Study shows how much buyers need to earn to afford an average home in each US metro
Niamh Shackleton
Featured Image Credit: Feverpitched/Getty / David Jay Zimmerman/Getty
It probably won't come as a shock to you, but it's still stupidly expensive to buy a home.
As of 2021, over 114 million people in the US were found to rent their home rather than own it and, with the state of current housing market, it is easy to see why.
A large majority of renters were under the age of 35, according to Ruby Home Luxury Real Estate, and this is likely down to fact you need a pretty large salary to be able to afford to get on the property ladder.
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And the exact salary you need to be aiming to become a homeowner has now been revealed in a new study - and it's not good news.
In a report conducted by Redfin, it was worked out what average salary people need to buy a median-priced home in the States, as well as breaking it down into salaries you need per US metro.
The study found that, typically, someone must earn $114,627 to afford the median-priced US home - which is up 15 percent on last year and an eye-watering 50 percent since the pandemic.
But if you live somewhere like San Fransisco or San Jose, that figure doesn't even touch the sides.
If you want to live in the highly sought after areas of California, you need to be earning north of $400,000 a year to afford median-priced home.
In San Fran, you'll need to be bringing home a whopping $404,332 a year, while in San Jose you'll need $402,287.
They came up top of the leaderboard of which places you'll need the highest salaries to be able to afford to be a homeowner, with Anaheim coming in third.
While it's substantially cheaper to buy a home in Anaheim (you need a salary of just over $300,000), it's still a lot of money.
Oakland ($250,000), San Diego ($241,000), and Los Angeles ($237,000) followed Anaheim, with Oxnard ($233,000), Seattle ($215,000), New York ($198,000) and Boston ($194,000) completing the rest of the top ten places you'll need to earn the big bucks.
On the flip side, in places such as Detroit and Akron, you can get by with a much more reasonable salary.
In Detroit, the study found you'll need an annual income of $51,793 to buy a home, while Akron was $59,702 - the only two locations with salaries you can get on the property ladder with below $60,000.
According to Forbes, as of 2023, the average yearly salary across the US comes in at $59,428, proving that buying a home is more difficult than ever.