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Going by the old rule of thumb that you shouldn't buy a home more than thrice your annual gross income, then you'd need to be making a $285,000 annual salary to afford the typical home in the Bay Area. That's ludicrous! How are firefighters, police officers, teachers, sanitation workers, and all of the other necessary workers who make sub-$100,000 salaries managing to afford to buy their first homes in that area unless their parents are buying houses for them? Insanity!
Is the quality-of-life in the Bay Area truly high enough to justify working multiple jobs to afford a home there unless you're a doctor, attorney, executive, or tech guru?!
This is actually quite interesting. San Francisco (not sure of the rest of the region) has sort of a public school teacher shortage and so is trying to add incentives to attract more. I graduate within two years with my Mathematics/Education, and I would love to live in the Bay Area (contrary to popular believe on CD, it is possible to love both "sprawling" and "urban" cities) bur they pay just isn't there. I talked to a few of my older friends who are teachers and they seem to feel the same.
Of course, that is over a year down the line. By then, maybe the cities have found a way to fix the issue.
Well most firefighters and police officers are making $100K or more with overtime. But yeah pretty hard for nurses, teachers, etc..overall. With a two income household it's not that hard to earn $150-200K+ though. But even households who earn that much would probably have to buy in a lower middle to average middle class area for their first home if it's a SFH. You'll likely have to make some sacrifices to break into the housing market here.
Also for trade up/move up buyers they likely have a rather large down payment from equity in their current/previous home. Also families do help with down payments.
Not trying to downplay how incredibly over priced it is and how hard it is to be a first time home buyer just explaining how some people do it. Unless you have a great career or family/close ties to the area probably not worth the cost for QOL imo.
There are a couple of hospitals in the city of SF that are having trouble retaining their medical assistants and other staff due to high housing costs. As soon as they find a job closer to where they live (usually some far out place like Antioch or Tracy) then they switch. They are going through 40 MAs a month and it's starting to **** off the doctors. We're working with them to try to come up with a solution and a few ideas have been floated but really, none of them will work imo. There needs to be income based housing built in SF, especially for medical workers.
This is the updated report for Quarter 2 of 2016 by the National Association of Realtors (realtor.org).
This update marks the first time the United States has had a metropolitan area (MSA) surpass $1 million for median housing prices. San Jose now joins Vancouver as one of only two large metropolitan areas over 1 million people to have median housing prices exceeding $1 million USD in all of the North American continent. Unless an area over 1 million people has seen its median housing prices exceed $1 million before in the past only to slip at some point later on, I do believe this marks the first time in American history a metropolitan area of that size or larger has crossed $1 million USD in median housing price. So, it is groundbreaking, to say the least.
Unfortunately no data is available for either Detroit MSA or Pittsburgh MSA.
Median Sales Price of Single-Family Homes by Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA):
- San Jose MSA: $1,085,000
- San Francisco-Oakland MSA: $885,600
- Honolulu MSA: $725,200
- San Diego MSA: $589,900
- Los Angeles MSA: $480,000
- Boston MSA: $435,800
- Seattle MSA: $420,500
- Washington, D.C. MSA: $406,900
- New York MSA: $395,400
- Denver MSA: $394,400
- Portland MSA: $356,700
- Sacramento MSA: $323,700
- Riverside-San Bernardino MSA: $315,500
- Miami-Fort Lauderdale MSA: $310,000
- Reno MSA: $307,900
- Austin MSA: $289,100
- Salt Lake City MSA: $276,900
- Baltimore MSA: $265,800
- Providence MSA: $265,600
- Charleston, SC MSA: $260,100
- Colorado Springs MSA: $259,300
- Raleigh MSA: $258,800
- Portland, ME MSA: $248,800
- Madison MSA: $248,100
- Chicago MSA: $246,400
- Minneapolis-Saint Paul MSA: $242,400
- Las Vegas MSA: $242,300
- Richmond MSA: $240,400
- Hartford MSA: $236,900
- Phoenix MSA: $234,700
- Dallas-Fort Worth MSA: $232,200
- Philadelphia MSA: $232,200
- Milwaukee MSA: $230,000
- Nashville MSA: $227,000
- Orlando MSA: $223,000
- Virginia Beach-Norfolk MSA: $223,000
- Houston MSA: $217,400
- Jacksonville MSA: $215,000
- San Antonio MSA: $210,500
- Spokane MSA: $209,500
- Boise MSA: $208,200
- Albany MSA: $202,700
- Tampa MSA: $199,900
- New Orleans MSA: $195,900
- Birmingham MSA: $195,200
- Albuquerque MSA: $193,500
- Tucson MSA: $192,500
- Atlanta MSA: $192,000
- Baton Rouge MSA: $188,700
- Kansas City MSA: $188,600
- Greenville MSA: $188,000
- Des Moines MSA: $187,900
- Saint Louis MSA: $170,300
- Omaha MSA: $169,800
- Knoxville MSA: $167,700
- Chattanooga MSA: $167,400
- Indianapolis MSA: $164,300
- Louisville MSA: $164,000
- Memphis MSA: $160,800
- Grand Rapids MSA: $160,700
- Cincinnati MSA: $160,600
- Greensboro MSA: $159,300
- Tulsa MSA: $152,700
- El Paso MSA: $149,300
- Little Rock MSA: $140,700
- Cleveland MSA: $138,100
- Rochester MSA: $134,600
- Buffalo MSA: $129,600
In the not-too-distant future the likes of Portland, Denver, and Seattle will all surpass the likes of Boston, Washington, and New York in median housing prices. I usually keep an eye on home prices, I try to look at each of the 4 updates (1 each quarter) every year.
I've seen Portland, Denver, and Seattle go from nowhere near as expensive as the Northeast Corridor cities to pulling up right beside them in median home prices. I've seen this occur rapidly too, in just two to four years of time.
Here is my thread from 2012 with the data made available by the National Association of Realtors:
If you skim that list and then look at my recent list in post #13 of this thread (both lists from the same source), the changes are absolutely dramatic. Some places have become expensive in just a 3-4 year span of time. It is remarkable really.
Location: The Greatest city on Earth: City of Atlanta Proper
8,485 posts, read 14,994,819 times
Reputation: 7333
Quote:
Originally Posted by SteelCityRising
$855,000?! Holy granola bar, Batman!
Going by the old rule of thumb that you shouldn't buy a home more than thrice your annual gross income, then you'd need to be making a $285,000 annual salary to afford the typical home in the Bay Area. That's ludicrous! How are firefighters, police officers, teachers, sanitation workers, and all of the other necessary workers who make sub-$100,000 salaries managing to afford to buy their first homes in that area unless their parents are buying houses for them? Insanity!
Their analysis didn't include Philadelphia. However, I also used another source as well in post #13 of this thread by the National Association of Realtors. In that analysis it includes Philadelphia and several dozens of other metropolitan areas that were not apart of the Marketwatch report.
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