In 20 years half a million will look like a bargain.Whatever you buy now will need another 50k minimum just to make it livable.Maybe 100k to make it nice unless you're handy.
It's not that much when you consider there are kids in their late 20s getting in my car complaining about the being in the higher tax bracket.Some of these brats are on 100k a year.I'm sure they work for it but that's the new buyer.I picked up one of me neighbours and he works in tech and he got the deposit for the gaff from company issued shares.US tech too.
A few newbies in my area are in good jobs paying 400k plus living on their own in gaffs that used to house ten people.They're the ones with the money snapping up ex corpo gaffs.