A homebuyer now needs to earn at least $114,000 a year to afford a $431,250 home – the national median listing price in April, according to data released Thursday by Realtor.com
The analysis assumes that a homebuyer will make a 20% down payment, finance the rest of the purchase with a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, and that the buyer’s housing costs won’t exceed 30% of their gross monthly income — an often-used barometer of housing affordability.
Based off the latest U.S. median home listing price, homebuyers need to earn $47,000 more a year to afford a home than they would have just six years ago. Back then, the median U.S. home listing price was $314,950, and the average rate on a 30-year mortgage hovered around 4.1%. This week, the rate averaged 6.76%.
Maybe zoning laws are bad, but I’m looking out of my window and see a mall that was built in place of a big square of grass where people would have picnics and sunbathe at summer in my childhood. The wind was also wonderful, and you could see all the way till the court building behind it from me (new, but not as ugly), and the ship-like Soviet enormous building on the side of it made the whole place beautiful. Now it’s just asphalt and that huge ugly mall in place of grass. Looks depressive and too expensive.
And right before my window there’s a two-story (almost 1.5) Soviet abandoned (some disagreement between ministry of defense that owned it in Soviet times and someone they illegally sold it to, there was some deadlock in deciding who owns it) cinema building, apparently the legal problems have been resolved and instead of it I might behold a buttfuck-ugly 5-story building instead soon. I’m certain that if that happens, a few trees and grass there would too vanish as if they never existed.
Moderation is gold, and all that.