Buying a home in America is just too darned expensive, what with today’s rapidly rising home prices. Right?

You might be surprised to know that, according to a somewhat complicated calculation, U.S. homes, on average, are among the most affordable in the world.

To come to that conclusion, the Best Brokers organization calculated how many months of average income, in each country, it would take to buy a 1,076 square foot home—a modest residence by U.S. standards, but in some areas this is a bit luxurious. The average American would have to pay the equivalent of 76 months of total income to buy that house. In South Africa, that figure falls to 71 months.

Those were the lowest totals in the survey, by a fair amount. Canadians would pay an average of 179 months of income, while Mexican citizens, south of the border, would spend 211 months of income on the same size home. The UK: 202 months. Italy: 184 months. India (where the average wage is a lot lower): 578 months, topping Indonesia (563 months). China and Japan came in at 177 and 455 months, respectively. In Turkey, it would require 52 years and six months of average wages to buy a house of that size.

As mentioned, the calculations can be tricky, requiring an estimate of the average cost of a home (which, of course, varies depending on location) and the average wage of workers in each country. The ranking also took into account real mortgage rates, which means the interest rates in each country, and also the inflation rate.

So when we hear somebody complain about how unaffordable American homes have become, we might suggest that they check out the affordability of homes elsewhere in the world. Which puts a sort of damper on the idea of expatriating abroad to live more cheaply... 

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