Situation in Europe is often reported in misleading ways. Everybody calls it "housing crisis" - but we do not have millions of homeless roaming the street. It is actually a "moving crisis" - people want to move to nicer places but can't afford it. I.e. here in Germany, we have close to 1M perfectly habitable empty flats/houses - but they are in rural areas or the countryside. Indeed there is high demand for urban areas and cities, at the same time rural villages struggle to find and retain their population because everybody (especially younger people) move to the city. You might have heard of those italian villages offering houses for 1€, just to attract families and keep those villages alive.
If you can't get a job in arschfick nowhere then it doesn't matter there are a million houses there, because you can't afford them because you need a job for that. Never mind people have family, friends, children (with friends, school, etc.) and things like that.
"Need to live near jobs" is a good point. People forget how mobile our society has become compared to our grand-parents generation. Nowadays you have the possibility to get your "dream job" and move for it wherever you want. Your grand-parents most likely took the first best job and career available in the area, not thinking about "self fulfilment" in their careers. In a lot of cases you do not need to move to have a job, but we rather want to be a software engineer in a Hotshot Company in a "culture rich city" rather than a farmer in your rural home town.
That's because a house 100km away from the nearest job is not cheap. Even rural area houses are very expensive compared to what jobs in those rural areas pay.
This makes them even more of a trap. The rents will go up. And yet, even more jobs will leave those places. And then you haven't saved up, because the amounts were tiny
In brief, too many USD printed since 2008 (especially the Covid money printer), that percolated into certain jobs/professions – and lead to highly inflated asset prices.
These things are worth what they always were, FIAT currencies have lost value.
The strange thing is that while I definitely see it happening in many places around the world, not all the causes are the same. I think @moralestapia has it right: massive inflation is likely a root cause.
I recall a thread from someone from South America in the Slovenia subreddit, where they said they wanted to move to Europe because it's impossible to afford a home where they currently live. The response was basically "yeah, welcome to the club pal".
It's definitely a global issue, rising population mixed with late stage capitalism.
