I had thought maybe these 20-something people buying houses from 500k to over a million are drug dealers and their wives are prostitutes. But naw, that is just anger speaking. 
Well, they aren’t lawyers, doctors, engineers, scientists, but I guess they could have won the lottery in their state or come from a wealthy family or maybe this show House Hunters is totally fake.
In any event, my wife enjoys the show, but it is not jealousy or envy on my part, but rather skepticism, doubt and it irritates me that it took me 50 years to afford a house that is 10 to 15 times cheaper. I love my home, but to afford a $500k home seems impossible to me and unless your dad is the king of a country it eludes me in every conceivable way. 
But then, we all have opinions, but I have 9 degrees including 2 doctorates and retired from the military after 30 years and I don’t make anything close in my income to these kids who buy castles. Just saying!:smack:
Is there even any pretense that the people on this show can actually afford these houses? I haven’t watched this show, but I watched (with other members of my family) a bunch of episodes last year of that reality show where two guys in a van drive around buying stuff from people who had barns full of junk, often at steep prices. We decided that these guys couldn’t really make any profit when they then sell this stuff in their store, since they must surely have lots of expenses from their trips. We suspected that they can only do it because the production company for the reality show pays them enough in salary to make up for the tiny profits they make on the stuff they sell.
Perhaps the same thing is true on House Hunters. Perhaps the production company for the show knows that if the people on the show actually could only look at houses they could actually afford, the show wouldn’t be very interesting. So each house hunter is given a check for enough money that they can make a reasonable down payment on these houses they can’t afford. In general, most reality programs are utter lies.
It is so refreshing to actually hear someone use these terms.
I often wonder how our society got so spoiled, such that so many folk feel that at a very early age they are entitled to a level of luxurious consumption that their grandparents never achieved.
My assumption was that a lot of the hunters came from family money.
I saw an episode of House Hunters International recently in Trinidad, hey I live there so I can offer commentary!
The three properties were all CREME DE LA CREME, I mean the best of the best. They were renting and the rent on one was like five thousand dollars USD a month, curiously the husband was dissatisfied and hilariously was worried about security on one house located in a gated community in the richest section of the country. These were beautiful mansions stunning by any standard.
The show is a fantasy, it should not be used to accurately judge the real estate market in any country.
True, but for House Hunters International, it is interesting to see what prices are for homes and condos. I am often shocked that in some cold, drab country that until recently was in the East Bloc, prices are through the roof - and this is for bland places that would go for 1/3 the price here in the US! How do the locals even exist at that price point?
Still - House Hunter International is the best show to make snide comments with friends and family!
Idiot Americans who don’t speak a lick of the language trying to find huge ass apartments/homes/condos for a budget that wouldn’t afford buying a Honda Accord. Or the super picky buyers with oodles of money who complain that everything was nice in the 350,000 square foot mansion on the beach with nine pools - but gee - the fridge wasn’t stainless steel and they hated the wall color in bedroom number six!
And of course the people who will spend an extra $250,000 for a 12 foot square garden in the back so their 18 year old dog can poop there.
And parents who worry their kids are going to intentionally leap off 10th floor balconies unless there is a 7 foot railing to protect them. Just how dumb/suicidal are your kids?
But back to the (ancient zombie) thread OP:
It is somewhat amazing that with a laptop or two, these people can move to some remote island where the nearest hospital is 18 hours away, but still earn enough to afford a $1.5 million house. Hey, I can type and send emails - I want that job!
Of course, then there are the bimbos who want to plunk down several million dollars and then hope to make money with their combo resort: yoga/interpretive dancing/Bonsai tree trimming. Yeah - they will flock to your resort…what could possibly go wrong with that plan?