Monday, July 11, 2005

Home is where the... no, wait you can't afford it.

Saw this while trawling for things to talk about:

...Real estate experts warn that housing prices in many markets are too quickly outpacing the incomes of most workers. The widening gap affects families across the country, from Washington D.C. and Rhode Island to Florida in the South and Nevada and California in the west.

In California, the situation has long been the worst: Only 17 percent of households could afford a home with a median price tag in April, according to the California Association of Realtors.

By May, the median home price in California climbed to $522,590 — more than double the price in most other states. To buy the typical home with monthly payments of $3,067, a California family would need to earn about $122,700 to qualify for a conventional loan.

In other high-cost states, the situation is not much improved. The average family in Florida earns nearly $44,000, which fell 26 percent short of the amount needed to finance a median-priced home last year, according to a study by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

National statistics show that families can afford a home in many other cities around the country. The typical household earns about $56,323, enough to buy a home costing $250,900 and 133 percent of what's needed to afford the median-priced home of $188,800, said Walter Molony, a spokesman for the National Association of Realtors....
Frankly, that's pretty scary, as it is indicative of the economy at-large and the ability of this housing driven economy to sustain itself. Combined with Fester's post from two months ago, I'm wetting my pants.

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