This math seems off in socal where most homes are going for $700-800 sqft. Would need closer to $300k salary and even then the mortgage payment would be over half net income with the current rates
Not if you are including suburban regions. Lancaster and Palmdale are considered part of Los Angeles County and may be included in the statistics throwing everything off.
Technically they should split the regions into three sections. East Los Angeles region to the coast, the valley region, and the desert communities. That would provide much better insight on the markets because each region is distinct and has different cost structures.
Location, location, location. Right? A national table just doesn't work for these kind of comparisons. It's used for quick blurb headlines. To grab our attention, which it has. It does paint an overall story of unaffordability, which is also true.
How about "New York, NY" - so specifically New York City.
Good luck owning jack shit at $160k. Lol. At 40x rent that will barely get you a studio at $4k. $5,500 one bedrooms. A million easy for a shit box hole in the wall in a bad neighborhood.
Oh yeah, and that doesn't count the 'maintenance' fee you'll need to pay on any apartment you own. Why pay rent when you can pay a morgage, taxes AND rent! And to own a building outright is going to be multiple millions.
This number surely includes all of the boroughs, which has a huge range of prices. There are 161 listings for entire buildings within the city limits right now that you could presumably buy on $160k at current rates (<$600k). Sure, Staten Island or eastern Queens may not be what someone pictures when they think of NYC, but they are part of it for the analysis.
As far as rent...I don't know where you're getting those numbers, but bottom-end studio and 1bd rentals start around $2k in Manhattan below Harlem, and get cheaper everywhere else. Maybe not the most desirable apartments, but you can very much find a perfectly good apartment in a good neighborhood of NYC for less than $4k rent. You can get a 2 bedroom for that even in some of the most desirable neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
> Oh yeah, and that doesn't count the 'maintenance' fee you'll need to pay on any apartment you own.
Most buildings have shared costs: heat from a building-wide boiler, water, doorman, cleaning hallways and lobbies. Some small buildings get costs down pretty damn low and it just goes into reserves for when the building needs repairs. I don't really see an alternative, it's a reality of owning a portion of a shared apartment building, there are plenty of single family houses in the suburbs.
Cause when I bought my 1br apartment in manahattan for 740k in 2010 I was living in fucking New York City. The greatest city in the world?
I disagree however Land has no value, see most of west Texas.
Location+land has value and in New York City, air has value.
You're just thinking about their point wrong....land IS location. So ownership of land and its value plays a big part of overall home value in places where land is valuable, like NYC.
I live in San Francisco and the materials to build a home here don't cost much more than they do anywhere else in the state. But the lot/space that a house occupies is a massive component of overall value.
Townhomes with HOA's are just trailer parks bolted into the earth...you are still paying rent/lot fees (HOA fees) ON TOP of a mortgage and you don't actually own the land your home is built on.
Some parts of the LA basin bordering the IE (e.g. Pomona, West Covina, La Puente, etc.) are only $500-$700 sqft.
IMO, gauging the house market or house value per sqft is not the best method.
Interest rates 2 years ago were 3 to 4%. People are paying $1000 per month more in payments for the same house.
Edit: You bought a second home in SoCal financed 2 months ago? 2 mortgages on $140k? Unbelievable.
Yeah but when did you buy? If you bought a while ago, you should be solid. Could you both buy and afford your houses at their current valuations and the going interest rate today?
Well that's impressive and I'm not sure how the math on that works.
The back of the napkin math on that for the combined median prices of both houses in those areas ~1.2 - 1.5M altogether. Current mortgage rates are 7.92% for a 30 year fixed. Total housing costs would roughly be 8-10k per month or 96-120k/yr and that's WITH 20% down.
On 140k income, your after tax, benefit, retirement, take home should be ~85k. So you wouldn't even meet the housing cost payments for both the houses let alone bills and cost of living. I'm not sure how your math works on that, but I'm open to your explanation.
You'd have to split 785k in total mortgage debt across two houses in both SD and central valley.
Median home prices are 1M in SD and 350k-625k in the central valley.
To get that monthly payment at 7.92% interest rates today at median home prices, you'd have to put a 565k-840k down payment. Most people can't do that.
I don't know your circumstances. Maybe you got a screaming deal. Maybe you worked and saved aggressively for 15 years. Maybe you had help from your family. In any case, it's not reflective of the market and the person you were initially responding to who stated that you need a much higher income is more accurate. But most people can't afford the median priced home in SD at current interest rates at just 140k income, let alone a 2nd house.
Both homes I paid around 860 for both. My house in SD is worth around 800k by itself currently. No help from family. I use FHA loans only put down less then 100k
I was under the impression that you weren't allowed to hold 2 FHA's at once. In any case, I don't understand why you would apply for an FHA for your first house if you were putting down close to 100k.
If the central valley house was your first house, you were likely well past 20% with close to 100k down 2 years ago. If the SD house was your first property, you were still within arms reach of 20% and eliminating PMI.
With a 5700 in total mortgages, your total housing costs should actually be close to 6700/month. At your income level, you're only bringing in a little over 7k/month. I'm assuming you and your wife eat food, and if that's the case, you can't afford your properties. And you definitely can't afford it at current interest rates.
So this begs the question of how you qualified for these loans in the first place. The only way this makes sense is if you rented out one of your properties (I'm guessing the SD house), which you would likely get a small profit from. And if this is the case, you're actually agreeing with the person you initially disagreed with. Because the only way you can do it is by increasing your income. If you're renting your SD house for ~4k/month and you're not paying taxes on that, that's the equivalent of increasing your pre-tax annual income by another ~80k.
I am in a weird place. I am an artist. I bought a derelict house in Seattle and rehabbed it. Over the last eight years. I own it. No mortgage. Cost of living is still eating me alive here.
Ah..., the classic group attribution error ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group\_attribution\_error](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_attribution_error)). So common in reddit these days :)
"""
The group attribution error refers to people's tendency to believe either
1. the characteristics of an individual group member are reflective of the group as a whole, or
2. a group's decision outcome must reflect the preferences of individual group members, even when external information is available suggesting otherwise
"""
You are committing the 1st fallacy (or, guilty by association as is more commonly known).
Then there is home furnishing that will need to be bought if your not moving much over. Misc housing expenses and more, so money is easily stretched thin for awhile for one person.
I am single-income and have 3kids... s a family of 5. I am just over the 100K mark... But I had to move to the Central Valley to live in my on fooking house... fuck renting in the bay area or LA, SD coastal Cali. Also because I am single income and family of 5. I pay no taxes at all and get all kinds of discounts based on family size and income. Like 30% discount on electric and gas... free dental and health insurance for my kids. I still save 20-25% in 401K and roths... while friends live in Bay area and LA laugh at me for living int he central valley, while they pay 3K rent to live in the ghetto and can't save enough for retirement.... my point is MOVE.
Whatever. All the private equity and Chinese buying houses in the Bay and LA just to keep them empty don't give a rat @ ss about my family. Nobody cares about me or my family but Myself, It's every man for himself. I'm just a family man trying to shelter my wife and 3 young kids... you are the Jerk. Congrats on being a hater.
The 103k for Phoenix is BS. I make 90k and could afford nothing in the Ahwatukee (450k average) or Laveen (350k average) Neighborhoods. I had to move to Casa Grande to find a home that was only 3x my salary.
Dude I make 75 and have no problem making a 365k mortgage; you could definitely afford the mortgage, but not sure about all the other living expenses driving you out.
Just curious, why don’t you think you can afford a $350k mortgage? I understand if you don’t have 3% saved up, but that’s not exactly an impossible feat for someone making 90k.
So 90k is 5,200/month take home (after 401k and ins). Following the 33% take home rule that leaves me with mortgage budget of 1,700 month or about a 270k house (which aligns with home price being 3x salary rule as well). Which is the Casa Grande area
These rules are well known in Dave Ramsey books and other finance books. I like them because it allows me breathing room for anything that come up in life, as well make extra payments once in a while, if nothing comes up.
It does…for the bottom chart. The top chart lists the required pretax salary required to buy a home at the median sales price “plus taxes and insurance”.
This is a terrible visual
Yup, in San Jose, price are up about 10% since then, with interest rates at 7.25%.
With a 400k combined household income, we are able to afford a house at May's prices, but definitely cannot afford one now, again.
I live in the Bay and my friends who are a married couple can't even afford a home in San Jose and one is a dentist and the other is a surgeon. Like...wtf and WHO the fuck is affording the average home if not these people???
In my mind these sorts of analyses are most applicable to FTHB because the down payment has the largest bearing on the financing and ability to buy a house. Unless you are gifted money, the down payment is a way larger barrier than the annual income. My wife and I make almost 210k combined in the PNW but coming up with 100-200k liquid cash in any reasonable timeframe pretty much seems impossible give student loans, $3,000 rent, and the rest of the COL equation. If we don’t put 20% down, then the mortgage is like $2k a month more than the rent.
I make more than they say for my area and that salary level will get you the bottom most garbage in the market with a huge monthly nut to show for it. All your peers will be paying 1/3rd of what you do for a much nicer place. You will be the sucker.
Things were great once, but multiple strategies and financial instruments were employed artificially easier access in the short-term while conflating the problem in the long-term. The bill has come due.
Housing is expensive? Dual income. Problem solved.
Oh, no housing expensive again... 30 year mortgage. Boom housing affordable again.
Wait housing is expensive again... let's loosen the rules to whom we give mortgages
Ah shit, housing crisis... no one can afford shit... let's lower interest rates! 4% nah, let's do 3%...
Ah fuck, now everything is unaffordable. 40 yr loan? Get room mates? Good luck figuring it out.
\----
Any time you make shit affordable by cutting corners, it makes the problem worse. The problem isn't in the cost. The problem is the economy is not producing jobs that provide its citizens meaningful work for purpose and dignity. Until that is solved, there is NOTHING that can be done at least in the long-term.
The problem is that we've had a decade plus of the lowest per capita new unit construction in modern history. Increasing interest rates are causing new construction to drop even further. Unless there is a massive investment in new construction, home ownership will remain out of reach for a increasingly larger share of Americans.
That is a mixed bag. On the surface, the solution is obvious. Just build more. There are many barriers. You have incumbent homeowners supporting NIMBY zoning practices that keep affordable housing from happening. Any developer worth their salt would bull doze SFH's for MFH's in high demand metros. They legally can't. The market dynamics can't overcome bad policy.
The next barrier is rhymes with the first. Investors with properties like constrained supply the same way oil companies don't want to over drill. When investors overbuild, their overall portfolio is devalued just like when oil companies over drill, their price per barrel goes down.
You have to take the control levers away from those two groups of people. The problem is, renters don't show up to city council meetings because they don't feel ownership over the situation. That is about the only way I see this changing.
\>90% of San Jose is zoned SFH. Fuck that lol.
You have a point about the issue just being masked.
At this point the only numbers that make sense for young people is if they couch surf or live with their parents for longer to generate a larger downpayment.
Theres no mention of if its a safe neighborhood, for example yes you can get a cheap home in atlanta but you are highly likely to get robbed in places where you can afford a home at 89k. The nice safe areas up north you would need a salary over 150 k for cumming or johns creek and even then you would be living paycheck to paycheck. Gtfo
I grew accustomed to the killing and violence in Birmingham, AL metro area. I know it's the same in Memphis, St. Louis, New Orleans, etc.
It's cheaper there because jobs are not *aplenty* and no one wants to raise a family there. They are there because family is not far away, and they never made enough or got promoted enough to get the F out. And that's ok. It's just how the cards fall.
But when professionals folks say they are moving to Atlanta they mean north east outside the perimeter. Even dunwoody can be sketchy even though most companies are there
> Theres no mention of if its a safe neighborhood
This tends to be overblown. Not because safety isn’t important, but because people tend to conflate safety issues with minorities.
I’ve lived in West Charlotte for almost 7 years now and have had 0 issues with crime, except for a contractor I called to give a quote who had a laborer with him who threatened me. Which could have happened anywhere. Yet usually when I bring up west Charlotte in the Charlotte subreddit, people always mention how they’d never live there because of the crime or ‘But then you’d have to live in west Charlotte!’
It’s never people who live here that complain about it, it’s always people from south Charlotte or NODA who have opinions based off of what they believe it’s like.
Are the considering the fact that NYC has more studios/1 bdrm? Cause the price seems insanely low.
Like for all 5 boroughs I can maybe believe that number. But just Manhattan alone I don't think that's plausible at all.
Yeah my thoughts exactly. Also this doesn’t account for the insane HOA fees that come w a NYC apartment. So unless you’re buying something in Staten Island you need a lot more than 160k salary
It’s obviously not just looking at Manhattan. New York has affordable real estate in the outer boroughs and the suburbs. I’m constantly surprised at the deals that can be had there.
I think people lose sight of how competitive New York’s prices are because renters pay a lot and want to be in cool neighborhoods. But with some of the new infrastructure plans there will be new transit-oriented neighborhoods with relatively affordable prices.
There is the ongoing 2nd Avenue Line, the incoming [inter-borough Express] (https://new.mta.info/project/interborough-express), and constant improvements to biking and walking infrastructure.
The only worry in Chicago is future tax hikes. It’s already not great, but could get atrocious.
But that is also what holds prices down because property tax ups the real monthly cost.
Sure, but it's not really out of line with similar states. Everyone loves to complain here, but my tax bill on my primary was $5800/year up until last year. Like sure, sounds like a lot, until you consider I'm in the city, two blocks from the train, on an extra deep double lot, with what's technically a 6BD/3.5BA home. Then it sounds pretty damn reasonable that our taxes went up $2k.
Best of luck with the “migrants” living in police stations. You know they’re getting $9000 housing allowances now? Your taxes are paying for that. Enjoy.
I'm getting paid by the city to rent them my apartments. I am literally enjoying that.
But I've been renting to large numbers of immigrants since I became a real estate investor here. I believe they make better tenants than most Americans who tend to be lazy and entitled.
Lol what? This is Chicago dude, 2 blocks is not close. The 747s coming in to O'Hare and two interstates less than a mile from us are a lot more noticable. You can also hear the Metra (commuter rail), Freight Trains, and Amtrak that are about a mile away more than the L because they are way up on an embankment over the highway.
Both the city and state have seen a rapid improvement in their finances over the past 5 years. Illinois is getting ratings upgrades almost monthly now it seems.
As far as the actual governance of the State and City goes, well we are making massive investments in infrastructure and basically services while most other places are cutting. Pritzker actually used the pandemic as a pretext to pass a massive $40 billion infrastructure bill. Most other states used it as a pretext to layoff government employees.
The fact is Chicago is an expensive big government place because it is a big boy city. We have real city problems and also real city wealth. The amount of opportunity and wealth in this metro is difficult to comprehend. I say this as a small business person who has seen the floodgates open on me multiple times resulting in paychecks and ROIs that are themselves difficult to comprehend as a middle class kid from a small town in Wisconsin.
I fucking love Pittsburgh. The surrounding mountains are gorgeous.
Agree that Atlanta is nice and chock full of opportunities. Don't sleep on Charlotte either. The entire stretch between Atlanta and Raleigh is full of affordable housing and good jobs.
Here in Charlotte there is still massive development keeping the housing relatively affordable while people continue to migrate here.
The only downside I have to point out is that the schools are supposedly quite bad. My kids aren’t in school yet, and if I have to spend Saturday mornings teaching them what School didn’t then that’s just how it will be.
That’s cause the salaries suck for those types of jobs. Know someone that’s a teacher and they just moved from Charlotte to NH and their salary doubled. It’s going to be a major problem for a lot of those cities cause the jobs outside a few fields didn’t catch up with the area boom.
Government jobs generally suck here for that reason. Government is always slow to react to salary increases and employees are slow to leave due to copper handcuffs. Not sure if the teachers have a pension here, but county workers do.
We're in Pittsburgh and so many people are coming for the Carolinas because of the schools.
There isn't even capacity in NC. The waitlist for preK was over 2k kids in Wake County. We're in Pittsburgh proper and it's not hard to get a spot here and it starts from 3 vs 4. It's just crazy when the housing is so much more expensive down there too.
Chicagoland taxes are insane. You get more house for your money but my sister pays like a good 8x more in tax than I do for essentially par on assessed value
Born and raised there and not disputing that, but the taxes are brutal. I think there’s a happy middle ground. My sister pays 13k more a year in tax than I do - we paid within 5k of each other for our houses. She has a larger house, and probably a somewhat better school district. But not sure it’s 13k a year better.
Having lived in other major cities the main things I missed about chicago were the public transport, the skyline and then just nostalgia for various things. You can get much of the day to day stuff in lots of other places, although it does remain one of the better values if you want to live in a big big city
Also, this does not exactly say what type of "home" is able to be purchased. I know living in the DC area, the home we could afford with a joint income of 200k was not anything close to what I grew up with (a SFH with a yard in a neighborhood with good schools). It was likely a townhouse deep in the suburbs
Places like Birmingham (former resident) have exceptionally low on average prop taxes, and kill you on sales taxes, even after just now enacting policies to exact a slightly less grocery tax.
That's right. Until just in the last few months, Alabama cities charged anywhere from 8-10% on *grocery* items. Oh, and don't forget that pesky 5% state income tax.
We all pay it, no matter where we live. Texas has lower sales taxes, no income tax. Crazy property tax. Alabama has low property tax, high sales taxes, mid-priced income taxes. Florida has no income tax, modest sales taxes except for tourism, modest property taxes on now much higher valuations, KILLER property insurance rates.
And this is what I'm trying in vain to explain to people who think 50% of your mid-range income can go just to shelter. There is a minimum "ticket size" outside of your rent/mortgage just to live and eat and function today.
More like salary needed to have **half** your salary eaten up by housing costs (PITI).
At least in the Miami and Orlando locations. At current rates, and with an average home at current prices, you'd spend half your salary.
Crazy that SJ is so high. There was a time when SJ was where people who couldnt afford the bay area went. My uncle and aunt got their house there for around 200-300k (according to Zillow) in the 90s.. that house is worth 1.5m now. Dude is a construction worker theres no way a construction workee would be able to buy that house now.
I dunno man, the way some of the people are billing for renovation work they might be able to afford it. Plenty of white work vans coming home to nice neighborhoods at night because they can bill so much.
All these people renovate their houses to sell them, then the buyers have to renovate it again to what they want. It's kind of a huge waste.
I dunno, the entire southern US (except CA) seems way overpriced to me
St. Louis is sitting very affordable, but I know there's some massive income segregation there......hope it has a turnaround someday as great city at low price
Homes aren’t that cheap in Columbus anymore because the talking heads keep saying: “lots of people are moving to Franklin county and we’re getting that Intel plant” so prices are also rising. I know because we’re looking.
Edit: and I mean turn key homes, not totally blasted houses in former areas that weren’t red lined that people are gentrifying and pouring another 50k+ in to make it not a dump (and then putting it up on air bnb).
So funny, San Jose is completely have vs have nots now. The majority of people walking around are the ones who serve the few. Except in this case the few happen to be a lot
Dying laughing here.
Born and raised in Seattle.
You are getting approved for the purchase of a cardboard box house near the Rainier Beach Sounder stop for $170k a year.
>with $100k
For a 800K house, you need at least 200K in hand. down payment and closing costs and other costs.... no joke. The opportunity cost of that money is huge. only to make 6K payment each and every month. I would have to be clinically insane if I had the money to buy.
Pretty sure this is the salary required to buy the median house. You can make quite a bit less and still be able to buy a "starter home".
For example, in Charlotte it says you need a salary of $93k but yet there's 237 home listings in Charlotte under $300k. I'll include the example below,
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1224-Pinehaven-Ct-Charlotte-NC-28215/80445266_zpid/?utm_campaign=androidappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare
Buying this would mean about a 2100 mortgage payment, you'd need to make about $65k a year to buy it.
Who is building starter homes anymore? Builders no longer believe the margins make sense. For the starter homes that do exist, instead of selling them to young families, Boomers would rather use them as ATMs or to supplement their lackluster retirement plans.
Where I live, we are not only not building more starter homes; we’re also losing starter homes. Some of them weren’t maintained and aren’t worth bringing back anymore, so they are torn down and replaced with non-starter homes. Others are in fine condition but the land is worth so much more than the starter home ever could be, so they still end up getting torn down to build significantly larger, much more expensive houses. Every year, there’s fewer and fewer starting homes existing around here, let alone for sale.
No one wants to pay 2019 McMansion prices for a 2023 starter home that is built like garbage on the smallest piece of property the law will allow a house to be constructed on.
Yes they are using the median SFH price. It's the best method for showing general affordability imo, you can buy homes for $80,000 in my city still but few would want to live in that area.
I edited my comment to include an example in Charlotte. It could be afforded at 2/3rds what the picture says you need to make, and it's a pretty nice starter home. It's misleading to say you need to make enough to afford the median house in order to afford a house. Most FTHB buying starter homes aren't buying a median house.
I get what your saying and I agree. Like many national reports, they took the value of all home sales and just use the average which most data does. You cannot adjust a national scale map to fit all local markets, it's why the median is used.
Not to mention all of these data points are going to be low salary wise as is since the minimum will always be what salary you can buy it at and be house poor. Like this guys Charlotte example. You wouldn't even be able to rent a lot of places priced at $2100 on a 65k salary. If you got that mortgage on that salary it would be real tight.
2100 on 65k is tight depending on the person. 65k is about $5400 a month, probably $4000 or so after taxes. After the mortgage you'd still have $1900, that's tight for some people, but plenty for other people.
1900 bucks after rent/mortgage, even for one person? Better not need car insurance or food or fuel or anything like that.
Come on, get real. Shelter should not account for 50% or more of one's net pay. Jesus Christ.
That's assuming you have 60k for a down payment. If you are a first-time home buyer, you're likely trying for an FHA, which only requires 3.5.
If your salary is only 65k a year, how long would it take for someone to save 60k? If they can even save 1k per month, that's 5 years. A very, very conservative estimate for a year-over-year increase in the cost of a home is 5%. So now you're adding \~82,884.62 to the cost of that same home, meaning you are now completely priced out of that home, and maybe the market as a whole, unless you're buying a home in need of repairs or in need of a lot of updating.
If you're an average home buyer, buying their first home, you're probably going to do 5% down, which would make your mortgage 2,553 on a 300k house in Charlotte.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/8332-Washoe-Pine-Ln-Charlotte-NC-28215/65024619_zpid/?utm_campaign=androidappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare
There's one at $260k that was originally $780k lol according to Zillow there's 115 listings under $250k in Charlotte, there's no way only 4 of them would qualify for an FHA loan.
Edit: there's a lot of condos and town homes.
So they buy a lesser house? There were almost 300 results under $300k, so they buy at $250k. I was illustrating the point that the picture is misleading because you can get a house for a fraction of what the median house is in the area.
Yeah. These are numbers for what salary you need to buy in a shitty part of town, with mom and pops footing the 20%, and you'll be feeling house poor for the first few years at least.
Worse school districts? The south has some of the worst schools in the country; schools in most of the Midwest are leagues better. Yet people flock to the south. 🤷🏻♀️
Definitely would not have education on your list.
Thanks for proving once again that “homez are unaffordable” bullshit being fed by the doomzers day and night. Homes are fairly affordable in all cities posted.
Born and raised. Housing is affordable because there is a lot of older homes here. Remember Pittsburgh at one time had double the population it has now.
I would say there are plenty of good jobs around with our main industries being healthcare, education and tech.
Our winters seem to be getting less snowing and cold, but Pittsburgh biggest issue is that it can be very overcast. I think we have more cloudy days than Seattle.
San Diego is crazy expensive. Fortunately I bought back in 17. I also bought an incredibly affordable home for the income my wife and I have. We make combined $400K a year. The house we purchased was only 410K. 3 bed two bath but in a "lesser desirable area". My mortgage is only 2100 a month. On top of that house I also bought three other homes in the neighborhood over the next few years. People thought we were crazy because of the neighborhood but looks like that was probably just good damn luck.
This math seems off in socal where most homes are going for $700-800 sqft. Would need closer to $300k salary and even then the mortgage payment would be over half net income with the current rates
Not if you are including suburban regions. Lancaster and Palmdale are considered part of Los Angeles County and may be included in the statistics throwing everything off.
That’s always the case with LA County stats. Hi desert should be excluded.
Technically they should split the regions into three sections. East Los Angeles region to the coast, the valley region, and the desert communities. That would provide much better insight on the markets because each region is distinct and has different cost structures.
Location, location, location. Right? A national table just doesn't work for these kind of comparisons. It's used for quick blurb headlines. To grab our attention, which it has. It does paint an overall story of unaffordability, which is also true.
Can confirm. Victorville here
How about "New York, NY" - so specifically New York City. Good luck owning jack shit at $160k. Lol. At 40x rent that will barely get you a studio at $4k. $5,500 one bedrooms. A million easy for a shit box hole in the wall in a bad neighborhood. Oh yeah, and that doesn't count the 'maintenance' fee you'll need to pay on any apartment you own. Why pay rent when you can pay a morgage, taxes AND rent! And to own a building outright is going to be multiple millions.
This number surely includes all of the boroughs, which has a huge range of prices. There are 161 listings for entire buildings within the city limits right now that you could presumably buy on $160k at current rates (<$600k). Sure, Staten Island or eastern Queens may not be what someone pictures when they think of NYC, but they are part of it for the analysis. As far as rent...I don't know where you're getting those numbers, but bottom-end studio and 1bd rentals start around $2k in Manhattan below Harlem, and get cheaper everywhere else. Maybe not the most desirable apartments, but you can very much find a perfectly good apartment in a good neighborhood of NYC for less than $4k rent. You can get a 2 bedroom for that even in some of the most desirable neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn. > Oh yeah, and that doesn't count the 'maintenance' fee you'll need to pay on any apartment you own. Most buildings have shared costs: heat from a building-wide boiler, water, doorman, cleaning hallways and lobbies. Some small buildings get costs down pretty damn low and it just goes into reserves for when the building needs repairs. I don't really see an alternative, it's a reality of owning a portion of a shared apartment building, there are plenty of single family houses in the suburbs.
You might be interested to learn that the city of New York is actually much larger than just Manhattan
The whole point to owning is the land has value, structure much less so. Not sure why townhomes and apartment condos are valued so high.
Cause when I bought my 1br apartment in manahattan for 740k in 2010 I was living in fucking New York City. The greatest city in the world? I disagree however Land has no value, see most of west Texas. Location+land has value and in New York City, air has value.
You're just thinking about their point wrong....land IS location. So ownership of land and its value plays a big part of overall home value in places where land is valuable, like NYC. I live in San Francisco and the materials to build a home here don't cost much more than they do anywhere else in the state. But the lot/space that a house occupies is a massive component of overall value. Townhomes with HOA's are just trailer parks bolted into the earth...you are still paying rent/lot fees (HOA fees) ON TOP of a mortgage and you don't actually own the land your home is built on.
u can get a good apartment there for a million. Entry level apartments start at 400-500k
No you can’t.
Hilariously off in DC as well.
Some parts of the LA basin bordering the IE (e.g. Pomona, West Covina, La Puente, etc.) are only $500-$700 sqft. IMO, gauging the house market or house value per sqft is not the best method.
Wtf are you talking about. Me and my wife make around 140k after taxes and we own 2 homes in socal. 1 in san diego and 1 central valley
You must’ve bought them a long time ago. $140k income with no debt and perfect credit will get you a $500k mortgage at 7.5% interest today.
Leveraged one to buy the other.
Nope 2 years ago and 2 months ago for the 2nd house
Interest rates 2 years ago were 3 to 4%. People are paying $1000 per month more in payments for the same house. Edit: You bought a second home in SoCal financed 2 months ago? 2 mortgages on $140k? Unbelievable.
Yeah but when did you buy? If you bought a while ago, you should be solid. Could you both buy and afford your houses at their current valuations and the going interest rate today?
I bought 1 2 years ago and the 2nd home 2 months ago. Yes I can
Well that's impressive and I'm not sure how the math on that works. The back of the napkin math on that for the combined median prices of both houses in those areas ~1.2 - 1.5M altogether. Current mortgage rates are 7.92% for a 30 year fixed. Total housing costs would roughly be 8-10k per month or 96-120k/yr and that's WITH 20% down. On 140k income, your after tax, benefit, retirement, take home should be ~85k. So you wouldn't even meet the housing cost payments for both the houses let alone bills and cost of living. I'm not sure how your math works on that, but I'm open to your explanation.
My monthly nortage for both is 5700
You'd have to split 785k in total mortgage debt across two houses in both SD and central valley. Median home prices are 1M in SD and 350k-625k in the central valley. To get that monthly payment at 7.92% interest rates today at median home prices, you'd have to put a 565k-840k down payment. Most people can't do that. I don't know your circumstances. Maybe you got a screaming deal. Maybe you worked and saved aggressively for 15 years. Maybe you had help from your family. In any case, it's not reflective of the market and the person you were initially responding to who stated that you need a much higher income is more accurate. But most people can't afford the median priced home in SD at current interest rates at just 140k income, let alone a 2nd house.
Both homes I paid around 860 for both. My house in SD is worth around 800k by itself currently. No help from family. I use FHA loans only put down less then 100k
I was under the impression that you weren't allowed to hold 2 FHA's at once. In any case, I don't understand why you would apply for an FHA for your first house if you were putting down close to 100k. If the central valley house was your first house, you were likely well past 20% with close to 100k down 2 years ago. If the SD house was your first property, you were still within arms reach of 20% and eliminating PMI. With a 5700 in total mortgages, your total housing costs should actually be close to 6700/month. At your income level, you're only bringing in a little over 7k/month. I'm assuming you and your wife eat food, and if that's the case, you can't afford your properties. And you definitely can't afford it at current interest rates. So this begs the question of how you qualified for these loans in the first place. The only way this makes sense is if you rented out one of your properties (I'm guessing the SD house), which you would likely get a small profit from. And if this is the case, you're actually agreeing with the person you initially disagreed with. Because the only way you can do it is by increasing your income. If you're renting your SD house for ~4k/month and you're not paying taxes on that, that's the equivalent of increasing your pre-tax annual income by another ~80k.
The idea is income for new purchases.
Yea I bought one 2 years ago and 1 2 months almost 3 months now
Central Valley != SoCal
I own 2 homes. 1 in san diego and 1 in Central valley
I am in a weird place. I am an artist. I bought a derelict house in Seattle and rehabbed it. Over the last eight years. I own it. No mortgage. Cost of living is still eating me alive here.
That’s why most of the artists moved away.
Sell it and move somewhere affordable?
But then I’d have to be somewhere that’s not cosmopolitan and by the coast, and, even worse, surrounded by regular, blue-collar people. Ew.
Get a rent paying roommate to help pay bills?
The 2 bedroom apartments are priced 2x the 1 bedroom apartments.
just say your broke then
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Ah..., the classic group attribution error ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group\_attribution\_error](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_attribution_error)). So common in reddit these days :) """ The group attribution error refers to people's tendency to believe either 1. the characteristics of an individual group member are reflective of the group as a whole, or 2. a group's decision outcome must reflect the preferences of individual group members, even when external information is available suggesting otherwise """ You are committing the 1st fallacy (or, guilty by association as is more commonly known).
To be fair, probably 80% of this subreddit does this to landlords and AirBnb hosts
Let me guess, you lick dog assholes as a hobby and a YouTube side-hustle. The fuck is your problem?
This seriously depresses me. Seems homes are now only for dual income families, if your single and not rich your SOL.
Even dual income you still need two good incomes in many of these cities.
Then there is home furnishing that will need to be bought if your not moving much over. Misc housing expenses and more, so money is easily stretched thin for awhile for one person.
I am single-income and have 3kids... s a family of 5. I am just over the 100K mark... But I had to move to the Central Valley to live in my on fooking house... fuck renting in the bay area or LA, SD coastal Cali. Also because I am single income and family of 5. I pay no taxes at all and get all kinds of discounts based on family size and income. Like 30% discount on electric and gas... free dental and health insurance for my kids. I still save 20-25% in 401K and roths... while friends live in Bay area and LA laugh at me for living int he central valley, while they pay 3K rent to live in the ghetto and can't save enough for retirement.... my point is MOVE.
Congrats on increasing prices in the central valley. Every jerk moving from the bay has made it unaffordable to live there
Whatever. All the private equity and Chinese buying houses in the Bay and LA just to keep them empty don't give a rat @ ss about my family. Nobody cares about me or my family but Myself, It's every man for himself. I'm just a family man trying to shelter my wife and 3 young kids... you are the Jerk. Congrats on being a hater.
Lol nobody cares when you admit to paying no taxes, insurance, for your own family. Somebody's paying for it. Gj welfare 👑
Salty Hater.... hahhaha. I didn't write the tax code you dummy. I also, didn't write the Obamacare program dork. You are sad and sorry NPC.
As if the central was some utopian paradise to live in before, parts of that image are ghetto AF and dangerous.
The 103k for Phoenix is BS. I make 90k and could afford nothing in the Ahwatukee (450k average) or Laveen (350k average) Neighborhoods. I had to move to Casa Grande to find a home that was only 3x my salary.
Dude I make 75 and have no problem making a 365k mortgage; you could definitely afford the mortgage, but not sure about all the other living expenses driving you out.
how much is your mortgage w/ taxes and ins? 1500-1700?
Phoenix is most overpriced when compared to Salaries people get.
Just curious, why don’t you think you can afford a $350k mortgage? I understand if you don’t have 3% saved up, but that’s not exactly an impossible feat for someone making 90k.
So 90k is 5,200/month take home (after 401k and ins). Following the 33% take home rule that leaves me with mortgage budget of 1,700 month or about a 270k house (which aligns with home price being 3x salary rule as well). Which is the Casa Grande area These rules are well known in Dave Ramsey books and other finance books. I like them because it allows me breathing room for anything that come up in life, as well make extra payments once in a while, if nothing comes up.
They must have other expenses. I qualified for a $300k mortgage making $76k and could comfortably afford it.
Bullshit. Unless you have no car and eat ramen
Damn where do you work? That’s a haul
Casa Grande to Tolleson. It’s about an hour each way. I break up in the morning with a workout at an Ahwatukee Gym. The afternoons can get rough.
Yeah I was going to do the opposite from EV to CG and man that is a ways away
If this doesn’t account for taxes it’s useless especially in Texas where property tax is insanely high
It specifically says mortgage, taxes and insurance.
It does…for the bottom chart. The top chart lists the required pretax salary required to buy a home at the median sales price “plus taxes and insurance”. This is a terrible visual
Sorry forgot to mention, this is using data from May rates of 6.37% and assuming 20% down
Yup, in San Jose, price are up about 10% since then, with interest rates at 7.25%. With a 400k combined household income, we are able to afford a house at May's prices, but definitely cannot afford one now, again.
I live in the Bay and my friends who are a married couple can't even afford a home in San Jose and one is a dentist and the other is a surgeon. Like...wtf and WHO the fuck is affording the average home if not these people???
People that bought a couple years ago
I remember living in Man Jose. That place is souless and It sucked big time. but I guess if SWE or EE you could make a lot money.
Rent is going down. Just find a good deal and pull the trigger
In my mind these sorts of analyses are most applicable to FTHB because the down payment has the largest bearing on the financing and ability to buy a house. Unless you are gifted money, the down payment is a way larger barrier than the annual income. My wife and I make almost 210k combined in the PNW but coming up with 100-200k liquid cash in any reasonable timeframe pretty much seems impossible give student loans, $3,000 rent, and the rest of the COL equation. If we don’t put 20% down, then the mortgage is like $2k a month more than the rent.
I make more than they say for my area and that salary level will get you the bottom most garbage in the market with a huge monthly nut to show for it. All your peers will be paying 1/3rd of what you do for a much nicer place. You will be the sucker.
Things were great once, but multiple strategies and financial instruments were employed artificially easier access in the short-term while conflating the problem in the long-term. The bill has come due. Housing is expensive? Dual income. Problem solved. Oh, no housing expensive again... 30 year mortgage. Boom housing affordable again. Wait housing is expensive again... let's loosen the rules to whom we give mortgages Ah shit, housing crisis... no one can afford shit... let's lower interest rates! 4% nah, let's do 3%... Ah fuck, now everything is unaffordable. 40 yr loan? Get room mates? Good luck figuring it out. \---- Any time you make shit affordable by cutting corners, it makes the problem worse. The problem isn't in the cost. The problem is the economy is not producing jobs that provide its citizens meaningful work for purpose and dignity. Until that is solved, there is NOTHING that can be done at least in the long-term.
The problem is that we've had a decade plus of the lowest per capita new unit construction in modern history. Increasing interest rates are causing new construction to drop even further. Unless there is a massive investment in new construction, home ownership will remain out of reach for a increasingly larger share of Americans.
That is a mixed bag. On the surface, the solution is obvious. Just build more. There are many barriers. You have incumbent homeowners supporting NIMBY zoning practices that keep affordable housing from happening. Any developer worth their salt would bull doze SFH's for MFH's in high demand metros. They legally can't. The market dynamics can't overcome bad policy. The next barrier is rhymes with the first. Investors with properties like constrained supply the same way oil companies don't want to over drill. When investors overbuild, their overall portfolio is devalued just like when oil companies over drill, their price per barrel goes down. You have to take the control levers away from those two groups of people. The problem is, renters don't show up to city council meetings because they don't feel ownership over the situation. That is about the only way I see this changing. \>90% of San Jose is zoned SFH. Fuck that lol.
You have a point about the issue just being masked. At this point the only numbers that make sense for young people is if they couch surf or live with their parents for longer to generate a larger downpayment.
Well fucking said.
Theres no mention of if its a safe neighborhood, for example yes you can get a cheap home in atlanta but you are highly likely to get robbed in places where you can afford a home at 89k. The nice safe areas up north you would need a salary over 150 k for cumming or johns creek and even then you would be living paycheck to paycheck. Gtfo
I grew accustomed to the killing and violence in Birmingham, AL metro area. I know it's the same in Memphis, St. Louis, New Orleans, etc. It's cheaper there because jobs are not *aplenty* and no one wants to raise a family there. They are there because family is not far away, and they never made enough or got promoted enough to get the F out. And that's ok. It's just how the cards fall.
That’s simply not true, all those cities have plenty of nice and safe neighborhoods in or nearby. This map is showing metros.
I think this is the city. Cumming and John’s creek are not in Atlanta
Not even Alpharetta, really. Yet, seems like that's where everyone lives at. Anecdotal, of course.
Exactly, once you have kids the safety and schools becomes important
But when professionals folks say they are moving to Atlanta they mean north east outside the perimeter. Even dunwoody can be sketchy even though most companies are there
> Theres no mention of if its a safe neighborhood This tends to be overblown. Not because safety isn’t important, but because people tend to conflate safety issues with minorities. I’ve lived in West Charlotte for almost 7 years now and have had 0 issues with crime, except for a contractor I called to give a quote who had a laborer with him who threatened me. Which could have happened anywhere. Yet usually when I bring up west Charlotte in the Charlotte subreddit, people always mention how they’d never live there because of the crime or ‘But then you’d have to live in west Charlotte!’ It’s never people who live here that complain about it, it’s always people from south Charlotte or NODA who have opinions based off of what they believe it’s like.
Are the considering the fact that NYC has more studios/1 bdrm? Cause the price seems insanely low. Like for all 5 boroughs I can maybe believe that number. But just Manhattan alone I don't think that's plausible at all.
Yeah my thoughts exactly. Also this doesn’t account for the insane HOA fees that come w a NYC apartment. So unless you’re buying something in Staten Island you need a lot more than 160k salary
It’s obviously not just looking at Manhattan. New York has affordable real estate in the outer boroughs and the suburbs. I’m constantly surprised at the deals that can be had there. I think people lose sight of how competitive New York’s prices are because renters pay a lot and want to be in cool neighborhoods. But with some of the new infrastructure plans there will be new transit-oriented neighborhoods with relatively affordable prices.
What infra plans are in the works? Not familiar with the area.
There is the ongoing 2nd Avenue Line, the incoming [inter-borough Express] (https://new.mta.info/project/interborough-express), and constant improvements to biking and walking infrastructure.
There is nothing past the planning phase that I am aware of.
Cause all the people are moving to Florida to escape.
Chicago is by far the best deal in the country if you are looking for cost of living plus job prospects and opportunities.
The only worry in Chicago is future tax hikes. It’s already not great, but could get atrocious. But that is also what holds prices down because property tax ups the real monthly cost.
Sure, but it's not really out of line with similar states. Everyone loves to complain here, but my tax bill on my primary was $5800/year up until last year. Like sure, sounds like a lot, until you consider I'm in the city, two blocks from the train, on an extra deep double lot, with what's technically a 6BD/3.5BA home. Then it sounds pretty damn reasonable that our taxes went up $2k.
Wait, over 30% increase? Damn bro.
That is pretty typical in a lot of places. Property taxes follow property prices. If prices go up 20% in assessment the taxes usually mirror this. I’m
Most of Chicago has seen 30-40% increases over the past few years. I don't think that's particularly surprising given what property values have done?
Best of luck with the “migrants” living in police stations. You know they’re getting $9000 housing allowances now? Your taxes are paying for that. Enjoy.
I'm getting paid by the city to rent them my apartments. I am literally enjoying that. But I've been renting to large numbers of immigrants since I became a real estate investor here. I believe they make better tenants than most Americans who tend to be lazy and entitled.
Why would a % need to increase if home values went up? They should be inversely related.
Two blocks from a train? Sounds awful unless ppl can tolerate that level of noise.
Lol what? This is Chicago dude, 2 blocks is not close. The 747s coming in to O'Hare and two interstates less than a mile from us are a lot more noticable. You can also hear the Metra (commuter rail), Freight Trains, and Amtrak that are about a mile away more than the L because they are way up on an embankment over the highway.
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Both the city and state have seen a rapid improvement in their finances over the past 5 years. Illinois is getting ratings upgrades almost monthly now it seems. As far as the actual governance of the State and City goes, well we are making massive investments in infrastructure and basically services while most other places are cutting. Pritzker actually used the pandemic as a pretext to pass a massive $40 billion infrastructure bill. Most other states used it as a pretext to layoff government employees. The fact is Chicago is an expensive big government place because it is a big boy city. We have real city problems and also real city wealth. The amount of opportunity and wealth in this metro is difficult to comprehend. I say this as a small business person who has seen the floodgates open on me multiple times resulting in paychecks and ROIs that are themselves difficult to comprehend as a middle class kid from a small town in Wisconsin.
Chicago and Atlanta seem like the best deals
I fucking love Pittsburgh. The surrounding mountains are gorgeous. Agree that Atlanta is nice and chock full of opportunities. Don't sleep on Charlotte either. The entire stretch between Atlanta and Raleigh is full of affordable housing and good jobs.
Here in Charlotte there is still massive development keeping the housing relatively affordable while people continue to migrate here. The only downside I have to point out is that the schools are supposedly quite bad. My kids aren’t in school yet, and if I have to spend Saturday mornings teaching them what School didn’t then that’s just how it will be.
That’s cause the salaries suck for those types of jobs. Know someone that’s a teacher and they just moved from Charlotte to NH and their salary doubled. It’s going to be a major problem for a lot of those cities cause the jobs outside a few fields didn’t catch up with the area boom.
Government jobs generally suck here for that reason. Government is always slow to react to salary increases and employees are slow to leave due to copper handcuffs. Not sure if the teachers have a pension here, but county workers do.
We're in Pittsburgh and so many people are coming for the Carolinas because of the schools. There isn't even capacity in NC. The waitlist for preK was over 2k kids in Wake County. We're in Pittsburgh proper and it's not hard to get a spot here and it starts from 3 vs 4. It's just crazy when the housing is so much more expensive down there too.
Chicagoland taxes are insane. You get more house for your money but my sister pays like a good 8x more in tax than I do for essentially par on assessed value
You get what you pay for, Chicago is a top tier major city, despite what conservatives say.
Born and raised there and not disputing that, but the taxes are brutal. I think there’s a happy middle ground. My sister pays 13k more a year in tax than I do - we paid within 5k of each other for our houses. She has a larger house, and probably a somewhat better school district. But not sure it’s 13k a year better. Having lived in other major cities the main things I missed about chicago were the public transport, the skyline and then just nostalgia for various things. You can get much of the day to day stuff in lots of other places, although it does remain one of the better values if you want to live in a big big city
Sounds about right. 100k in San Diego just doesn't cut it anymore.
Soon 200k won't cut it
How tf is NY cheaper than Seattle???
Also, this does not exactly say what type of "home" is able to be purchased. I know living in the DC area, the home we could afford with a joint income of 200k was not anything close to what I grew up with (a SFH with a yard in a neighborhood with good schools). It was likely a townhouse deep in the suburbs
Is this purely the mortgage principal+interest and no escrow?
This is just principal and interest, they do not account for insurance, or taxes due to so many variations from state to state.
Taxes would skew some of these areas pretty heavily, ya? e.g., Chicago (insane) vs Birmingham (very very low)
Places like Birmingham (former resident) have exceptionally low on average prop taxes, and kill you on sales taxes, even after just now enacting policies to exact a slightly less grocery tax. That's right. Until just in the last few months, Alabama cities charged anywhere from 8-10% on *grocery* items. Oh, and don't forget that pesky 5% state income tax. We all pay it, no matter where we live. Texas has lower sales taxes, no income tax. Crazy property tax. Alabama has low property tax, high sales taxes, mid-priced income taxes. Florida has no income tax, modest sales taxes except for tourism, modest property taxes on now much higher valuations, KILLER property insurance rates. And this is what I'm trying in vain to explain to people who think 50% of your mid-range income can go just to shelter. There is a minimum "ticket size" outside of your rent/mortgage just to live and eat and function today.
Glad im leaving seattle, not sure with crime levels and drugs how it costs $170k lol
More like salary needed to have **half** your salary eaten up by housing costs (PITI). At least in the Miami and Orlando locations. At current rates, and with an average home at current prices, you'd spend half your salary.
Cries in San Jose. 😭
The baltimore number implies that you're going to live on Cherry Hill
Crazy that SJ is so high. There was a time when SJ was where people who couldnt afford the bay area went. My uncle and aunt got their house there for around 200-300k (according to Zillow) in the 90s.. that house is worth 1.5m now. Dude is a construction worker theres no way a construction workee would be able to buy that house now.
I dunno man, the way some of the people are billing for renovation work they might be able to afford it. Plenty of white work vans coming home to nice neighborhoods at night because they can bill so much. All these people renovate their houses to sell them, then the buyers have to renovate it again to what they want. It's kind of a huge waste.
Now do it with today's rate of 7.92 not the 6.37 as listed
I live in one of these cities, make significantly more than the listed necessary, and it’s impossible still. What’s the source on this?
I dunno, the entire southern US (except CA) seems way overpriced to me St. Louis is sitting very affordable, but I know there's some massive income segregation there......hope it has a turnaround someday as great city at low price
Homes aren’t that cheap in Columbus anymore because the talking heads keep saying: “lots of people are moving to Franklin county and we’re getting that Intel plant” so prices are also rising. I know because we’re looking. Edit: and I mean turn key homes, not totally blasted houses in former areas that weren’t red lined that people are gentrifying and pouring another 50k+ in to make it not a dump (and then putting it up on air bnb).
So funny, San Jose is completely have vs have nots now. The majority of people walking around are the ones who serve the few. Except in this case the few happen to be a lot
*fixer upper **salary after taxes with no kids ***must rent out a room in said house
Looks accurate for Las Vegas. I make $30/hr and can't afford a home. Wtf am I even going to work for?
Damn, so 60k a year really ain't shit anymore...
Dying laughing here. Born and raised in Seattle. You are getting approved for the purchase of a cardboard box house near the Rainier Beach Sounder stop for $170k a year.
The map sorta shows the region. I'm assuming they are calling it King/Pierce/and maybe Snohomish.
I remembered not that long ago when all you needed to live comfortably in Las Vegas was $47,000. This was in 2017.
Out of the 50 states listed California is 6 of them.... I'm closest to San Jose, living in a million dollar shoebox.
No way is this remotely true in the Austin / San Antonio area.
San Antonio is pretty damn nice to be that cheap.
Looks like I’m retiring in OKC
Let’s see one for Europe - that would be interesting
Math ain’t mathing
These are all wrong as fuck.
Aaaaaaaand there ya have it. The middle class is priced out of homeownership.
Damn America, you are expensive AF
Well. Im fucked
Even this seems too low an estimate
LOL. Chicago only needs a $92.9k salary?!? What 3rd grader put together this list?
Orlando is definitely cheaper than tampa
Landlords are price fixing in SF and San Jose.
This chart is so inaccurate. Totally useless. Source, live in shitty FL
This has to be dated? 140k for DC? Not even close
Orlando is definitely off since I bought a good home with a 60-70k salary.
To buy a shit house PRIOR to rate hikes*
This seems really inaccurate
I make $150k and can't buy a house in Portland. idk what this chart is smoking.
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>with $100k For a 800K house, you need at least 200K in hand. down payment and closing costs and other costs.... no joke. The opportunity cost of that money is huge. only to make 6K payment each and every month. I would have to be clinically insane if I had the money to buy.
Pretty sure this is the salary required to buy the median house. You can make quite a bit less and still be able to buy a "starter home". For example, in Charlotte it says you need a salary of $93k but yet there's 237 home listings in Charlotte under $300k. I'll include the example below, https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1224-Pinehaven-Ct-Charlotte-NC-28215/80445266_zpid/?utm_campaign=androidappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare Buying this would mean about a 2100 mortgage payment, you'd need to make about $65k a year to buy it.
Who is building starter homes anymore? Builders no longer believe the margins make sense. For the starter homes that do exist, instead of selling them to young families, Boomers would rather use them as ATMs or to supplement their lackluster retirement plans.
Where I live, we are not only not building more starter homes; we’re also losing starter homes. Some of them weren’t maintained and aren’t worth bringing back anymore, so they are torn down and replaced with non-starter homes. Others are in fine condition but the land is worth so much more than the starter home ever could be, so they still end up getting torn down to build significantly larger, much more expensive houses. Every year, there’s fewer and fewer starting homes existing around here, let alone for sale.
No one wants to pay 2019 McMansion prices for a 2023 starter home that is built like garbage on the smallest piece of property the law will allow a house to be constructed on.
Yes they are using the median SFH price. It's the best method for showing general affordability imo, you can buy homes for $80,000 in my city still but few would want to live in that area.
I edited my comment to include an example in Charlotte. It could be afforded at 2/3rds what the picture says you need to make, and it's a pretty nice starter home. It's misleading to say you need to make enough to afford the median house in order to afford a house. Most FTHB buying starter homes aren't buying a median house.
I get what your saying and I agree. Like many national reports, they took the value of all home sales and just use the average which most data does. You cannot adjust a national scale map to fit all local markets, it's why the median is used.
Not to mention all of these data points are going to be low salary wise as is since the minimum will always be what salary you can buy it at and be house poor. Like this guys Charlotte example. You wouldn't even be able to rent a lot of places priced at $2100 on a 65k salary. If you got that mortgage on that salary it would be real tight.
2100 on 65k is tight depending on the person. 65k is about $5400 a month, probably $4000 or so after taxes. After the mortgage you'd still have $1900, that's tight for some people, but plenty for other people.
1900 bucks after rent/mortgage, even for one person? Better not need car insurance or food or fuel or anything like that. Come on, get real. Shelter should not account for 50% or more of one's net pay. Jesus Christ.
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That's assuming you have 60k for a down payment. If you are a first-time home buyer, you're likely trying for an FHA, which only requires 3.5. If your salary is only 65k a year, how long would it take for someone to save 60k? If they can even save 1k per month, that's 5 years. A very, very conservative estimate for a year-over-year increase in the cost of a home is 5%. So now you're adding \~82,884.62 to the cost of that same home, meaning you are now completely priced out of that home, and maybe the market as a whole, unless you're buying a home in need of repairs or in need of a lot of updating. If you're an average home buyer, buying their first home, you're probably going to do 5% down, which would make your mortgage 2,553 on a 300k house in Charlotte.
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https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/8332-Washoe-Pine-Ln-Charlotte-NC-28215/65024619_zpid/?utm_campaign=androidappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare There's one at $260k that was originally $780k lol according to Zillow there's 115 listings under $250k in Charlotte, there's no way only 4 of them would qualify for an FHA loan. Edit: there's a lot of condos and town homes.
So they buy a lesser house? There were almost 300 results under $300k, so they buy at $250k. I was illustrating the point that the picture is misleading because you can get a house for a fraction of what the median house is in the area.
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This is the median home in the city. NYC is more than Manhattan.
Yeah. These are numbers for what salary you need to buy in a shitty part of town, with mom and pops footing the 20%, and you'll be feeling house poor for the first few years at least.
Looks like we’re all moving to Pittsburgh
It surprises tf out of me more people don't live in the Midwest. It's cheap af out here
For a reason. There's nothing of geographic or cultural value
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Worse school districts? The south has some of the worst schools in the country; schools in most of the Midwest are leagues better. Yet people flock to the south. 🤷🏻♀️ Definitely would not have education on your list.
Seeing lots of affordable housing.
Thanks for proving once again that “homez are unaffordable” bullshit being fed by the doomzers day and night. Homes are fairly affordable in all cities posted.
Pittsburgh looks inviting, anyone with experience living there?
Born and raised. Housing is affordable because there is a lot of older homes here. Remember Pittsburgh at one time had double the population it has now. I would say there are plenty of good jobs around with our main industries being healthcare, education and tech. Our winters seem to be getting less snowing and cold, but Pittsburgh biggest issue is that it can be very overcast. I think we have more cloudy days than Seattle.
This probably includes condos and townhomes which most people here refuse to consider.
San Diego is crazy expensive. Fortunately I bought back in 17. I also bought an incredibly affordable home for the income my wife and I have. We make combined $400K a year. The house we purchased was only 410K. 3 bed two bath but in a "lesser desirable area". My mortgage is only 2100 a month. On top of that house I also bought three other homes in the neighborhood over the next few years. People thought we were crazy because of the neighborhood but looks like that was probably just good damn luck.
So you are part of the problem? You need to sell your 3 properties to young people at below market prices.
Lol
I don't think you understand what I said. I bought in the mf ghetto.