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A comment on Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring. Parent comment

Re:Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable hou... by adventured on Monday October 23, 2017 @02:07PM (#15535424)
A $2,000 mortgage is not insane. A lot of people in the US can in fact afford a $2k mortgage.

The median full-time job in the US pays near $45,000. The median household income is near $60,000 today.

There are 127 million full-time employees in the US.

Or put another way, approximately 39% of all people in the labor force (~161 million) are earning at least $45,000 per year.

If you're in the top 1/3 of all full-time earners (40+ million people), you can afford a $2,000 mortgage by yourself. If 40+ million people in the US can afford something, it's not insane.

Two people with a full-time job, earning only the median, can very safely afford that $2,000 mortgage. The typical full-time median income person in the US will commonly not even have a four year degree, so this isn't a stretch premise in terms of requirements. If you want to hit $4k per month (the parent's scenario), the top 1/3 of households can manage that (tens of millions of people fall under that umbrella).

If you want to get into insane mortgage territory as it pertains to the median income, you're talking much higher. $8k-$10k+ style mortgages.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable hou... by alistairSH on Monday October 23, 2017 @02:49PM (#15535852)
The problem isn't that a $1 million home is insane (or not). Or, even a $2000/month mortgage. Yes, a well compensated professional can afford those numbers.

The problem in the Bay, and increasingly in other popular areas, is there are few options for less. Especially in places like the south bay, where it isn't really urban - it's a giant suburb that lacks dense, affordable housing options.

An average employee shouldn't have to live hours away from their job. Or spend 50% of their income on housing.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable hou... by taysic on Monday October 23, 2017 @02:45PM (#15535801)
I’ve heard housing should ideally not cost more than 1/3 of your income to live comfortably. That would mean you’d have to make 72k after taxes a year to afford such a mortgage.

I think it is crazy that two high earning people would be spending possibly 50% or more of what they make on housing.

[ Parent | on HN ]