Personal Finance

What is the size of the “median” home in each area? Single family, or townhome, or condo?

Given that this appears to be a median average, this graphic does not account for the extremely wide variance depending on the cases above. A two bedroom condo and a five bedroom single family home could easily have a $2000/mo variance in the mortgage cost.

The other item that would perhaps be useful would be to call out what the down payment requirement is for each of these areas; ie, you can only achieve a $3000/mo mortgage if you’ve also put down $140,000, which is unachievable for over 90% of the country.

lmao cries in San Jose

I mean, the thing is, it's not even that great a city. Like, sure the tech jobs are here, and the bay area overall is nice and has temperate weather, but San Jose itself is a giant sprawling suburb. Downtown is "okay" and we do have public transit in the form of the light rail but it's pretty slow.

I'm paying $3.4k to rent a 2x2.5 townhome with my partner currently. It's very nice, and my landlords are just a very nice couple rather than a company, but dang is it expensive just to live here.

And before anyone asks, I live here 1) because I work in tech and the jobs are here, and 2) because my family all lives in the Bay Area and they're very important to me.

Anyway, my formal recommendation to any of you looking to move to San Jose is to basically not do that. Find a remote job and work in tech that way, or hybrid so you can live further out and commute only a couple times a week.

I saw a house in Phoenix that was in my price range. I thought, "Wow, this house has a lot of natural light."

The last photo was a picture of the roof, or lack thereof.

I'd love to know where the houses you can afford on a $140K salary in DC are. Unless house here is loosely defined as a place where you live (apartments, condos), I'm certain this data is flawed.

My dumbass had a nice 3 bed 2 bath home in NM that I was paying a measley $600 a month as a first time buyer. I then sold it and moved to the Boston area.

I regret everything.

It would be much more useful to see a comparison to income so you could get a better idea of how realistic purchasing a home actually is. For example, Buffalo has cheap homes, but can you get a job there that afford one? And how is the quality of life there? How is crime? Like, it might be the case that San Jose is a better deal or more realistic if salaries are high enough to justify the home price. Because right now, this is more a map of just, what is the overall economy like for each city.

why the hell is Pittsburgh Pennsylvania so cheap?

median price home

So I nice mid life house...

Median price homes aren't affordable, start home and median price home are mutually exclusive.

Median price home literally is going to be about the halfway point between a starter home and a fucking mansion

It boils my blood everytime I see these info dumps starting off with average or medium house prices.

That's not a fucking starter home price.

It's like looking at the median price of a car and then trying to say that cars aren't affordable for your first car.

You don't spend 20k to 30k in your first car, you buy near the bottom percentile as your starter. Your first car is like a fraction of the cost of the median.

Tfw all you can afford is the rust belt 

Good luck buying a house in Seattle on a $170,000 salary. It's going to be a beat-down, tiny thing, with no yard, in a questionable area.

Interesting that Pittsburgh has a lower median house price than Detroit.

This is beautiful! Does anyone know the software used to create this visualization?

I want to see Honolulu

The median household income in Portland, OR is $78k and the salary needed to afford a house is $136k?

Yup, sounds about right.

edit: Looks like I should consider moving to Pittsburgh...

They should include the interest rate they are using to calculate the mortgage. Based on what's provided they are assuming around a 6% mortgage which is no longer available. Tack an extra $1,000 monthly payment onto that million dollar home and an extra $40,000 to your income to make it affordable. (Assuming debt/income ratio and income taxes)

Did I miss anything?

Now that insurances against natural disasters start costing a fortune in places like Florida, and you probably have to have such an insurance to get a mortgage there, it, the costs for housing down there will probably skyrocket soon.

Ah yes, New England is perfectly readable on this graph

Wait till they find out it's likely harder to rent in many areas, too, thanks to the new ratio requirement.

I like to joke that I moved from the SF Bay Area to Seattle for the affordable housing, but it's funny because it's true.

Guess I should move away from Seattle then

This is just not realistic.

Using the median home price is severely underestimating the cost of a decent home in an okay neighborhood.

With these salaries, you can afford a house that needs severe repairs or in either an unsafe or really inconvenient area.

I bought a house in one of these cities in 2017 with slightly more than what they say is the required salary. It was 195k with 4.5%. The school district reassessed the house from the sale, my taxes skyrocketed, and my mortgage increased $600 a month. I ended up selling the house after 3 years to move in my parents with 25k in credit card debt.

Today, that house would cost at least 300k and interest rates are around 8%. I’ve almost tripled my salary since then and my budget is probably max 330k.