I prefered to purchase a cheap but brand new place to avoid losing it if I lose my job, which is what happened.
I could have bought a 120-140k house but I would have lost her as soon as I would have gone out of wageslaving.
Alos, it really varies from one area to another ; in France, Paris is the most expensive, prices are skyrocketing. Other big cities like Lyons, Marseilles, Nice or Toulouse are giga-expensive too. Then you have Corsica island, where the prices are very high, at the level of a big city, but its inhabitants are hostile as fuck. Ultimately, you have all those colonies we still have in south america, north america, africa, pacific ocean, caribean islands, but honestly the climate is often tropical with shitty mosquitoes and all kind of fucking fauna
If you aren't born in those exotic places, there's almost zero chances you can settle there. If I had enough money, I would NEETmax in some remote french pacific island nobody cares about. Local tribes would adopt me as their pet and sacrifice me to their pagan gods