[marybethorama]

The nearest listed is Hagerstown, MD and that is a more expensive area.

There's a big difference here between new and old houses. Prices have gone up a lot. We sold our rental house for 65,000 and not it's on sale for 98,000. Of course it may not sell at that price.

New townhouses start at 130,000. Detached houses are over 200,000. But if you don't care about a new house, you can get a house for a lot less. Neighborhoods don't matter in terms of school districts. The best schools all have poor neighborhoods in their districts and some of the most expensive houses are in the poor school districts.

In my town there really are no unsafe neighborhoods. My neighborhood is "undesirable" because there are a lot of student rentals but I love it. We'd have to pay another 100,000 at least to live in a "better neighborhood". But if we did and we had to move, we might not get our money back. Plus, I'm not crazy about the "better" neighborhoods in terms of location.

We do live in a smaller, older house with (gasp) one bathroom. Many people wouldn't even consider it. They'd "have" to renovate and spend tens of thousands putting in a new kitchen, bathrooms. But it would just overimprove the house for the neighborhood.

I don't mind living in a modest house but a lot of people wouldn't consider it. In our case not making improvements won't affect the value because we can always rent to college students and their standards are quite low. They don't mind sharing bathrooms and they don't care about new kitchens. We have the perfect location and plenty of room to park which is what they want.

So I guess, living in a new house might be out of reach for us but it's cheaper to own in our town than to rent so we own.

 

[Herausgeber]

Quote:

Originally Posted by skueppers Yep, I live in the same metro area, and it seemed about right to me -- both the median home price and the income required to afford it. Luckily, we bought our house before the prices went through the roof, otherwise we certainly wouldn't be able to own a home here.

Yep. I could not afford my own house at this point if I hadn't been lucky enough to catch this neighborhood just before the wave of gentrification did.

Mary Beth, are you in Cumberland, by chance? I used to work in Hagerstown, and it's been fascinating to watch even that town, which is insanely far away in my mind, become a suburb of D.C.

 

[TiredX2]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lisalulu I'm in Seattle and it says that the median house price is 325K and that you need 103K to get it. I think the wage needed sounds about right based on what we were making and got approved for when we bought our house. I think their median value sounds a little low to me for in-city housing especially what I see for sale around our neighborhood. We desparately need more room but can't afford a bigger house and stay in the city with me not working Lisa

I live on the Eastside and I think $325 is really low. Definately not the median!

When I searched my area on Realtor.com for under $350 (which median means more than HALF should be under) w/3beds, 1.5 baths it came up with...
FOUR:
http://www.realtor.com/FindHome/Home...typ=4&x=27&y=3

Three of which are in Carnation (further east) and one of which is in Renton (further South).

In April 2006, the median house price in the King County area was reported at $405K:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...mesales07.html

The Eastside is actually a bit more expensive than Seattle proper, but there are definatley much more expensive properties available in Seattle.

And I *dream* of us making $103K. The last report I saw from our school district was that the average family income for the district was $104-105K. So really close to the estimate of $103.

Our house is under the "real" median home value, but significantly above that one listed. Our income is significantly below the median listed. And, yes, we certainly feel it.

 

[TiredX2]

If $325K was the median house price in a city you would expect 1/2 the properties to be selling for more, 1/2 to be selling for less.

On Realtor.com, searching in Seattle (1+ bed, 1+ bath) below the price of $325 I found 613 properties for sale in the area (only three of which on the first page was actually in Seattle or anywhere NEAR really).

Meanwhile, there were 2073 properties for sale in the Seattle area above $325K.

I bet many of the ones in the lower bracket are actually just property (no dwelling) as well.

I'm just not seeing $325 being anywhere near the median

 

[KentuckyDoulaMama]

It sounds about right for our area (lexington Ky)

Right for the earning of my dh's job, rental prices, median home prices, and my soon-to-be occupation (nursing). Right for two of my friends occpations too.
Says we'd need about 46,000 annual income to afford a house here which makes me VERY happy to think that maybe in 24-36 months we'd be homeowners finally.

BTW, I just got a huge motivator for continuing on in school for 2 more semesters to get my RN. The differences here between an LPN and an RN is about $20,000

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And here, there is not hardly any difference in the workload/duties between the two.

Holey shmoely!!! I knew it was more, but not THAT much more!
Yep, Im staying in school for another year LOL!

 

[lisalulu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TiredX2 I live on the Eastside and I think $325 is really low. Definately not the median! The Eastside is actually a bit more expensive than Seattle proper, but there are definatley much more expensive properties available in Seattle.

I know the eastside is crazy. I have friends who make over 100K and wanted to live on the eastside (something near 520) and there was just no way on their income that they could find a house in their price range-and that was a couple years ago. They ended up in North Seattle!

Lisa

 

[TiredX2]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lisalulu I know the eastside is crazy. I have friends who make over 100K and wanted to live on the eastside (something near 520) and there was just no way on their income that they could find a house in their price range-and that was a couple years ago. They ended up in North Seattle! Lisa

Well, if you need $104 to afford $325 and the average on the Eastside is actually closer to $450-500 (and higher by 520) yeah... it's scary over here! So glad we bought over 5 years ago (when it was simply a real stretch instead of impossible)!

 

[Learnintolaugh]

Our area was pretty close, I think the average home price was just a tad low, but we aren’t too far off from that. Their average for my job was pretty spot on, but too high for dh. (Either that or his employers are just cheap…oh wait, yes, they are just cheap.) Overall I think it showed that housing is relatively affordable here, which it still is and is one of the reasons we moved here. (Family being the other one.) I’d love to see the data from where we moved from but it isn’t listed. My guess is we would now be priced out of the market.

 

[PajamaMama]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Herausgeber Median home price in my area was $407,000 in 2005. You'd need to make $129K a year to afford it.

I personally would not feel comfortable with a ~400K mortgage on 129K a year.

 

[jkpmomtoboys]

OK it says you need almost $250K in income to buy an average house here, which is 750K.

That sounds about right on, though considering most people aren't jumping into the market first at 750K and have bought a smaller house first, it's not like the average wage here is 250K.

 

[momaste]

Median house price: $760,000
Annual required income: $241,000

We're also in the Bay Area, and in our neighborhood, $700k will buy a fixer 2 bedroom starter house, or maybe a condo if you're lucky. The house down the street from us, 3 bed/2 bath, is selling for $1 million right now. A lot at the end of our block sold recently for $1.2 million, the house torn down and two houses put in, and EACH are selling for $2.6 million. Ridiculous.

We rent.

 

[jkpmomtoboys]

Well, ok that's true in our town too, but I think that in the whole Bay Area, 750K is probably the average house....

It is absolutely ridiculous. We moved into our house about 18 months ago and our neighbors (some of whom have been here since 1970 or so) thought we were nuts for what we paid....not to mention the 6 month renovation project we're doing to it right now....

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[momaste]

We're right next to Palo Alto/Stanford and Atherton, the town with the highest median house price in the country. MIL bought the house we live in (2 bed/1 bath) for $26k in 1974. The house across the street with the exact same floorplan sold last year for $850k. Crazy!!

 

[Herausgeber]

Quote:

Originally Posted by PajamaMama I personally would not feel comfortable with a ~400K mortgage on 129K a year.

Me neither. We make more than that and don't have a mortgage anywhere near that high. I know the bank says I could afford it, but I have to live paycheck to paycheck.

 

[ericswifey27]

According to the website, we would need 155,076 annual income.

We do own our house (bought 4 years ago) and we don't make anywhere even remotely close to that. I wish.

A huge chunk of our income goes just to the mortgage. It is not worth living here at all. Renting here I don't think is any better at all.

 

[chanibell]

We live in N. Seattle and bought our house 8 years ago. Even looking back then we saw many dumps sorry "fixers" for $300,000. Luckily the woman we bought our house from lowered her price. Now, if we bought our home today...well we couldnt buy our home today, we couldnt afford it. We are losing many good friends b/c they are leaving the state and moving to more affordable places.

 

[oneKnight]

For renters, like myself, a two bedroom we'd need to make $11.08/hour if I'm reading this chart right. Our rent is about $100 less than they quote, but we don't live in Little Rock, AR either.

or $39K/year for the median house of $123K...Ok, so we might own a home some day.

 

[Jacksmum8]

I just thought I'd pipe in here, I'm from Vancouver BC, we rent, even if I worked full time we would not be able to afford a house here. They just did a story on our local news about the housing bubble here. $1,000,000 will get you a tiny three bedroom fixer-upper with little or no yard. I would move but I don't want to be away from family, oh well... it really does bother me though, I'd love to have a permanent residence, I feel like a bit of a hobo not owning anything, I also worry that we can't set down roots for our son, I'd like to be more involved in the community but i don't want to get too attached to any one area in case we have to move

 

[Snowdrift]

I totally am at a loss for why someone would seriously spend 350-500k on a "median" house. I guess in many ways you make do with what you are dealt, but I'm sooo glad we moved to a lower COL area--to Lansing from Metro Detroit.

 

[mamaofthree]

It looks like they are trying to have people make enough to actually afford the house they buy (I remember it being something like 2 1/2 times you income should be your mortgage).
Now people seem to get into house way more expensive then they can afford. Which is really scary. Dh makes $60,000 (just this last year do to a promotion) and the average house in our area is well over $265,000.00 It is nuts! I know lots of people who don't make that much trying to get into those houses!

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H