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{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* Arguably omnipresent in this category given that Japan has higher housing costs than almost anywhere else. Just about every anime has an unspoken district in Tokyo where decently sized apartments or full-fledged houses can be bought cheaply. A few acknowledge it with even a line about it being an old family home or something, once... maybe. The breadwinner in [[Death Note|Light Yagami]]'s household is a policeman (Though he is Chief of Japan's National Police Agency which is comparable to say the FBI); in ''[[Sailor Moon]]''{{'}}s Tsukino household (in the particularly expensive Tokyo district of
** Another baffling example from ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' is the case of Makoto Kino/Jupiter, who is orphaned and does not have a job but owns and maintains her own apartment. [[Fanon]] tends to say that her parents left her a very large inheritance.<ref>Interestingly,
*** The same is also true of Mamoru Chiba/Tuxedo Mask; however, in the anime, he is seen working at various jobs and it is explicitly stated that his parents left him a ''very'' large trust fund.
** Also averted with any series where the protagonist basically lives in a box of an apartment. These are fairly standard, and a lot of anime series seem to be shifting to showing this (probably because the artists themselves live in these sorts of apartments).
* In ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'', one has to wonder how Delia Ketchum affords her house, considering that she doesn't seem to work and she has no husband. While it's not alluded to in the show, [[All There in the Manual|additional material]] reveals that she runs a local restaurant.
* Averted in the [[Studio Ghibli]] film ''[[Whisper of the Heart]]'' where the main character Shizuku lives in a realistically cramped apartment with her parents and shares a small room with her twenty-something sister until the older sibling moves out. Nishi's antique shop plays it straight, however.
* Averted in ''[[Ah! My Goddess]]''. When Keiichi's sister Megumi goes looking for an apartment for her to stay in while in college, he points out that she can't possibly afford the large apartment that she wants. A quick trip to a bunch of real estate agents drives this point home. When she does find an apartment that meets her specifications, it turns out that it's so cheap because it's [[Haunted Headquarters|haunted by a disgruntled spirit]].
** Played with in case of Keiichi himself, who lives with all three goddesses in a ridiculously large mansion that no college student could realistically afford. In reality, however, it's a rundown and abandoned shrine that was refurbished by Belldandy's [[A Wizard Did It|magic]].
* The three sisters in ''[[Minami-ke]]'' are all students, with the oldest being in High School, and they live [[Parental Abandonment|by themselves]] in a fairly big four-room apartment, despite having no apparent income. It's implied once that their father isn't around, either living elsewhere or dead, and the mother isn't referred to at all.
* Played with in various continuities of ''[[Tenchi Muyo!]]''. A frequent cause of disbelief is the size of Tenchi's house, that's apparently too large for the incomes of a single architect ([[Bumbling Dad|Tenchi's father]] Nobuyuki) and a retired Shinto priest (his grandfather Katsuhito) to maintain, let alone acquire a land for, especially with the frequent [[Broke Episode]]s in TV Series, bringing the accusations of Masakis being the [[Land Poor]]. On the other hand, at least in the OVA continuity it's justified by the fact that it sits in countryside on the grounds of a family shrine, of which Katsuhito is the priest, and that their original house in the city was much smaller.
** Furthermore, at least in the OVA continuity the Jurai Empire has serious covert influence on Earth, and Katsuhito has basically infinite funds, if he ever chose to use them.
* ''Possibly'' averted in ''[[My Lovely Ghost Kana]]'', because the apartment building where Daikichi lives is described as "nearly abandoned" and he may actually be squatting. Neither is it entirely clear what he actually does for a living.
* Justified in ''[[Shaman King]]'', where Yoh Asakura and his fiancé Anna Kyoyama live in an enormous former ''ryokan'' that they rent for about one thousand yen monthly (less than ten dollars); but the reason the rent is so cheap is that the building is supremely haunted and in quite a state of disrepair, which scares most normal people but is merely a minor inconvenience to a pair of shamans who can easily exorcise the ghosts and use the maintenance tasks as training.
== Comic Books ==
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** This is theoretically [[Truth in Television]]. Apartments in New York City are so expensive that there's a fairly long internet post making the rounds with a fully-sourced list of ''castles'' that would be cheaper to buy than New York apartments.
* Guy Woodhouse in ''[[Rosemary's Baby]]'' is a struggling actor, and his wife Rosemary is a stay-at-home housewife, and yet they are able to afford a spacious prewar apartment in a stately building on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Even in the 1960s, expensive and sought-after real estate.
* ''[[Sleeping with the Enemy]]'': Laura is able to rent, fix up, and maintain a HUGE, beautiful home, despite only having a part-time job at a library before fleeing her abusive husband and initially not working at all when she does get away. And when she does finally start working, she's still in a job that doesn't pay much. Even for Iowa in the early 90's that's quite a stretch.
* Averted in ''[[Marley and Me]]'' (no doubt because it's based on a true story), as the Grogan's increasingly nicer homes coincide with a better paycheck for each of them.
* The two main characters in the fourth ''[[Final Destination]]'' film, an unmarried couple in college, live together in a very nice house with no mention of them having jobs or parents helping them out.
== Literature ==
* Elizabeth Wakefield's New York apartment in ''Sweet Valley Confidential'' is a good example, particularly since it seems to be combined with [[One-Hour Work Week]] and [[Unlimited Wardrobe]].
* ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' has the Carpenter family, which consists of ''seven'' children, their stay-at-home mother, and a father who works part-time as the fist of God and part-time as the owner/foreman of a small construction company. (It's explicitly stated in one of the short stories that Michael Carpenter refuses to cut corners and doesn't build large, lucrative homes.) They live in a large house in Chicago that is always in perfect repair, since Michael apparently has enough spare time between fighting evil and building middle-class houses to keep his own home and yard in fantastic shape, including upgraded doors, a panic room, new extensions as needed for a growing family, and a treehouse that's probably at least studio-apartment size. (It's possible that divine grace (or the Church) drops baskets full of money on a Knight of the Cross, though that doesn't explain why teenage runaway Molly Carpenter could afford a place to stay, along with several hundreds of dollars worth of tattoos and piercings, without access to her parent's money.)
** Somewhat averted in the same series, as the main character lives in a cramped basement apartment, rents a small office for his business, and spends a few books worrying about how he'll pay rent.
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* On ''[[Charmed]]'', three twenty-something women (only two of whom have jobs) own a large three-story Victorian manor with a yard in San Francisco, a very dense urban area with some of the most expensive real estate in the country. The issue is supposedly [[Hand Wave|handwaved]] that it has been in the family for generations and has been inherited, but the Halliwells would likely not be able to even afford the property tax on a home that would likely sell for at least $5 million, assuming it's not in wealthy or desirable part of town.
** Not to mention the repeated damage the house takes due to their powers and/or monster attacks. (This could be explained by the fact that Leo has the ability to heal everything, including inanimate objects.)
** By the fifth season, this house is home to Piper (who owns a club always on the brink of bankruptcy), Paige (who is unemployed), Phoebe (who is an advice columnist), Leo (who is technically dead, therefore not existing, yet still needs food and clothes) and Piper and Leo's son. WHAT?
** The property tax aspect becomes more plausible when you know about [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_<!-- 28197829 California's Proposition 13]], passed in the late '70s: if the house has been in the family for ''generations'', then the property tax is no more than 1% of the assessed value for ''1975'', plus a max of 2%/year adjustment for inflation. That could wind up to be less money than rent on a crappy studio apartment in housing-bubble-era San Francisco. -->
* In ''[[Drake and Josh]]'', the family lives in a beautiful dwelling. But the father is only a weather man on the local news. And he does a lousy job of predicting the weather. As for the mother, we never even see her working.
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* ''[[The King of Queens]]''. Doug is a package delivery man and Carrie is a legal secretary, yet they can afford a detached, two-story house in Queens while supporting Carrie's elderly father and paying for a car, big-screen television, daily dog walker and other luxuries. Granted, Doug's job is unionized, big-firm legal secretaries do pretty well, and Queens is not Manhattan. Still, it ''is'' New York City with the related real estate prices, taxes and insurance rates.
* Long-running Australian soap ''[[Home and Away]]'' has many examples, mostly teen characters set up in their own living spaces but with no job or income to support them.
* ''[[Degrassi]]'': The apartment that Ellie, Marco, Paige, and Alex (replaced with Griffin later on) shared looked a little more spacious than what four college students could realistically afford.
* Subverted in ''[[El Chavo del Ocho]]''. Don
* On ''[[That Girl]]'', Ann Marie is a struggling actress, auditioning for bit parts and taking various one-off temp jobs on the side, and yet she can afford a spacious, groovily decorated bachelorette pad inhe middle of Manhattan.
* In ''[[Castle]]'', averted and played straight. Castle, being a famous bestselling author of over 20 novels as well as being well-known in New York's elite and upper-class circles, can easily afford his spacious penthouse. On the other hand, Beckett's apartment would break the wallet of a police detective, {{spoiler|and this was before it got blown up. Her new place as of Season 4 is even more extravagant.}}
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* Played with on ''[[New Girl]]''. The three guys live in an extremely spacious apartment even though Nick works as a bartender and has almost no money and Winston is unemployed. Schmidt, however, makes a lot of money at his job and is implied to cover the bulk of rent, while Jess likely covers some Rent as well and the apartment has quite a few defects and a landlord who isn't entirely sane. It also bears mentioning that it is in Los Angeles, not NYC, where property is more affordable.
* Averted naturally on ''[[The Wire]]''. McNulty lives in a very small, one room apartment in a working class neighborhood that a Baltimore Detective paying alimony could realistically afford.
* Subverted in ''[[My Name Is Earl]]''. Even with his lottery winnings, Earl and Randy still live in a cheap, rundown motel. Before that, They lived in a trailer which Joy and Darnell now own. When Earl gets job, He and Randy have fairly modest apartment (One that a salesmen with pre-existing funds could afford in a non-competitive property market).
* Initially averted in ''[[CHiPs]]'' when Ponch lived at a mobile home in a trailer park. Later played straight when he moved into a fancy apartment by the marina. It makes you wonder if he was [[Dirty Cop|on the take]].
* ''[[Full House]]'': Some found it unrealistic that Danny could have afforded what was obviously a very nice, very big town house in a presumably equally very nice section of San Francisco on a TV morning show host's salary, as well as support three young children. There's never any mention of Joey or Jesse paying him rent (not that they could have, given how sporadic their employment was for the first few seasons of the show).
== Video Games ==
* ''[[Fahrenheit (2005 video game)|Fahrenheit]]'' has several examples, being set in [[New York City]] and featuring many elegant apartments, but Lucas Kane's is the most egregious. He has an almost ludicrously-sized apartment in the middle of Manhattan, made even more ridiculous by the tiny, run-down appearance of the access hallway inside his building. Either Lucas has the only penthouse apartment in the building, or parts of his kitchen and bedroom reside in alternate dimensions, because the doors in the hallway are set far too close together to accommodate Lucas' luxurious living room. All this, on a mid-level IT manager's salary.
* [[Spiritual Sequel]] ''[[Heavy Rain]]'' has the same problem with the apartments that are owned by Ethan (who's supposed to be a divorce dad falling on hard times) and Madison (a reporter who doesn't even seem to be working for one particular newspaper)--they're both absurdly spacious, though at least Ethan's apartment is bare. On the other hand, there was also Ethan's Pre-Tragedy Idyllic IKEA House...
** Ethan lives in a house even after he's divorced.
* All of the safehouses used by Mike in ''[[Alpha Protocol]]'' are fairly expansive penthouses, save for the one in Taipei, which is a tiny, crappy apartment - until Mike uses the shower, which takes him downstairs into an [[Elaborate Underground Base]] that looks more like an intelligence command center than a safehouse, complete with a secret tunnel leading aboveground for his motorcycle. This is explained as part of the Alpha Protocol program, where agents establish safehouses using their own money and established bank accounts (and most of the resources used are not actually known by the agency to avoid tracing it back to Alpha Protocol - yay compartmentalizing!) Mike tends to [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshade]] this, pointing out in Moscow how he appreciates where government spending is going while chilling in his massive, chic and ultramodern penthouse.
* There's a form of this with a lot of games involving space travel. Even in spaceships that are fairly cramped, submarine-style affairs, the captain will still often have spacious living quarters with lots of room for trophies, storage, and cutscenes.
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* Deconstructed by [[The Nostalgia Critic]] (with a guest appearance from [[Atop the Fourth Wall|'90s Kid]]), in his ''[[Bio-Dome]]'' review, which he points out was one of numerous movies from the '90s featuring stupid young people with no steady jobs but had decent places to live.
** Subverted when [[Reality Ensues|mid-explanation there's a knock on '90s Kid's door]].
{{quote|''' '90s Kid''': Oh, that's probably my land lord with another eviction note [Crashing sound] And a battering ram. <nowiki>[</nowiki>[[Dramatic Gun Cock]]<nowiki>]</nowiki> And a sawed-off shotgun... }}
== Western Animation ==
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