The Housing Question
Dutch people say it in the comments, and they are not being unkind: there is a housing shortage, and you are arriving into it. This works out honestly what your arrival does, what it does not, and which choices change how much of it you become.
We are arriving into it ourselves. Every uncomfortable line on this page is one we had to sit with first.
The shortage was built before you. Dutch home completions ran near 100,000 a year in the mid 1990s, fell to 64,000 by 2003, the lowest since 1953, and never recovered, while households kept getting smaller and permits now take 23 months instead of 16. None of that is you. What is you: you become part of it the moment you start looking. An American arriving with cash, flexibility, and the ability to view a home the week it lists competes directly with a Dutch first time buyer, and the price band you shop in decides whether that collision happens at all. Choosing a smaller city moves you to a different line. It does not remove you from one.
Both routes ask the same two things in a different order, and neither one hands back an answer until both are done. A province on its own is a shopping list, and this is not that.