Realtor.com has just published research measuring how long it would take in and around major cities to afford a down payment on the median-priced house. They compared the nation's 50 largest housing markets (metropolitan areas).
Overall, the median-income household would need to save at the annual household savings rate of 5.1% for about seven years to come up with the down payment.
Lo, the finding that comes crashing through is that local housing and land use regulations make buying a home for young families in and around blue cities hopelessly unaffordable.
It would take a young person about 36 years to save enough money to afford the down payment on a house in the San Francisco metro area. This is approximately seven times the overall average. Also above 20 years are San Jose (36) , Los Angeles (34), San Diego (30), and Boston, Seattle, and New York (all 23). Almost all blue metros!
Then look at the inexpensive markets, almost all in red states. The typical household in metro San Antonio would require 1.3 years of savings to afford a down payment on the median-priced house. Virginia Beach (Norfolk) ranked second, at 2 years, followed by Memphis at 2.5, Houston at 3.5, with Birmingham and Jacksonville at 4.2. Eight other metros are under 6 years: Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Atlanta, St. Louis, Cleveland, Dallas-Fort Worth, Louisville, and Orlando.
These high costs of buying a house in blue cities and states are especially remarkable, because as we've shown scores of times on these pages, millions of people are moving out of blue states. But leftist urban planners keep raising the cost of buying a home even when demand is falling.
Leftist politicians are killing the American dream of home ownership.
While the public policy discussion on housing affordability has focused on the relationship between prices and income, these data reveal that high down payments may be an even greater barrier to achieving the American Dream of homeownership.
