It’s a vicious pinch, rent rates going up preventing you from saving while housing rates (and minimum down-payment if you want a decent monthly mortgage/interest rate) are going up at the same time. My wife and I got lucky and we own our townhouse, but half of the properties vacated in our neighborhood either through eviction or owners moving out have all been turned into rental properties owned by a corp. It’s fucked up, they want noone to own anything anymore so they can get richer through obscene rent hikes every year… And we live in MD. I can’t even imagine trying to survive in NY or any other big city.