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.
this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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“Price includes 4 walls. Roof is extra.”
*Roof is included with the Bronze subscription Plan at an extra $450 a month.
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 saved for a few years, and every amount I saved was offset by the housing prices going up. I eventually had $300K saved up and couldn’t afford the down payment on a family home.
That’s just completely and utterly unsustainable. I live in San Diego County now, which isn’t a whole lot better.
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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.
From the Bay Area, $1.5M will get you a two bed one bath or three bed 1.5 bath home built in 1925 or so. You can buy in a lower end neighborhood for a little less or a higher end one for a bit more, but the standard is going to be a craftsman home from 1906 with a driveway if you’re lucky.
I think the graphic also used a 20% down payment and a slightly over 6% mortgage in the calculation.
I just want to retire and move someplace cheap, like NYC or London.
Wow, two bedrooms for only $1.5mil! What a steal!
That's insane to me. I live in Tulsa, OK and bought a nice 2400sq ft home with 4 bedrooms, 2 living rooms, dining room, 2 full baths and garage and in a cul-de-sac for 120k. But the downside is I'm living in Oklahoma...so... Yeah.
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There is no way that this graphic isn’t including the entire metro area. The city I currently live in is on the list and so is the city that I am planning to relocate to. Prices shown do not accurately reflect the prices of houses/condos that I would consider “in the city”.
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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.
It says "homes" and not "houses", so probably apartments and condos indeed
Reading is hard
It's gotta include condos....any condos. Like studio sized condo from the 60s in a dumpy building with neighbors that have 3 families living in a one bedroom
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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.
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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?
bro fuck those goofy ass roads over there. wonky ass hilly ass city
Because we tell everyone the Midwest is terrible to keep it that way.
I might have to come check that place out to be honest
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shh! don't talk about it
Probably because per the 2021 census stats, 20% of residents are below the poverty line and the median household income was only 54k.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/pittsburghcitypennsylvania/PST045222
I'm sure the high rate of hard drug usage doesn't help everyone's situation there either.
yes this AND crime. definitely don't move there. is really bad, you'll hate it until you're killed by random violence.
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.
Exactly. The median purchase price for new cars is ~$45k or something, yet I'd never spend that much despite making more than median salary. Things don't scale like that.
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I want to see Honolulu
Interesting that Pittsburgh has a lower median house price than Detroit.
Have you seen Detroit? A third of homes downtown are completely derelict.
Maybe all those open toilets in the basement are not as appealing as Pittsburghers think they are....
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...
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Ah yes, New England is perfectly readable on this graph
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.
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?
They did it’s at the bottom. 6.37%
Which, having literally just bought a home, is a supremely optimistic rate to get right now. We spent $10k buying down our interest and only managed 6.9%
This is beautiful! Does anyone know the software used to create this visualization?
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.
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