In NYC, a lot of the affordable housing stock are part of co-ops, where the board has to approve your finances before you can move forward with a purchase. If your monthly income is less than a certain multiple (you would think 3x, but it's usually 5x - 10x depending on the co-op) of your monthly payments ie maintenance + mortgage + insurance, they can reject your application.
And even if you found a condo (usually 2x as expensive as a co-op for same QoL) without a board to reject you or just lived in a city without co-ops holding a lot of housing stock, banks have similar requirements in co-op applications as well. So you really need to have a massive income to go in without a >20% down.
Among the young people who may like to buy a house, this probably applies to a few rare folks working for a bay area tech company salary but are allowed to live in any other city where the home prices are more affordable.
I used streeteasy[0] almost exclusively during my home search. They label every listing by home type (co-op, condo, townhouse, etc)
I don't think I found a condo under 800k, while there are plenty of co-ops across the boroughs, including Manhattan, in the 300-800k range.
EDIT: just noted you said "in another place". In my experience it's very hard to find this information in America outside NYC without investigating individual buildings.
Anecdotal, but:
Head over to https://streeteasy.com/ & do some searches with whatever you deem to be "affordable," then compare between the various "building types" in their filtering.
It's been a little while since I've done this–I, at least temporarily, gave up the idea of buying something in the city–but I noticed similar trends to keerthiko. Similar to when I was actually looking at places with a broker.
And even if you found a condo (usually 2x as expensive as a co-op for same QoL) without a board to reject you or just lived in a city without co-ops holding a lot of housing stock, banks have similar requirements in co-op applications as well. So you really need to have a massive income to go in without a >20% down.
Among the young people who may like to buy a house, this probably applies to a few rare folks working for a bay area tech company salary but are allowed to live in any other city where the home prices are more affordable.