Well, for starters you have a chart showing actual dollar cost of homes compared to one showing inflation adjusted wages. Even looking at that one for attached houses I am not sure that wage inflation has failed to keep up that much. Using my personal example 20 years ago a copier rep earned maybe $10k + maybe $5k - $10k commission if he was good. Today its more like $50k base + $50k+ commission. As a lounge boy or Kitchen porter in my teens (25 years ago) I made $2 a hour. Today it's more like $11?

Anyway, with respect to the house I worked in entry level copier sales during the day and delivered pizzas every evening. I made around $17k at the time I took out my mortgage. I also went halves on the house with a buddy who earned around $12k but he didn't live there for long. We needed two salaries to meet the banks lending rules which was 2.5x one salary + 1.5x the second salary and then our parents guaranteed the remainder of the balance. We were barely able to cover the deposit and lending regulations, even at $105k and we had no carpets or curtains for over a year. We then rented out 1 rooms in the rooms in the house for $300 a month, then 2 rooms for $600 and eventually the whole house for $1,100 (After it had doubled in value).

We sold it after 7 years, I put my share of the profits into an apartment and rented it out. Then I bought another, and another and then a house and then another apartment, keeping each unit rented and just leveraging equity. I still rent the place i live in.

As for your question, If he were to buy that 1 bed condo I would propose he rents out the whole thing and keeps buying more units as his equity builds.