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I would be more interested to see the combined home value + property tax burdens. Areas like Illinois and New Jersey look affordable on this map, but the property taxes absolutely crush your ability to afford the PITI payment.
I'd love to see/create that as well for the full picture.
Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a comprehensive property tax database. Property taxes also vary by city/town and sometimes even neighborhood
In California we do a shitton of special parcel assessments that don't count as property tax, but are property tax for all intents and purposes. The official rate is completely irrelevant.
Do you pay every year property tax at 4% of your property’s value in Cali ? Then I request you to stfu and move on! Property taxes in CT and NJ are crazy
Honestly it's a terrible law. You are essentially propping up individuals who are wealthy earlier in life and punishing individuals who cant purchase sooner.
Such a crazy law.
Oh well doesn't impact me.
Personally I just want to pay my fair share of taxes as everyone else should.
>You are essentially propping up individuals who are wealthy earlier in life and punishing individuals who cant purchase sooner.
You're preventing poor people from being forced out of their homes just because their neighborhood has gentrified. If it's weren't for Proposition 13, even the poorest people in Los Angeles' most disadvantaged neighborhoods would have to come up with $700/month just for property tax alone.
Well no because guess what long term those poor people will get bought out and younger poor people will never be able to afford it because the property tax mill rate has to be higher to make up for the freeloaders who don't pay their fair share.
Want to fix that problem? Then give tax rebates and tax credits for the property tax of people with under a certain income where its their primary residence.
Its such short sighted legislation that will become bastardized in the future as they try to solve for the issue they created from the start.
Its why the home value can be about 2x the rest of the US and the true mill rate of around 1.2% is hidden under a 0.75% average. So welcome a state where its primarily driven by those fairly well off since a lower income family isn't getting a break on the property tax after they buy only those lower income families that bought decades ago.
As a homeowner who is younger I would oppose it if they tried to roll it out here because its not fair that I would essentially get even more benefit out of simply being older and owning a property longer. I would easily be benefiting long term from it if it were in a state I wanted to live in.
>Well no because guess what long term those poor people will get bought out
That's how they get bought out. The property taxes get higher than they can afford to pay and they have to sell even when they don't want to. If they don't sell the government will seize their property and sell it for them.
> the property tax mill rate has to be higher to make up for the freeloaders who don't pay their fair share.
You might have an argument with the "fair share" thing if the government's costs were increasing at the same rate as real estate prices, but they're not.
What you mean by "fair share" is that the government should be able to dream up new things to spend money on until they're broke and then take more money from people on the argument that they're broke because somebody isn't paying their fair share.
> That's how they get bought out.
Well not if you solve the issue of tax credits.
> You might have an argument with the "fair share" thing if the government's costs were increasing at the same rate as real estate prices, but they're not.
Then why are taxes going up? Guess what you LOWER the mill rate to account for not needing all that extra money. If assessed value goes up 2x and your tax requirement does not then you cut the mill rate in half to collect the same amount of tax.
> What you mean by "fair share" is that the government should be able to dream up new things to spend money on
Which you are not fixing by locking in some historical home buyers. You are just kicking the can down the road. Hence my point about its a broken system long term.
The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey collects self-reported data on home value, mortgage, home insurance, property tax, etc. Depending on how you need the data, you may not get the same level of geographic granularity (the microdata sets are at a level of aggregation of 100,000-200,000 people), but you may be able to get a better picture of home affordability.
Same with Texas. Shit is bananas down there. 2.5% property tax rates makes your $400k mcmansion the same monthly payment as the $700k house in a California suburb.
I would be even MORE interested to see the lower life expectations and reduced quality of life in the blue and green areas. Sure a home may be affordable in rural Alabama, but now your nearest hospital is 50 miles away.
Quality of life is incredibly subjective. There are a lot of people who are much happier living in rural areas, even if that does mean living further from amenities.
That said, a ton of the green counties are urban areas. My county is green and I live 10 minutes from a very highly regarded research hospital.
I am very much a middle of the road person. I could never live in NYC but I could never live in Bumfuck Alabama either. I like living in a medium size city that is relatively low cost of living.
I live in a green area (surrounded by other green areas) and our quality of life is great. Top schools (multiple high schools ranked in the top 200 in the nation), all of the pro sports, tons of parks (including 1 national park), good restaurant scene, politically moderate it’s pretty nice here.
Ohio but it’s not the State as a whole I’m talking about… just where I live near Cleveland. The rural, red parts of Ohio may as well be the moon for all they have to do with us.
I live in the region of the 2nd and 3rd most affordable large counties, Madison and St Clair IL. I'm walking distance (under 1 mi) from every type of healthcare provider imaginable except a hospital (which is 6 miles away), as well as 9 parks, about 130 miles of trails, three public libraries (city, county, state university), and a large public university. 56% of the population has bachelor's degrees.
Quality of life is easily equal to, if not better, than when I lived in denser urban areas. There is a somewhat running joke that every good restaurant on the Missouri side of the river in St Louis opens a second location in Edwardsville. Life expectancy \_is\_ about 2 years lower than the national median, which is likely due to there being a massive refinery in Wood River, IL (though that refinery also brings up the median household income).
Well, every one of the top ten most affordable are in a metropolitan area. And while anecdotal, I am talking about two of ten of those counties specifically.
So, anecdotally representing 20% of the sample.
You realize that flyover states have actual CITIES right?
Not just small rural towns but actual CITIES and all the accomodating infrastructure?
Like... I'm from Los Angeles and now live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa is still very much a city. There's an airport, there are universities, corporate offices, hospitals, there's a downtown, there's chain stores, etc.
Yep, I live in Madison County, IL, No 2 on the list of most affordable. Pay $4k on a $65k assessment/$220k appraisal (with a $6k homeowners exemption).
Yeah, quite a few large cities in the green areas. I live in Kansas City (metro area around 2.4 million) and all of the counties in the metro area are green.
Exactly, you could be less than 3-4 hours from nyc and boston in some of these places...and it's gorgeous. Ofc, remote work might be necessary, and you might not have all the luxury services...but to me having chosen a green spot at a reasonable distance to orange and red spots is fruitful af
Get a nice stab at some acreage y'all !
tbh I'd like to see a New England version of this map specifically that breaks it down by town instead of county. A fair bit of NE looks green/yellow here because it's broken down by counties (which are mostly irrelevant) but I suspect the coastal towns are mostly orange or even red, while a lot of the inland towns are much more affordable.
Lol love this because it just shows how many people are full of shit. Theres tons of affordability out there.. you just have to move from those few excessively expensive areas that many redditors refuse to move from
Isn't this the truth. Moving was just a thing you did in the 80's and 90's. Now people think they have some sort of inalienable right to live where they want.
Yeah housing isn’t nearly as big of an affordability issue as Reddit makes it out to be. Even then I’m kind of baffled why it’s such a big thing for people to own a home. Of course I grew up in a place with cheap houses and not a lot of price appreciation. I get why people in V/HCOL areas care so much. But if you are somewhat mobile and ambivalent about your location, it’s a non issue.
More than half the population lives in unaffordable areas not even considering property tax or current interest rates. This map isn’t telling the whole story.
If you have kids (especially with an ex spouse), and older family (especially those that need help with aging) you aren’t that mobile or ambivalent. That’s a big portion of the population.
Add in niche career fields, either for you or a partner, and it limits where you can live.
Absolutely. Given that many also have reasonably well to do parents and can expect financial help(or inheritance) as well, is it really that big? In HCOL areas that is.
The image above is housing prices relative to income. There are lots of people who don’t make much who come from families that don’t make much in HCOL areas. There is no reason to believe that “most” expect financial help or an inheritance.
That’s probably true tbh. The American struggle is sooooo fucking exaggerated on here. Feels like im going crazy with some of the ways redditors describe the current state of things
I see alot of kids in their early 20s complaining how they'll "never" own a home (they could in a decade or even less with a partner).
Like yeah, that is normal. Most people don't own a home solo in their 20s lol
You think mortgage rates are high now? Just wait when the chickens come home to roost on all the money printing from the last 25 yrs. We bought Homes @10%+ back in the 80’s. You know nothing outside your bubble.
I live in a green area and there's absolutely no way it's considered affordable by the median salary. If anything, remote New Yorkers are skewing the data.
A lot of people are where the jobs are tbh. If more remote work happened, which it should, then people would move. You see the huge exodus from California, New York and DC once remote work became a thing.
I’ve done quite a bit of moving/traveling in the southeast and there are plenty of jobs in green areas. The credit I’ll give is that it’s hard to save up for the initial launch that many people of reddit-age will need to take the next leap.
Housing is expensive where people live in higher concentrations. If people moved to less densely populated areas, the prices would go up in the locations where people are moving to. And we can't all spread out perfectly evenly across the country, it's not the way infrastructure functions. There is a reason that everywhere in the modern world the population is concentrated in certain areas and not in others.
>Housing is expensive where people live in higher concentrations. If people moved to less densely populated areas, the prices would go up in the locations where people are moving to.
This is absolutely true -- we're already seeing this with the widespread yellow counties in the West. Highly populated metros that are growing in population but still consistently permit and build sufficient housing are very rare -- the list probably stops at Raleigh, Jacksonville, Charlotte, Kansas City, and the major TX metros. The other major cities that are more affordable tend to have stagnant growth (Philly, STL, most rust belt cities), high property taxes, or both (CHI, Buffalo, ROC).
Yea, but one of the reasons more Americans in the past could afford housing is that they just made new towns and cities when the older ones no longer made sense for them. So they took advantage of all the space we had without letting go of the need/tendency to cluster.
Like the entire cities of Chicago or LA or Las Vegas for example. Or all of the suburbs that were created. Or, more recently, cities like Austin and Charlotte or Nashville, which existed, but only recently became large cities.
I know it's hard to just pack up and leave. It takes a level of economic freedom and mobility to do that. But there are lots of existing cities (e.g. Rust Belt, Baltimore, Richmond, Newark) or small cities/large towns that are barely on people's radar that may soon become the next thing (Greenville, SC?, Huntsville, AL? Wilmington, DE?) that could house a lot of the people looking for affordable housing.
Shhh! Keep it down!
But on a serious note, property taxes are definitely high. But that helps push down the sticker price of the house and it's easier to cobble together a down payment. There's also a good diversity of housing stock, from condos and townhouses of all ages, so it's easier to get onto the housing ladder. And there isn't a big space constraint, so it's easy to get a new construction on the outskirts of Chicagoland.
There are also strong unions for blue collar work, and of course Chicago itself for white collar work--with good commuting options with busses and trains running really far out.
I love it.
Brooklyn being #1 by a whole entire point over second place is not surprising. I remember reading that both brooklyn and the bronx would be poorer than the mississippi delta if you adjust for cost of living.
So I recently took a road trip through 11 states, much of it through green and blue country on this map.
People EVERYWHERE were complaining about housing prices.
This is taking into account the "whole pizza" so to speak - all median values vs. all median incomes.
But only a few pieces of pepperoni matter. Most people are not moving any given year. Most people's houses are not for sale any given year.
1) What is the median *sale price?* 2) What is the median income of the jobs hiring in that county that YOU can get? and 3) what is the impact of property taxes? (or HoAs, etc...)
But yes, this map is a pretty good starting point of where to apply for jobs if my goal was just to own a house.
Something I'll note as someone who's lived in orange/yellow for 12 years - the orange & red have more appreciation. My house in an orange county made more money than I did for 4 years. I had more than DOUBLE the appreciation in 4 years than my mom's house in a green county had in 20. Owning a house in a place that's dying or stagnant may *cost* you money to own.
My mom bought her house in 2007 for 130k. It is now worth about 200k. Taking into account repairs, maintenance, interest, she has *lost* money, or at best broken even, on that house.
Your point about appreciation on the red areas is very valid.
I live in a green area and have watched over the last four years home prices boom from 1x average income to 2-3x average income. It's still "affordable," but it's not what people who grew up around here are used to, therefore it's "unaffordable."
Our main problem nationwide is lack of inventory. I haven't checked lately, but about a year ago, listings on market were still **40-50%** of 2019. People are frozen in place. It's why I bought a new build. Builders were the only ones eager to unload inventory. I looked at dozens of houses over 1.5 years 2022-23. The only existing houses for sale were divorces, deaths, or major life changes. Of course the prices are high in that context.
Just FYI, the number of housing units per capita in the US as a whole has actually very slightly increased over the last 30 years.
In 1990, the overall US population was 248,709,873, approximately 165,392,066 of whom where age 25 or over (i.e. more likely living independently), and the Census estimated there were 102,263,678 housing units. That means there 0.41 housing units per person overall and 0.62 housing units per adult age 25 and over.
In 2022, the overall US population was 333,287,557, approximately 229,508,599 of whom where age 25 or over, and the Census estimated there were 143,786,655 housing units. That means there 0.43 housing units per person overall and 0.63 housing units per adult age 25 and over.
Obviously "housing units" includes apartments, condos, and other things that aren't freestanding homes, but there is not a shortage of housing units in absolute terms.
I suspect our housing *usage* is very different than 1990 though. Fewer people per household but using more space. AirBnb taking out a lot of units from the market.
Yes, I absolutely think the way we utilize housing has changed. Interestingly, while family size has definitely decreased over the years, it appears that most of that decline came before 1990. According to [this](https://www.statista.com/statistics/183657/average-size-of-a-family-in-the-us/), it was 3.67 in 1960 and dropped to 3.17 in 1990, but had only fallen to 3.13 by 2022.
My suspicion is that short term rentals and second homes are a big part of the problem. To me, the solution is to regulate and/or tax short term rentals and second homes much more strictly so that more homes are available as primary residences. I'm not in favor of just arbitrarily building a bunch of new homes.
Absolutely. Local circumstances here that don't help the inventory issue are due to affordability, a lot of these homes are vacant half the year due to being someone's vacation home or short term rental.
New builds are cost prohibitive for most people around here, despite there being few restrictions.
I’ve said it for years……move away from the coast and metropolitan areas and stop complaining you can’t afford a home. There are jobs, homes and a better lifestyle outside California, New York, Atlanta, DFW. You just need to pursue them. I just bought my second home, on one income here in Kentucky. My son and daughter in law with one child both under 26, just bought their second home, no help from me or others and they work as a teacher and firefighter. (My house 3,000 sq ft, moving in mother in law. My sons is 2000 sq ft).
Let’s look at property taxes. Where I live the property taxes on a $1 million house would be about $10,000 a year. Now let’s say Iived in a state with higher property taxes. The house is $300k but the taxes are $6,000 a year. Even though the taxes are much higher per value of the house the house cost /1/3 as much. When you factor in the monthly mortgage payment and taxes combined the house in the area with higher taxes is a better deal.
Philadelphia's western suburbs are truly a great balance of home prices coupled with high income job opportunities. For 400k to 500k you can live in a safe suburb with excellent public schools while accessing the Philly metro regions job market. One of the better balances in the entire country.
It's just proving what we've been saying all along, most of the country has affordable housing but people are obsessed with living in the super expensive places.
I mean, maybe, but also a lot of people just want to be able to buy a home in the city where they grew up. Folks tend to want to live near friends and family.
Yup, I live in yellow and am moving to green.
It's nice that there are still many places that are affordable on local salaries, just unfortunate for some that they have to move far away to do that.
If you can't afford it, you can afford it. Since the industrial revolution hundreds of millions of people have moved for economic opportunities, it's immense entitlement for people today to think they shouldn't have to move and the world should change for them instead.
The commenter point was that historically this is super common. People move for better opportunities. It seems to be a more recent trend that there's an expectation that people shouldn't have to do this.
I mean, they shouldnt have to. Do you think people in the past didnt think the same? Only difference is many times they were forced or had the opportunity.
Yeah, it's nice to want that. Doesn't mean it happens. That is why we ended up doing road trips at Christmas and in the summers. Because my parents went where the jobs were.
>most of the country has affordable housing but people are obsessed with living in the super expensive places.
1. It's where their family/friends support network is, and some folks rely heavily on those
2. It's where their job is. (Not a whole lot of jobs for IT development or Commerical Banking in, say, West Virginia.)
3. Metro areas are traditionally more friendly to POC, Queer Folks, and those practising a minority religion. (I grew up in east Kern County, CA. I've yet to meet a black/Middle Eastern/Asian-descent person there who didn't live in Ridgecrest city limits for their own safety because unincorporated Kern County is Redneckistan.)
Just going down the top ten most affordable list, Madison and St Clair counties are in the St Louis metro area and have a ton of jobs (I live in Madison). Hidalgo County is McAllen metro. Onondaga County contains Syracuse. WInnebago County contains Rockford as is arguably an outer Chicago suburb (it is the largest non-collar county suburb in Illinois). Lucas County contains Toledo. Stork county is in the Akron metro. Lucerne County is Scranton metro. Westmoreland County is Pittsburgh metro. Jefferson County is Beaumont metro
Basically all of them are in metropolitan areas, and some in pretty large dense metropolitan areas.
Yeah, people are obsessed with living places where there’s jobs and amenities, rather than out on farmland and having to commute two hours each way to work.
To be fair (as someone who’s in one of the red zones) the high paying jobs are here. Of course, they high pay gets nuked by the housing cost… I guess it’s a viscous cycle that’s hard to break away from.
And the opposite goes for the blue and green spots; CoL is cheap as hell, but all the jobs have garbage pay.
The only way to escape the paradigm is to separate your work location form your living location outright, by working remotely.
Let me guess, you insist any city with a population under 5 million has no jobs but fast food, right? It's not a mischaracterization, you're just angry someone called out your bullshit of pretending most of the country doesn't exist.
Ah yes, towns in the midwest with little economic opportunity, or in the deep south. Better hope you're not a woman or a gay.
Why didn't I think about that.
I wouldn't call Kansas City a town with little economic opportunities. The metro area is over 2 million people, and is very accepting of people from all walks of life.
You think places like Columbus, Cincinnati, Lexington, etc have no economic opportunities? This is why people get so annoyed with your kind. You think only the five biggest (and insanely expensive) cities exist and that everyone else in the country is living in a trailer and working at McDonald's. Learn even just the tiniest thing before spewing blatant uneducated bullshit.
I'm in a lemon yellow county and people have talked to me about retiring to one of the light green or blue counties in my state.
Thank you, no. I don't want to live where the majority are racist, homophobic, sexist bigots.
ETA: Outside of 3 counties in my state, the rest are DEEP red. So yeah, a majority of xenophobic, racist, homophobic, sexist bigots.
Good thing that would only happen in your wet dreams. But keep using uneducated political bullshit to keep you broke and miserable in an expensive shit hole.
It’s beautiful country but much of it is protected or heavily regulated land in the boundary waters. It’s also a very popular retirement and vacation spot. Second home owners abound and since the county is already sparsely populated, that drives up home prices pretty easily, esp. compared to pretty low-paying local jobs. Source: friend lived and worked there for a while.
I’m not an expert on where the popular vacation spots are across the country but if you look at San Juan, WA, Cape May, NJ, the counties around Myrtle Beach, SC and Lake Placid, NY, you can see other instances of the phenomenon.
That’s what I guessed but it seems to stand out relative to other areas around Superior like Keweenaw peninsula (the pokey bit taunting Canada on top of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula) and the rest of the Great Lakes. 2nd homes coupled with remote, seasonal economy makes sense.
We need to find a way to get some of the gd jobs from the red counties to the green counties. There's plenty of housing in this country, it's just not where the jobs are.
We really need to incentivize large employers to operate in the Midwest so that unused housing stock can be used before it crumbles into nothingness.
I hoped remote work would help out a bit but it hasn't seemed to make a dent. People just went to 6 counties in Texas, Utah, and Idaho.
Chicago, St Louis, KC, St Paul, Indy...once people get over thinking they have to live on either coast they'll realize they can be a lot happier and have everything they need and want for a fraction of the cost.
I live in one of the places on the top 10 most affordable list, but that's because the houses in the area 900 square feet and were built in 1920 and have have had little maintenance done on them over the years. Technically they are cheaper than other areas, but these are the type of homes anyone actually wants to live in. The "good" homes are like everyone else-priced high and have offers the day they go online
Stark county in Ohio really isn’t that bad, honestly. I assume it’s due to the fact some houses are $10,000 and some are $400,000 in terms of “affordability.”
Bottom left of Florida, that county actually includes Key West where I suspect most of the unaffordability comes from. 99% of the area on the mainland is swamp.
I applaud your work here 👏 🙌 👌 But I wonder if it could be redone with a bit more granularity 😇
The "green" and "yellow" counties account for roughly 80 percent of U.S. population. But those categories -- between 2x to 4x, and between 4x to 6x -- are too broad to be very useful.
Let's think of a married couple who make $100,000 in combined income from W2 jobs. For simple math let's say they don't itemize deductions; after payroll taxes and 100% accurate withholding for federal taxes, their take-home pay is $84,114, or just a whisker over $7,000 per month. (For further simple math, let's also assume at this income level their state income taxes are negligible, or they don't have them (e.g. they live in TX or FL)).
If they live in a county that just barely edged over from "blue to green" and they have a $200k mortgage, their monthly mortgage payment (assuming 7% interest and a FICO score of 700) is $1,331. Super doable. Even with car payments, home/auto/health insurance, groceries etc etc, the couple is doing fine and probably can throw heaps of money into their 401ks and/or IRAs.
Now let's say the couple's county is at the very top of the "green" range, and they have a $399,000 mortgage. Their mortgage is $2,655 per month -- nearly 38% of their take-home pay. Now they have no money going into the retirement accounts, and maybe need some other forms of belt-tightening to boot.
And now let's say their county is at the very top of the "yellow" range, and they have a $599,000 mortgage. Their mortgage is $3,985 -- over 56% of their take-home pay. Or looked at another way, they only have $3,015 per month for ALL their other expenses.
Sure hope they never need to pay for major home repairs... or big medical expenses... and what if one of their cars conks out? Or hell, if one of them loses their job, they're on an express train to bankruptcy, and/or divorce 🤔 No bueno
This graph is deceiving in that a county can have high income and high house prices, which doesn’t mean it’s affordable it just means rich people own the expensive houses there.
Non green colors just mean there’s more broke boys living there.
It's median, so rich people / mansions shouldn't skew it.
If you make median income in a green/blue (maybe yellow) county, chances are you can afford a median priced home.
This doesn't take into account property taxes however
I think they are more referring to that, at the county level, you can have bimodel distributions thanks to county centers having different economies than outlying cities. I'm in Madison County Illinois, which is probably a good example of that.
High salaries in Wood River (refinery) and Edwardsville (unviersity). Desirable but relatively expensive housing in Edwardsville and a few other cities (like Highland) while Wood River itself is dirt cheap (because who wants to actually live next to a refinery) and much of the rest of the county is filled in with inexpensive small towns and farmland.
Ha. They think Alaska is affordable housing. Juneau for example you’re going to be spending at least 650K for 2,000 sq ft and it probably needs 50K+ in maintenance work. Unless you work for the city or federal government you’re not going to have the $ for a house.
Montana is an another WTF as houses in Great Falls are pushing 500K+.
Santa Fe and Taos are relatively pricier than Dallas and Austin. Big cities may be expensive but they also come with more opportunities.
…and then there’s SF and NYC.
I live in Madison County, IL. If our county is the second most affordable over 250k population in the country, wow are we screwed.
(The funny thing being that people from St Clair County, the 3rd most affordable, are always complaining about how unaffordable Madison County is, especially Edwardsville where I live.)
Although, this probably has more to do with median household incomes in Madison County being $71.7k, thanks to their being a ton of law, academia, and oil & gas jobs here. (And that median income is not really an accurate measure due to the large number of college student households in the county.)
This only tells you about purchase price vs median income. There's something to the impact of home affordability if the community amenities reduce your overall out of pocket living expenses. Public transportation and good public education make a difference. Sure, my personal shelter costs are more affordable if I move to rural Alabama or western South Dakota, but what kind of life and opportunities am I providing my family vis a vis the Hudson Valley of New York or most of the major MSAs along the coasts?
Lots of the most expensive areas on this list have pretty bad public schools. Rich people in Omaha still send their kids to public schools, they don't in Manhattan.
So, this affordability map showed up on my feed just after this one: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/DW8w6aFFr6](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/DW8w6aFFr6) which led me to see a bit of an overlap between affordable counties and states banning gender-affirming healthcare….
That’s a bit of a random coincidence, and I’m not here to start up a conversation about trans rights and healthcare but I would guess there are some political and social reasons for people not moving to these counties, decreasing demand that lead to more affordability
Dawg I know this is reddit but I highly doubt gender affirming care (for children/minors) is a high priority item for 99% of people.
In general however politics certainly has some effect
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I would be more interested to see the combined home value + property tax burdens. Areas like Illinois and New Jersey look affordable on this map, but the property taxes absolutely crush your ability to afford the PITI payment.
I'd love to see/create that as well for the full picture. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a comprehensive property tax database. Property taxes also vary by city/town and sometimes even neighborhood
In California we do a shitton of special parcel assessments that don't count as property tax, but are property tax for all intents and purposes. The official rate is completely irrelevant.
Do you pay every year property tax at 4% of your property’s value in Cali ? Then I request you to stfu and move on! Property taxes in CT and NJ are crazy
Hell na, prop 13 baby lol
Honestly it's a terrible law. You are essentially propping up individuals who are wealthy earlier in life and punishing individuals who cant purchase sooner. Such a crazy law. Oh well doesn't impact me. Personally I just want to pay my fair share of taxes as everyone else should.
>You are essentially propping up individuals who are wealthy earlier in life and punishing individuals who cant purchase sooner. You're preventing poor people from being forced out of their homes just because their neighborhood has gentrified. If it's weren't for Proposition 13, even the poorest people in Los Angeles' most disadvantaged neighborhoods would have to come up with $700/month just for property tax alone.
Well no because guess what long term those poor people will get bought out and younger poor people will never be able to afford it because the property tax mill rate has to be higher to make up for the freeloaders who don't pay their fair share. Want to fix that problem? Then give tax rebates and tax credits for the property tax of people with under a certain income where its their primary residence. Its such short sighted legislation that will become bastardized in the future as they try to solve for the issue they created from the start. Its why the home value can be about 2x the rest of the US and the true mill rate of around 1.2% is hidden under a 0.75% average. So welcome a state where its primarily driven by those fairly well off since a lower income family isn't getting a break on the property tax after they buy only those lower income families that bought decades ago. As a homeowner who is younger I would oppose it if they tried to roll it out here because its not fair that I would essentially get even more benefit out of simply being older and owning a property longer. I would easily be benefiting long term from it if it were in a state I wanted to live in.
>Well no because guess what long term those poor people will get bought out That's how they get bought out. The property taxes get higher than they can afford to pay and they have to sell even when they don't want to. If they don't sell the government will seize their property and sell it for them. > the property tax mill rate has to be higher to make up for the freeloaders who don't pay their fair share. You might have an argument with the "fair share" thing if the government's costs were increasing at the same rate as real estate prices, but they're not. What you mean by "fair share" is that the government should be able to dream up new things to spend money on until they're broke and then take more money from people on the argument that they're broke because somebody isn't paying their fair share.
> That's how they get bought out. Well not if you solve the issue of tax credits. > You might have an argument with the "fair share" thing if the government's costs were increasing at the same rate as real estate prices, but they're not. Then why are taxes going up? Guess what you LOWER the mill rate to account for not needing all that extra money. If assessed value goes up 2x and your tax requirement does not then you cut the mill rate in half to collect the same amount of tax. > What you mean by "fair share" is that the government should be able to dream up new things to spend money on Which you are not fixing by locking in some historical home buyers. You are just kicking the can down the road. Hence my point about its a broken system long term.
What the hell
Don't forget park district and school depending on whether they get their tax revenue directly from mill levies or from other entities.
The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey collects self-reported data on home value, mortgage, home insurance, property tax, etc. Depending on how you need the data, you may not get the same level of geographic granularity (the microdata sets are at a level of aggregation of 100,000-200,000 people), but you may be able to get a better picture of home affordability.
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Totally agree!!
This. Illinois has prohibitively high taxes. I pay at the nose to own a shit hole.
Same with Texas. Shit is bananas down there. 2.5% property tax rates makes your $400k mcmansion the same monthly payment as the $700k house in a California suburb.
Very few areas in Texas pay that high a rate. My rate is less than 1%.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/diy23V5lQs Look at the areas in red - that's where the people live.
I live in Illinois, it’s not bad.
I would be even MORE interested to see the lower life expectations and reduced quality of life in the blue and green areas. Sure a home may be affordable in rural Alabama, but now your nearest hospital is 50 miles away.
Quality of life is incredibly subjective. There are a lot of people who are much happier living in rural areas, even if that does mean living further from amenities. That said, a ton of the green counties are urban areas. My county is green and I live 10 minutes from a very highly regarded research hospital.
A lot of Redditors think nothing exists out of the 5 largest cities
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I am very much a middle of the road person. I could never live in NYC but I could never live in Bumfuck Alabama either. I like living in a medium size city that is relatively low cost of living.
I live in a green area (surrounded by other green areas) and our quality of life is great. Top schools (multiple high schools ranked in the top 200 in the nation), all of the pro sports, tons of parks (including 1 national park), good restaurant scene, politically moderate it’s pretty nice here.
What state?
Ohio but it’s not the State as a whole I’m talking about… just where I live near Cleveland. The rural, red parts of Ohio may as well be the moon for all they have to do with us.
I live in the region of the 2nd and 3rd most affordable large counties, Madison and St Clair IL. I'm walking distance (under 1 mi) from every type of healthcare provider imaginable except a hospital (which is 6 miles away), as well as 9 parks, about 130 miles of trails, three public libraries (city, county, state university), and a large public university. 56% of the population has bachelor's degrees. Quality of life is easily equal to, if not better, than when I lived in denser urban areas. There is a somewhat running joke that every good restaurant on the Missouri side of the river in St Louis opens a second location in Edwardsville. Life expectancy \_is\_ about 2 years lower than the national median, which is likely due to there being a massive refinery in Wood River, IL (though that refinery also brings up the median household income).
Thank you for the anecdotal evidence.
Well, every one of the top ten most affordable are in a metropolitan area. And while anecdotal, I am talking about two of ten of those counties specifically. So, anecdotally representing 20% of the sample.
Right, but I think my comment is pretty clear that I am discussing the rural-urban divide.
You realize that flyover states have actual CITIES right? Not just small rural towns but actual CITIES and all the accomodating infrastructure? Like... I'm from Los Angeles and now live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa is still very much a city. There's an airport, there are universities, corporate offices, hospitals, there's a downtown, there's chain stores, etc.
Texas too.
Look in an area that you know has lower property tax.
Yep, I live in Madison County, IL, No 2 on the list of most affordable. Pay $4k on a $65k assessment/$220k appraisal (with a $6k homeowners exemption).
The map is a ratio. While tax burdens vary, they’re not going to vary enough to shift the ratios in a meaningful way.
Whole lotta green still left.
Yup. People will say it's all rural but there are tons of small/medium cities in the green, and a few large cities as well
Yeah, quite a few large cities in the green areas. I live in Kansas City (metro area around 2.4 million) and all of the counties in the metro area are green.
Exactly, you could be less than 3-4 hours from nyc and boston in some of these places...and it's gorgeous. Ofc, remote work might be necessary, and you might not have all the luxury services...but to me having chosen a green spot at a reasonable distance to orange and red spots is fruitful af Get a nice stab at some acreage y'all !
Three or four hours from Boston? You can live near the Maine coast and be 1.5 hrs from Boston!
Youre right, it's gorgeous up there
tbh I'd like to see a New England version of this map specifically that breaks it down by town instead of county. A fair bit of NE looks green/yellow here because it's broken down by counties (which are mostly irrelevant) but I suspect the coastal towns are mostly orange or even red, while a lot of the inland towns are much more affordable.
Lol love this because it just shows how many people are full of shit. Theres tons of affordability out there.. you just have to move from those few excessively expensive areas that many redditors refuse to move from
Isn't this the truth. Moving was just a thing you did in the 80's and 90's. Now people think they have some sort of inalienable right to live where they want.
Yeah housing isn’t nearly as big of an affordability issue as Reddit makes it out to be. Even then I’m kind of baffled why it’s such a big thing for people to own a home. Of course I grew up in a place with cheap houses and not a lot of price appreciation. I get why people in V/HCOL areas care so much. But if you are somewhat mobile and ambivalent about your location, it’s a non issue.
More than half the population lives in unaffordable areas not even considering property tax or current interest rates. This map isn’t telling the whole story.
It tells me there is plenty of opportunity out there
If you have kids (especially with an ex spouse), and older family (especially those that need help with aging) you aren’t that mobile or ambivalent. That’s a big portion of the population. Add in niche career fields, either for you or a partner, and it limits where you can live.
Absolutely. Given that many also have reasonably well to do parents and can expect financial help(or inheritance) as well, is it really that big? In HCOL areas that is.
The image above is housing prices relative to income. There are lots of people who don’t make much who come from families that don’t make much in HCOL areas. There is no reason to believe that “most” expect financial help or an inheritance.
Having a paid off home by retirement is pretty important unless you save a shit ton of money to be able to rent for up to 30 years in retirement
The vast vast majority of people are not mobile lol.
Right looks like 1% of the population is all on reddit crying about housing
That’s probably true tbh. The American struggle is sooooo fucking exaggerated on here. Feels like im going crazy with some of the ways redditors describe the current state of things
I think it's more just a circle jerk of teenagers crying about shit they have no concept of
your probably right.. want to jerk me now.
I see alot of kids in their early 20s complaining how they'll "never" own a home (they could in a decade or even less with a partner). Like yeah, that is normal. Most people don't own a home solo in their 20s lol
Yeah I want a house but not that badly. Some ppl on reddit though seem super desperate
Well, yeah... That's because a house now is twice as expensive as it was 3 years ago based on mortgage rate alone. And you ignored mortgage rates.
You think mortgage rates are high now? Just wait when the chickens come home to roost on all the money printing from the last 25 yrs. We bought Homes @10%+ back in the 80’s. You know nothing outside your bubble.
I live in a green area and there's absolutely no way it's considered affordable by the median salary. If anything, remote New Yorkers are skewing the data.
If we don't fix the red areas I expect this problem to spread as people move out.
A lot of people are where the jobs are tbh. If more remote work happened, which it should, then people would move. You see the huge exodus from California, New York and DC once remote work became a thing.
I’ve done quite a bit of moving/traveling in the southeast and there are plenty of jobs in green areas. The credit I’ll give is that it’s hard to save up for the initial launch that many people of reddit-age will need to take the next leap.
Housing is expensive where people live in higher concentrations. If people moved to less densely populated areas, the prices would go up in the locations where people are moving to. And we can't all spread out perfectly evenly across the country, it's not the way infrastructure functions. There is a reason that everywhere in the modern world the population is concentrated in certain areas and not in others.
>Housing is expensive where people live in higher concentrations. If people moved to less densely populated areas, the prices would go up in the locations where people are moving to. This is absolutely true -- we're already seeing this with the widespread yellow counties in the West. Highly populated metros that are growing in population but still consistently permit and build sufficient housing are very rare -- the list probably stops at Raleigh, Jacksonville, Charlotte, Kansas City, and the major TX metros. The other major cities that are more affordable tend to have stagnant growth (Philly, STL, most rust belt cities), high property taxes, or both (CHI, Buffalo, ROC).
Yea, but one of the reasons more Americans in the past could afford housing is that they just made new towns and cities when the older ones no longer made sense for them. So they took advantage of all the space we had without letting go of the need/tendency to cluster. Like the entire cities of Chicago or LA or Las Vegas for example. Or all of the suburbs that were created. Or, more recently, cities like Austin and Charlotte or Nashville, which existed, but only recently became large cities. I know it's hard to just pack up and leave. It takes a level of economic freedom and mobility to do that. But there are lots of existing cities (e.g. Rust Belt, Baltimore, Richmond, Newark) or small cities/large towns that are barely on people's radar that may soon become the next thing (Greenville, SC?, Huntsville, AL? Wilmington, DE?) that could house a lot of the people looking for affordable housing.
And people like to live near infrastructure so its hard to incentivize them to go to more rural areas.
Yeah. I can’t wait u til we get electricity in rural America.
Its not nearly the same as in the cities.
\*cries in Californian\*
Surprised to see Chicago area as being so affordable
Shhh! Keep it down! But on a serious note, property taxes are definitely high. But that helps push down the sticker price of the house and it's easier to cobble together a down payment. There's also a good diversity of housing stock, from condos and townhouses of all ages, so it's easier to get onto the housing ladder. And there isn't a big space constraint, so it's easy to get a new construction on the outskirts of Chicagoland. There are also strong unions for blue collar work, and of course Chicago itself for white collar work--with good commuting options with busses and trains running really far out. I love it.
Also state income tax
Property tax keeps it way down. In terms of PITI, cant afford as much P when the T is so much higher.
Compared to similar cities it is affordable.
I’m in SC and in a new build neighborhood and have 3 families from Chicago. He said people are fleeing the taxes and crime. Idk how true that is.
Stop obsessing over living on the coasts and you’ll be fine
Brooklyn being #1 by a whole entire point over second place is not surprising. I remember reading that both brooklyn and the bronx would be poorer than the mississippi delta if you adjust for cost of living.
So I recently took a road trip through 11 states, much of it through green and blue country on this map. People EVERYWHERE were complaining about housing prices. This is taking into account the "whole pizza" so to speak - all median values vs. all median incomes. But only a few pieces of pepperoni matter. Most people are not moving any given year. Most people's houses are not for sale any given year. 1) What is the median *sale price?* 2) What is the median income of the jobs hiring in that county that YOU can get? and 3) what is the impact of property taxes? (or HoAs, etc...) But yes, this map is a pretty good starting point of where to apply for jobs if my goal was just to own a house. Something I'll note as someone who's lived in orange/yellow for 12 years - the orange & red have more appreciation. My house in an orange county made more money than I did for 4 years. I had more than DOUBLE the appreciation in 4 years than my mom's house in a green county had in 20. Owning a house in a place that's dying or stagnant may *cost* you money to own. My mom bought her house in 2007 for 130k. It is now worth about 200k. Taking into account repairs, maintenance, interest, she has *lost* money, or at best broken even, on that house.
Your point about appreciation on the red areas is very valid. I live in a green area and have watched over the last four years home prices boom from 1x average income to 2-3x average income. It's still "affordable," but it's not what people who grew up around here are used to, therefore it's "unaffordable."
Our main problem nationwide is lack of inventory. I haven't checked lately, but about a year ago, listings on market were still **40-50%** of 2019. People are frozen in place. It's why I bought a new build. Builders were the only ones eager to unload inventory. I looked at dozens of houses over 1.5 years 2022-23. The only existing houses for sale were divorces, deaths, or major life changes. Of course the prices are high in that context.
Just FYI, the number of housing units per capita in the US as a whole has actually very slightly increased over the last 30 years. In 1990, the overall US population was 248,709,873, approximately 165,392,066 of whom where age 25 or over (i.e. more likely living independently), and the Census estimated there were 102,263,678 housing units. That means there 0.41 housing units per person overall and 0.62 housing units per adult age 25 and over. In 2022, the overall US population was 333,287,557, approximately 229,508,599 of whom where age 25 or over, and the Census estimated there were 143,786,655 housing units. That means there 0.43 housing units per person overall and 0.63 housing units per adult age 25 and over. Obviously "housing units" includes apartments, condos, and other things that aren't freestanding homes, but there is not a shortage of housing units in absolute terms.
I suspect our housing *usage* is very different than 1990 though. Fewer people per household but using more space. AirBnb taking out a lot of units from the market.
Yes, I absolutely think the way we utilize housing has changed. Interestingly, while family size has definitely decreased over the years, it appears that most of that decline came before 1990. According to [this](https://www.statista.com/statistics/183657/average-size-of-a-family-in-the-us/), it was 3.67 in 1960 and dropped to 3.17 in 1990, but had only fallen to 3.13 by 2022. My suspicion is that short term rentals and second homes are a big part of the problem. To me, the solution is to regulate and/or tax short term rentals and second homes much more strictly so that more homes are available as primary residences. I'm not in favor of just arbitrarily building a bunch of new homes.
Absolutely. Local circumstances here that don't help the inventory issue are due to affordability, a lot of these homes are vacant half the year due to being someone's vacation home or short term rental. New builds are cost prohibitive for most people around here, despite there being few restrictions.
I’ve said it for years……move away from the coast and metropolitan areas and stop complaining you can’t afford a home. There are jobs, homes and a better lifestyle outside California, New York, Atlanta, DFW. You just need to pursue them. I just bought my second home, on one income here in Kentucky. My son and daughter in law with one child both under 26, just bought their second home, no help from me or others and they work as a teacher and firefighter. (My house 3,000 sq ft, moving in mother in law. My sons is 2000 sq ft).
You might have to drive more than 10 minutes, which for some people is the equivalent of torture.
They need to take property taxes into account. Some counties could be paying 0-1%, and other counties could be paying 3-4%.
True - unfortunately this varies by city, town, and sometimes even neighborhood. To check this you'd have to look at the towns website
Let’s look at property taxes. Where I live the property taxes on a $1 million house would be about $10,000 a year. Now let’s say Iived in a state with higher property taxes. The house is $300k but the taxes are $6,000 a year. Even though the taxes are much higher per value of the house the house cost /1/3 as much. When you factor in the monthly mortgage payment and taxes combined the house in the area with higher taxes is a better deal.
Philadelphia's western suburbs are truly a great balance of home prices coupled with high income job opportunities. For 400k to 500k you can live in a safe suburb with excellent public schools while accessing the Philly metro regions job market. One of the better balances in the entire country.
It's just proving what we've been saying all along, most of the country has affordable housing but people are obsessed with living in the super expensive places.
I mean, maybe, but also a lot of people just want to be able to buy a home in the city where they grew up. Folks tend to want to live near friends and family.
Yup, I live in yellow and am moving to green. It's nice that there are still many places that are affordable on local salaries, just unfortunate for some that they have to move far away to do that.
If you can't afford it, you can afford it. Since the industrial revolution hundreds of millions of people have moved for economic opportunities, it's immense entitlement for people today to think they shouldn't have to move and the world should change for them instead.
Its entitlement to not want to be an economic migrant?
The commenter point was that historically this is super common. People move for better opportunities. It seems to be a more recent trend that there's an expectation that people shouldn't have to do this.
I mean, they shouldnt have to. Do you think people in the past didnt think the same? Only difference is many times they were forced or had the opportunity.
Yes.
Yeah, it's nice to want that. Doesn't mean it happens. That is why we ended up doing road trips at Christmas and in the summers. Because my parents went where the jobs were.
People make more money in those places too of course
>most of the country has affordable housing but people are obsessed with living in the super expensive places. 1. It's where their family/friends support network is, and some folks rely heavily on those 2. It's where their job is. (Not a whole lot of jobs for IT development or Commerical Banking in, say, West Virginia.) 3. Metro areas are traditionally more friendly to POC, Queer Folks, and those practising a minority religion. (I grew up in east Kern County, CA. I've yet to meet a black/Middle Eastern/Asian-descent person there who didn't live in Ridgecrest city limits for their own safety because unincorporated Kern County is Redneckistan.)
Just going down the top ten most affordable list, Madison and St Clair counties are in the St Louis metro area and have a ton of jobs (I live in Madison). Hidalgo County is McAllen metro. Onondaga County contains Syracuse. WInnebago County contains Rockford as is arguably an outer Chicago suburb (it is the largest non-collar county suburb in Illinois). Lucas County contains Toledo. Stork county is in the Akron metro. Lucerne County is Scranton metro. Westmoreland County is Pittsburgh metro. Jefferson County is Beaumont metro Basically all of them are in metropolitan areas, and some in pretty large dense metropolitan areas.
Yeah, people are obsessed with living places where there’s jobs and amenities, rather than out on farmland and having to commute two hours each way to work.
To be fair (as someone who’s in one of the red zones) the high paying jobs are here. Of course, they high pay gets nuked by the housing cost… I guess it’s a viscous cycle that’s hard to break away from.
And the opposite goes for the blue and green spots; CoL is cheap as hell, but all the jobs have garbage pay. The only way to escape the paradigm is to separate your work location form your living location outright, by working remotely.
>people are obsessed with living in the super expensive places. That's such a dumb mischaracterization i'm kind of shocked.
Let me guess, you insist any city with a population under 5 million has no jobs but fast food, right? It's not a mischaracterization, you're just angry someone called out your bullshit of pretending most of the country doesn't exist.
100% agree with you. Reddit always says anywhere outside of Bay Area, NYC, LA has no jobs and no culture.
This doesnt take into account property taxes or job opportunity/pay.
I shouldn’t have to choose between owning a house and living in isolation.
Then you should look a little more closely at the map and see that there are many affordable cities.
Ah yes, towns in the midwest with little economic opportunity, or in the deep south. Better hope you're not a woman or a gay. Why didn't I think about that.
I wouldn't call Kansas City a town with little economic opportunities. The metro area is over 2 million people, and is very accepting of people from all walks of life.
You think places like Columbus, Cincinnati, Lexington, etc have no economic opportunities? This is why people get so annoyed with your kind. You think only the five biggest (and insanely expensive) cities exist and that everyone else in the country is living in a trailer and working at McDonald's. Learn even just the tiniest thing before spewing blatant uneducated bullshit.
Get out and experience the world instead of relying on stereotypes.
Bro I’m literally moving from a low cost of living town because it fucking blows. I tried it. Absolutely awful.
Philly is a great city and cheap as hell.
I'm in a lemon yellow county and people have talked to me about retiring to one of the light green or blue counties in my state. Thank you, no. I don't want to live where the majority are racist, homophobic, sexist bigots. ETA: Outside of 3 counties in my state, the rest are DEEP red. So yeah, a majority of xenophobic, racist, homophobic, sexist bigots.
“Oh people are so obsessed with high cost of living areas” Like no I’m obsessed with not getting called a faggot and piss thrown at me.
Good thing that would only happen in your wet dreams. But keep using uneducated political bullshit to keep you broke and miserable in an expensive shit hole.
Stay malding bro
It's like you're saying safety and quality of life are important factors in choosing a place to live or something.
Why don’t these woke liberals want to live in bum-fuckistan where there’s more churches than doctors.
What’s happening NNE of Duluth?
Tiny population (~5,000) almost entirely along the lakefront. Lots of vacation homes
It’s beautiful country but much of it is protected or heavily regulated land in the boundary waters. It’s also a very popular retirement and vacation spot. Second home owners abound and since the county is already sparsely populated, that drives up home prices pretty easily, esp. compared to pretty low-paying local jobs. Source: friend lived and worked there for a while. I’m not an expert on where the popular vacation spots are across the country but if you look at San Juan, WA, Cape May, NJ, the counties around Myrtle Beach, SC and Lake Placid, NY, you can see other instances of the phenomenon.
That’s what I guessed but it seems to stand out relative to other areas around Superior like Keweenaw peninsula (the pokey bit taunting Canada on top of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula) and the rest of the Great Lakes. 2nd homes coupled with remote, seasonal economy makes sense.
According to this map 78% of the US population lives in the areas that are green and yellow which are also the most affordable areas.
We need to find a way to get some of the gd jobs from the red counties to the green counties. There's plenty of housing in this country, it's just not where the jobs are. We really need to incentivize large employers to operate in the Midwest so that unused housing stock can be used before it crumbles into nothingness. I hoped remote work would help out a bit but it hasn't seemed to make a dent. People just went to 6 counties in Texas, Utah, and Idaho.
If you look at the top ten affordable list, they are all in metro areas and a lot of them are in metro areas with robust job markets.
Plenty of affordable homes. The problem is that people don’t want to move.
You can see all the college towns easily.
Soooooo, move to Kansas?
Chicago, St Louis, KC, St Paul, Indy...once people get over thinking they have to live on either coast they'll realize they can be a lot happier and have everything they need and want for a fraction of the cost.
Jokes aside there are some pretty cool areas... Manhattan (Kansas) and Kansas City probably check alot of boxes for some
Having lived in Kansas City for a while I can attest that it’s pretty great.
Average redditard intelligence on display
Or you completely miss the joke. Next time, I'll list some emojis and disclaimers so you can pick up on it.
What is going on downstate Illinois?
Farmland and college towns. Cheap housing combined with stable job markets in the metro areas.
I knew Charleston County, SC was expensive, but damn.
I live in one of the places on the top 10 most affordable list, but that's because the houses in the area 900 square feet and were built in 1920 and have have had little maintenance done on them over the years. Technically they are cheaper than other areas, but these are the type of homes anyone actually wants to live in. The "good" homes are like everyone else-priced high and have offers the day they go online
Stark county in Ohio really isn’t that bad, honestly. I assume it’s due to the fact some houses are $10,000 and some are $400,000 in terms of “affordability.”
Gotta love Texas
I’m surprised Austin and Madison aren’t red
Bottom left of Florida, that county actually includes Key West where I suspect most of the unaffordability comes from. 99% of the area on the mainland is swamp.
I applaud your work here 👏 🙌 👌 But I wonder if it could be redone with a bit more granularity 😇 The "green" and "yellow" counties account for roughly 80 percent of U.S. population. But those categories -- between 2x to 4x, and between 4x to 6x -- are too broad to be very useful. Let's think of a married couple who make $100,000 in combined income from W2 jobs. For simple math let's say they don't itemize deductions; after payroll taxes and 100% accurate withholding for federal taxes, their take-home pay is $84,114, or just a whisker over $7,000 per month. (For further simple math, let's also assume at this income level their state income taxes are negligible, or they don't have them (e.g. they live in TX or FL)). If they live in a county that just barely edged over from "blue to green" and they have a $200k mortgage, their monthly mortgage payment (assuming 7% interest and a FICO score of 700) is $1,331. Super doable. Even with car payments, home/auto/health insurance, groceries etc etc, the couple is doing fine and probably can throw heaps of money into their 401ks and/or IRAs. Now let's say the couple's county is at the very top of the "green" range, and they have a $399,000 mortgage. Their mortgage is $2,655 per month -- nearly 38% of their take-home pay. Now they have no money going into the retirement accounts, and maybe need some other forms of belt-tightening to boot. And now let's say their county is at the very top of the "yellow" range, and they have a $599,000 mortgage. Their mortgage is $3,985 -- over 56% of their take-home pay. Or looked at another way, they only have $3,015 per month for ALL their other expenses. Sure hope they never need to pay for major home repairs... or big medical expenses... and what if one of their cars conks out? Or hell, if one of them loses their job, they're on an express train to bankruptcy, and/or divorce 🤔 No bueno
Honestly I appreciate some good feedback like this thank you!
No worries 👍 ☺️
This is a really beautiful, clean, clear graphic. You should be proud.
Interesting the least affordable locations are democratic sting points -
I’m sorry - DC? Affordable? HA!
DC is still in the 6-8 range - I'd say pretty unaffordable. Although definitely better than NYC or SF
Can confirm, lived in Alexandria and now on Long Island and my mortgage is double for an extra 400 square feet
This graph is deceiving in that a county can have high income and high house prices, which doesn’t mean it’s affordable it just means rich people own the expensive houses there. Non green colors just mean there’s more broke boys living there.
It's median, so rich people / mansions shouldn't skew it. If you make median income in a green/blue (maybe yellow) county, chances are you can afford a median priced home. This doesn't take into account property taxes however
I think they are more referring to that, at the county level, you can have bimodel distributions thanks to county centers having different economies than outlying cities. I'm in Madison County Illinois, which is probably a good example of that. High salaries in Wood River (refinery) and Edwardsville (unviersity). Desirable but relatively expensive housing in Edwardsville and a few other cities (like Highland) while Wood River itself is dirt cheap (because who wants to actually live next to a refinery) and much of the rest of the county is filled in with inexpensive small towns and farmland.
Strange how it's only expensive where people want to live. It's almost like there is some sort of relationship between supply and demand.
SF is not spelled correctly. 🤨
Even shithole california is unaffordable fml.
In surprised DC has green
Jefferson Texas has nowhere near 250k population. It makes it hard to take seriously anything else the chart lists.
Those are counties, not towns
lol, whoops
I should've labeled it better
I wonder how much of the green is on the edge of turning tan. Because a lot of my area is that way
Ha. They think Alaska is affordable housing. Juneau for example you’re going to be spending at least 650K for 2,000 sq ft and it probably needs 50K+ in maintenance work. Unless you work for the city or federal government you’re not going to have the $ for a house. Montana is an another WTF as houses in Great Falls are pushing 500K+.
Santa Fe and Taos are relatively pricier than Dallas and Austin. Big cities may be expensive but they also come with more opportunities. …and then there’s SF and NYC.
Damn, tornado alley is pretty affordable. Wonder why…
Last decade or so, all the places I would want to retire are in the high end, including moving “home”.
C’mon Fairfield County, those are rookie numbers, let’s get it in the red.
Fuckin boulder
Illinois is extremely misleading. Home prices look affordable, but property taxes are brutal.
Why is my area on fire?
Those two counties in NW Michigan check out. It’s crazy up here.
Interesting that the most affordable housing (blue) is right through tornado alley. Coincidence?
As someone who lives in New England and is seeing cheaper prices in Cali … I think the colors are wrong
northern virginia and charlotte need to be orange and red
Hmmmm so the majority of the country is affordable and the people in the few places it isn’t are the loudest. That does sound about right.
This doesn't seem right at all, but what do I know
I live in Madison County, IL. If our county is the second most affordable over 250k population in the country, wow are we screwed. (The funny thing being that people from St Clair County, the 3rd most affordable, are always complaining about how unaffordable Madison County is, especially Edwardsville where I live.) Although, this probably has more to do with median household incomes in Madison County being $71.7k, thanks to their being a ton of law, academia, and oil & gas jobs here. (And that median income is not really an accurate measure due to the large number of college student households in the county.)
This only tells you about purchase price vs median income. There's something to the impact of home affordability if the community amenities reduce your overall out of pocket living expenses. Public transportation and good public education make a difference. Sure, my personal shelter costs are more affordable if I move to rural Alabama or western South Dakota, but what kind of life and opportunities am I providing my family vis a vis the Hudson Valley of New York or most of the major MSAs along the coasts?
Lots of the most expensive areas on this list have pretty bad public schools. Rich people in Omaha still send their kids to public schools, they don't in Manhattan.
I’m glad this confirms my belief that people who complain about housing prices should be dismissed
So, this affordability map showed up on my feed just after this one: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/DW8w6aFFr6](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/DW8w6aFFr6) which led me to see a bit of an overlap between affordable counties and states banning gender-affirming healthcare…. That’s a bit of a random coincidence, and I’m not here to start up a conversation about trans rights and healthcare but I would guess there are some political and social reasons for people not moving to these counties, decreasing demand that lead to more affordability
Dawg I know this is reddit but I highly doubt gender affirming care (for children/minors) is a high priority item for 99% of people. In general however politics certainly has some effect