12 Metro Areas Where You Can Buy a Home With Less Than $30,000 of Annual Income
Earlier this month, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) issued its 2021 fourth-quarter report on existing-home prices, noting that the median sales level had reached $361,700, with double-digit increases recorded year over year in two-thirds of the country's 183 metro areas.
Affordability also worsened, the trade group said, with sustained price appreciation and higher interest rates pushing up the typical payment for a single-family home mortgage with 20% down to $1,240, representing 16.9% of the family income, up from 14.7% in 4Q 2020. First-time homebuyers, meanwhile, were generally spending 25.6% of household income on mortgage payments, above the trade group's 25% "affordability line." (The NAR includes a down payment of 10% for first-time homebuyers in its calculations.)
"A number of families, especially would-be first-time buyers, are increasingly being forced out of the market, and this is why supply is critical to expanding homeownership opportunity," NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said in the report.
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Source Fool.com
