http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-housing-affordability
Being a first-time homebuyer often comes with a lot of advice. Make sure you can afford your mortgage. Pick a real estate agent who knows the market. Scrape together a good-sized down payment.
We’ve got one more to add to the list: Don’t buy out West.
Bloomberg News analyzed the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas to determine the least and most affordable places for people between ages 25 and 44, a proxy for those in their prime home-buying years. We ranked places by the difference between the median household income for that age group and the estimated minimum earnings needed to purchase a single-family home in the region as of 2015.
So the formula is:
affordability gap = median wage - min wage to afford a house
Our beloved San Jose got beaten, just barely, by Honolulu. That’s just a gap of $130. SF is much more affordable than SJ by this measure, presumably because the median wage is higher in SF?
