By the way, that's a facially incorrect statement. You DO afford it today, based upon your net worth if not your income. Otherwise you wouldn't be in it unless someone else was giving you free rent.
If you had your current net worth, and had to buy the home again at today's prices, you would have simply made the appropriate down payment and would be in the exact same position.
What you're saying is that you couldn't have afforded it in 1991 based on only your 1991 income at today's prices.
Well, (respectfully), duh.
What I was saying is if I were to try and buy my house at today's value I could never afford it given my current salary. My salary has hardly tripled since 1991.
What he is saying is that the housing prices have become unaffordable for first time buyers or for buyers with little equity who earn what he earns today.
Your argument makes his house "affordable" only because he already owns the house which he bought at good value in 1991 and you calculate the equity as part of his net worth. Your argument also assumes that he has not mortgaged his equity away by taking out a home equity loan.
Gimmick loans have flooded the market with dollars that the borrowers will not be able to repay once the interest-only grace period expires, the increased interest rates kick in and the principle repayment is compressed all into the remaining term of the loan.
That easy money has artificially inflated prices way beyond the actual value.
The situation is analogous to banks loaning everybody in a small town $3 million at terms they cannot repay and then seeing the price of a gallon of milk go up to $75 per gallon at the local supermarket and people in that town calculating their "net worth" by how many $2,500 pairs of Docker's slacks they own and by how their kid just bought a $100,000 mutt puppy dog by exchanging him for two $50,000 mutt kittens that the kid next door wanted to sell.
The only way you can afford to buy houses today is to either enter into an extremely foolish loan arrangement or pay for the new house with money that you received from someone that has entered into an extremely foolish loan arrangement.
Those "greater fools" are now in extremely short supply and the last ones who entered the Ponzi scheme are now getting fried.
Those of us who bought our houses at good value and have not mortgaged our equity away will do just fine.
We bought value. We did not buy a lifetime of mortgage slavery.