If you want to buy a home, it will cost you.
Mortgage site HSH.com has updated its estimate of how much annual income a household would need to buy a home in major metropolitan areas in the US, according to first-quarter 2016 data.
In Q1, the site found that the prices of sold homes in the majority of the markets it examined dropped from Q4 2016, but an increase in 30-year mortgage rates more than countered that drop. Between the mortgage rates and the prices — which may have been less than Q4 but were still more than a year prior — the average home price increased by about 9% across all markets.
HSH.com looked at median home prices from the National Association of Realtors. It took into account interest rates for common 30-year fixed-rate mortgages and property taxes and insurance costs to figure out how much money it would take to pay a median-priced home's mortgage, taxes, and insurance in each city, and how much you'd have to earn to afford it.
HSH.com emphasizes that this is only the base cost of owning a home, without taking into account maintenance and other incidentals.
The site also calculated how it would change the salary needed to buy a home if a buyer were to put 10% down instead of the recommended 20%. No matter where you are, putting down less makes things more expensive — you can visit HSH.com to see both numbers.
Salaries are listed from lowest to highest needed and are rounded to the nearest $500.
