You can't compare Western Europe to the US. Maybe to specific regions or super-urban areas, e.g., the LA to SD corridor or the Bay Area.
In which case the two are comparable: there are few if any middle-class families in the bay area that own their homes except by inheritance or some other luck (gift, lottery). Even condos and other high-density housing are all but completely out of reach for all but the top 10% of income earners. And those condos are almost all studios or 1- or 2-bedroom units that are very tiny.
"... there are few if any middle-class families in the bay area that own their homes except by inheritance or some other luck ..."
This is a ridiculous statement.
There are plenty of middle class (by Bay Area standards) folks who have bought houses in Fremont and San Pablo and San Leandro and Hayward.
In fact, even in Marin there are parts of Novato and weird pockets of West Marin (Forest Knolls ?) where this was, and continues to be, done.
They are boring places and middle class folks working boring jobs have purchased homes there year in and year out for the past 25 years. Yes, they had to make choices and sacrifice some things for other things in order to do this.
Perhaps the ability to do that is comparable to a lottery win ?
I’m surprised anyone has heard of Forest Knolls! I grew up there.
It definitely used to be weird and relatively affordable for the middle class but not really any more.
Last year someone bought a house in the neighborhood for $1.3 m. It was worth $350k when my parents moved to the area about 25 years ago. The new owners have a pair of new Porsches in the driveway. Maybe that counts as middle class in the Bay Area these days but it’s still not obtainable for the vast majority of Americans.
$350k in 1997-dollars means that 25 years ago, it was worth $627k in today-dollars.
Adjusting for inflation, it's doubled in real value over 25 years, which works out to <3% APR. It's a decent return, but we've also ignored 25 years of property tax and maintenance. (on the other hand, we've also ignored 25 years of effective rent)
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that $1.3M isn't worth what it used to be but it sounds big in our head because we remember a time when a dollar went a lot further than it does today.
Just running some numbers into affordability calculators. Buying a house at $350k probably had your annual income between 70-80k which was about the top 1/3 of households 25 years ago. That was middle class. To afford $1.4M you're looking at an annual income around 350k. That's about the top 2%. Even if you stretch your budget more and have a hefty down payment you're still going to probably be in the top 5% of income to buy that house.
You wrote: <<there are few if any middle-class families in the bay area that own their homes except by inheritance or some other luck (gift, lottery).>> That is a bold, sweeping statement with no supporting evidence provided.
I Googled for about 10 seconds to find some statistics about Bay Area homeownership.
Zoomable map to visualise California homeownership (very cool!): https://dig.abclocal.go.com/california/homeownership-maps/BayArea_homeowners_zip_map.html
Homeownership Rate (5-year estimate) for San Francisco: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOWNRATEACS006075
At a glance on the first link (zoomable map), the Bay Area looks similar to SoCal (LA/OC/SD). Why do people think homeownership is so low in areas of California with lots of good jobs? It isn't. To be clear: I doubt people on this discussion are interested in homeownership rates in extreme suburbs (2+hours away) and rural areas.
In which case the two are comparable: there are few if any middle-class families in the bay area that own their homes except by inheritance or some other luck (gift, lottery). Even condos and other high-density housing are all but completely out of reach for all but the top 10% of income earners. And those condos are almost all studios or 1- or 2-bedroom units that are very tiny.