I grew up in NE SD County (Valley Center) in a modest home my parents built on a large lot in the 70s. Now live in Sacramento working for the state, I make $114,000 and my husband makes about $68,000. We are both 38, no kids but we have 3 90-lb dogs which makes home ownership a must. We manage to save a little but will both have 60 percent state pensions when we retire. We bought a small post war bungalow (1200sf) here in 2000 for $115,000 and sold it in 2003 for $250,000. After that we purchased a larger (small by today’s standards at 1600sf) house in 2003 for $319,000. I still think we paid a little too much for the house we are in but our mortgage is about $200K and we really wanted a second bathroom. We make decent wages for this area, but we wouldn’t even be able to sniff at a house in SD without $300k-$400k in cash.