According to a report by the California Association of Realtors (CAR), which is based in Los Angeles, only 32 percent of California households could afford to buy a median-priced home in the first quarter of this year. The report has the median-price of a home at $496,620 and this is the 16th consecutive quarter that the index is below 40 percent. The lowest the index has been these past couple of years was back in 2008, when the index was at 29 percent. The Sacramento Bee writes,
…[In this year’s first quarter,] a minimum annual income of $102,050 was needed to make monthly payments of $2,550 – including principal, interest and taxes – on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at a 4.36 percent interest rate for a median-priced home in the state.
Sacramento County was the most affordable for this year’s first quarter, with a median-priced home costing $319,720. CAR calculates that buying a home at that price would only require a minimum qualifying annual income of $65,700 to make monthly payments of $1,640. The most expensive county for this year’s first quarter was San Francisco County, which was actually ranked as the state’s toughest market to start the year. A median-priced home in San Francisco County was $1.3 million, which would require a minimum qualifying annual income of $267,130. CAR states that only 13 percent of California households would be able to afford to purchase a home in San Francisco County.
This definitely puts the cost of buying a house in California into perspective.
Read the full article here
