As a Gen-X'er, I had the same conversation with my grandparents 35 years ago.
"Why don't you just buy a house?"
"Do you know how much houses cost now?"
"Well, we bought our first house for $40,000."
"$40,000 isn't even a down payment now. Tell you what, here's how much I make, let's sit down with the real estate listings and you tell me what I can afford."
". . . Oh."
"Yeah, right, 'Oh'."
I did finally buy a house... 33 years later, a decade after they both died.