El Paso is in Top 10 Least Affordable Cities (Fort Bliss, Wells: home builder, buying)

[piyf]

Porperty Taxes in El Paso are not expensive. Please go look at property taxes in most other places. EP isn't cheap but it's not expensive.

I think EP is on that list because the median income and home is a huge margain.

[ocean2026]

this is a bit misleading as houses vary in cost depending on area. I would guess that an average El Pasoan would have no more difficulty in buying a house than anyone else. Someone growing up in the lower valley and making an avg wage there would probably have no problem buying a house in his own neighborhood.

Also people moving to El Paso with their companies will make enough to buy a house as well.

[lipbalm]

Originally Posted by ocean2026

this is a bit misleading as houses vary in cost depending on area. I would guess that an average El Pasoan would have no more difficulty in buying a house than anyone else. Someone growing up in the lower valley and making an avg wage there would probably have no problem buying a house in his own neighborhood.

Also people moving to El Paso with their companies will make enough to buy a house as well.

I wonder if that is a big percentage? when compared to the EP pop.

[malamute]

Originally Posted by br7or13

I'm no economist, but I gotta cast some doubt on the methodology here. I've lived in Miami and N.Y./N.J. area, and there is no way it costs as much to live in E.P. as it does in these other areas. In terms of housing and food prices, E.P. is far less expensive. Maybe on the property tax end of things, I can see how E.P. creeps up there, but even then there is no personal income tax in Texas, so who F'ing knows?

Yes because here unlike Miami, you can easily live without air conditioners, at the most you might want a swamp cooler, but you could do fine with a couple fans. Here you need very little heat in the winter to stay comfortable and you could survive with no heat since it doesn't get too cold, it dips below freezing at night, nothing like what they face in the north.

You can find affordable homes, in the Central part of town, there are a lot of homes sitting empty that would sell for little money.

[malamute]

Originally Posted by danieloneil01

Porperty Taxes in El Paso are not expensive. Please go look at property taxes in most other places. EP isn't cheap but it's not expensive.

I think EP is on that list because the median income and home is a huge margain.

I would disagree with that. Our average wages are much too low for the extreme property taxes here. People in other places are paying half to a quarter of what we pay in property taxes. They are very out-of-line and we get very little for them.

[HookTheBrotherUp]

You have to suspend reality and put yourself within the parameters used. The article said the city needs more than 500K residents, so I'm guessing they took the entire working population of El Paso. Along with that goes the average income of all those people. It's no surprise that ELP has low wages, and many with no wages. So your average El Paso wage is 32K.

Next they are using the NAHB figurures, this tells me they are only considering the average cost of a new home, not like one in <insert blighted neighborhood with prison bars on doors and windows here>. According to HAHB's web site, the average cost of a new home in Texas is 181K.

Next, do the math. On average, a monthly mortgage payment will be about 10% of the cost of the house, so figure the monthly mortgage on a 180K house is $1,800.00, or $21,600.00 a year which leaves $10,400.00 a year to live on.

Can a single person, let alone a family, afford a home based on that? Resume reality, and the answer is no.

A lot of the rebuttals here are true, like buying a home in the lower valley on the average wage, taxes, or that homes cost a lot less in ELP than in other cities, but you must only consider the parameters used for the article.

[DesertDog]

I asked this question quite a while back and got a couple of tongue-in-cheek answers but seriously how do people afford the homes they live in here on the far east side of El Paso? Neighborhood after neighborhood of homes from 150K-275K and it can't all be military families. As an earlier post said this puts home payments with taxes at 1800 a month and up with most people here not making over 25 dollars an hour how is this possible? How do people even qualify to buy these homes? I doubt everyone sold their home in California and moved here so what's up?

[malamute]

Originally Posted by DesertDog

I asked this question quite a while back and got a couple of tongue-in-cheek answers but seriously how do people afford the homes they live in here on the far east side of El Paso? Neighborhood after neighborhood of homes from 150K-275K and it can't all be military families. As an earlier post said this puts home payments with taxes at 1800 a month and up with most people here not making over 25 dollars an hour how is this possible? How do people even qualify to buy these homes? I doubt everyone sold their home in California and moved here so what's up?

Don't forget the very wealthy class from Juarez. A home costing $300k makes a nice enough second home for them. They can buy them just to use for the address for residency. Or they buy them for their grown kids so they can live in a safer city.

[malamute]

Originally Posted by HookTheBrotherUp

You have to suspend reality and put yourself within the parameters used. The article said the city needs more than 500K residents, so I'm guessing they took the entire working population of El Paso. Along with that goes the average income of all those people. It's no surprise that ELP has low wages, and many with no wages. So your average El Paso wage is 32K.

Next they are using the NAHB figurures, this tells me they are only considering the average cost of a new home, not like one in <insert blighted neighborhood with prison bars on doors and windows here>. According to HAHB's web site, the average cost of a new home in Texas is 181K.

Next, do the math. On average, a monthly mortgage payment will be about 10% of the cost of the house, so figure the monthly mortgage on a 180K house is $1,800.00, or $21,600.00 a year which leaves $10,400.00 a year to live on.

Can a single person, let alone a family, afford a home based on that? Resume reality, and the answer is no.

A lot of the rebuttals here are true, like buying a home in the lower valley on the average wage, taxes, or that homes cost a lot less in ELP than in other cities, but you must only consider the parameters used for the article.

Well it's not just the blighted neighborhoods where you can find affordable homes. You can find quite cheap houses in neighborhoods that are actually plenty safe.

The other thing to consider is that it's quite common to find houses where several families are living, several generations in one house. Pooling the money gets people more house than living in single family homes does.

Now I'm the first one to realize that Americans don't want to live several families in a house but that's how many people afford homes here on lower wages. Sometimes the multiple families in one house is just while they're starting out. Also when people live with their parents until age 50 or 60, when the parents die, they get the house free and clear, and they're able to save up years of income by not having to pay rent or mortage all that time. Selling the inherited house and using years of savings allows for some to buy some pretty pricey homes.

And many of the adults living with parents get the big advantage of no property taxes and the parents who own the house get a very sweet tax break for being senior citizens. What many of these people do is enjoy the no rent living, but buy a home they rent out but use to get property tax exemptions at income tax time pretending to live in it for tax purposes. It's win-win-win all the way around. That's very common.

[DesertDog]

I've heard the term "Juarez-Elite" used in several post and was curious what this means and who are they?