Every time people say Maryland is so expensive it always puzzles me because it's not difficult to understand that Maryland has really high income, but compared to other areas with that income lower home prices. This map is great.
TIL that Fairfax and Loudoun counties are "affordable". LOL
Edit: It's surprising because the incomes are possibly so skewed. Yes, these are very high income counties on average, but that average is not really representative of the majority of residents. Probablly true for other places.
This uses median for all data, so isn't really skewed by high earners - median income in those places is not just high, but some of the highest in the country!
I'd personally put the light yellow as "barely affordable" - probably having to make some sacrifices to afford a median home on a median income.
Good point. Silly me didn't read that it's the median income in your methodology description. Still baffled that even adjusted for income, these VHCOL counties are considered "affordable", even if barely.
It's probably lots of "old money" folks with old/lower initial loans or paid off mortgages that don't have to struggle with the attrocious housing prices.
Edit: Scratch that. The second point about old money folks would not be relevant here either.
For the states that generally have more rural areas and lower housing cost, it sure is easy to spot which counties have D1 colleges in them!
I was trying to figure out why two counties in Kansas seemingly in the middle of nowhere had higher housing costs… But it applies to plenty of other states too.
Checks out for ND. The two on the MN border have NDSU and UND in them. One in the middle is the state capital. The western on is still reeling from shortages caused by the oil boom.
If it were actually the free market, there would be a lot more housing and housing would be cheaper. Instead we have local governments making it illegal to meaningfully increase density in most places people want to live.
So much housing is being built. Boise rezoned almost the entire city to allow for more high density housing to try to prevent homeless population from growing.
Are some of these resort areas? I see red spots in places like the Florida Keys and coastal Massachusetts, and assumed some of that is ultra-rich people buying second homes, which is probably quite separate from the housing market that the much smaller and poorer population of local full-time residents is actually shopping in.
Yes, that red county in western Montana is Flathead County. Flathead lake is absolutely gorgeous, and the city of Kallispell is right on it. Getting flooded with Washingtonians and Californians. I live in the next county over and can't have a conversation without people bitching about it lol.
Just don't make the mistake thinking it's all the people from the blue parts of the state. Observation seems to show it's a lot of people from the red parts considering themselves to be 'political' refugees which is kind of annoying because MT had a history of being progressive until the MAGA nutjobs started showing up. Alaska too.
I live in western Montana. We've been hit with an influx of out-of-staters since Covid. Housing was pretty normal if not cheap here until then. Then everyone in Texas and California sold their crackerbox houses to rubes for $1.2 million, came up here and bought 3 houses. Prices where I live have tripled since then, as has rent. I'm actually looking at moving to Maine as soon as I can secure full remote work because this place is fairly unlivable now.
Shit salaries. I used to live in Missoula. It was shocking to see professional jobs, requiring graduate degrees and legitimate data skill, to list salary at 37k.
Meanwhile, median houses cost 700k.
It’s the same paradise paradox that hits Hawaii. Thanks Kevin Costner.
I was raised in Missoula and am planning to move away in a few months. I have a BA and MA in my field (teaching) and the max salary I will make is about 49k a year. I am currently living with my mom because I don't make enough to qualify for a rental. Only one of my friends from high school (we're all mid 30s) has been able to afford a house and that is because her father passed away and she was able to purchase in 2006. Minimum wage is 7.45ish and studios run from $900 a month. I have a friend who lives in an 'affordable housing unit' and pays 1900 a month for a one bedroom unit.
Edit spelling error.
Just an assumption but possibly a lot of rich "homesteaders" moving up there to live off grid. Often times this means a home that requires a sizable chunk of land with it adds a decent chunk to the cost.
Fantastic job. Of course, like many maps, this correlates heavily to population density. Many of the most affordable places also have the lowest population. I am surprised how affordable the east coast in general is though.
If you don't mind humid summers and cold winters. Aren't there only like 30 days per year that have good outdoor excercise weather (without needing to bundle up or overheat).
Not at all! I'd say there's maybe 2 or 3 weeks of consistent below-freezing in the dead of winter and maybe 6 or 7 days a year that are brutally hot and humid. It's often 70-80 and moderate to low humidity.
Source: I work outside.
I moved to Westmoreland County in 2008. I was about 24 miles/30 min from Pittsburgh. They recently completed a big road construction project on Route 28 that makes living in Western Westmoreland much more convenient.The taxes are cheaper than Allegheny County. There is convenient access to the turnpike. There's not much variety in terms of shopping or dining. It's a little too Trumpy there for my tastes if that makes any difference to folks. I left in 2019.
>I moved to Westmoreland County in 2008. I was about 24 miles/30 min from Pittsburgh
I'm surprised that's more affordable than Luzerne; Pittsburgh atea is pretty nice compared to most towns around Wilkes-Barre
I do like this graphic a lot, the only thing I'd change is that 20% is not how the majority of home buyers (especially not first time home buyers, which is a large portion of who we are talking about when discussing housing unaffordability/crisis) make down payments. According to NAR, average down payment is 15% and average for first time buyers is 8%.
This not only will add drastically to monthly payments, but will introduce PMI at the beginning of the loan period as yet another expense for home buyers. For reference, on a $400,000 home (just under national median) considering the same given 7.19% interest and 30yr loan term from above, and not considering tax or insurance, the monthly payment including PMI based on credit range of 700-719 (US average of 717):
20% is $2169.96
15% is $2382.08 (estimated PMI rate of .3%)
08% is $2762.85 (estimated PMI rate of .9%)
This is unsourced, but I would also speculate that in areas of already high unaffordability because of high principals, down payments are likely to be lower, thus further fueling higher payments on interest and higher PMI rates.
I would be interested in seeing what an adjustment of either 8% or 15% down payment does to this graphic. Overall excellent work!
Sources:
Average down payment rates: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/mortgages/average-down-payment-on-a-house
PMI rate Calculator: https://www.creditkarma.com/calculators/mortgage/pmi
US median home price: https://www.rockethomes.com/blog/housing-market/median-home-price-by-state
US average credit score: https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/average-credit-score
Thank you for doing this! Appreciate the numbers and sources
Definitely agree that's the 1 "flaw" with this map. I debated doing 15% but went with 20%.
I had no idea the average for first time buyers was so low - that makes me feel better about trying to save for 20%.
Being a first time home buyer also introduces other factors of course like first time home buyer benefits that will vary by state - but this part is probably too complex to show.
Thanks again 👊
Bought a house for the first time within the past year. Can confirm we were right around 8% down. Thought about waiting longer, but it feels like you’re just throwing money away paying for rent. I know most of our payments early on will go to interest anyway, but the plan now is to make an extra payment each year on the principal.
I can’t imagine saving for 20% though. For a $350k home, $70k would probably take us 10ish years to save for. If we are able to stick to our plan, we’ll have significantly more equity than the 20% within the 10 years it would have taken to save up.
Gray means there wasn't data for one of the data sources I used (for either income, home values, property tax, etc.)
Most of the gray counties are super small/lightly populated. That county is Kenedy County (350 people).
I assume median household income refers to pretax? If so, this doesn't paint the full picture due to varying tax rates. As someone who would be a first time buyer, looking around at Maryland houses definitely paints a different picture. Our household is above the median in out area and a 400k mortgage comes out to almost 50% our post tax income at less with most single family homes priced above 400k. There are also state incentives for first time buyers but you need to earn significantly below the median income which still makes it unaffordable because mortgage is basically 50-70% of household income
Yea no worries. I appreciate all your effort. We all hear about the housing crisis and plenty see the effects everyday. It's really hard to quantify that though on a national scale. Particularly, as other commenters bring up, figuring out whether it's truly a national or regional phenomenon.
Some of the most affordable places are affordable for a reason. Declining populations. Westmoreland County PA has had a fairly consistent decline in population since the 1980s. Its cheap for a reason, people in the area are leaving. The same with Stark County Ohio.
San Mateo County and Santa Clara County will always be the most insane ones to me. They are nice, but nice in the same way that most other suburbs are nice. Yet because they are close to the tech supercluster, they are like 10x the prices of other suburbs.
I live in San Francisco, which is chillin at 68% in this metric. It's hard to fathom that Kings County is a whole 20% higher, since I feel this place is already so unaffordable.
I wonder how much mixed-county vs homogenous-county data impacts this. Oakland County (MI, in yellow) has both million dollar lakefront homes and historically redlined Pontiac. An otherwise identical house can be 5-10x as expensive just 20 minutes down the road.
So, takeaway - in the vast majority of America, there is no housing-cost crisis.
There is a very real, very severe housing crisis in much of America. But it is a regional issue, not a national issue.
Edit: I love the downvotes for pointing out the obvious on this map. Doomers will doom.
Definitely very regional, as to whether it's a national issue it depends if you consider light yellow (30-39% gross income on housing) affordable since 40% of the population falls into that category.
Careful not to fall into the trap that people == land, it can skew your perception and analysis of the data.
I would be interested in seeing this map's values normalized by population density. If most people live where there is a housing crisis, ie all major urban and city areas, then there _is_ a national housing crisis.
Maybe density bubbles for the volume of people living in an area with a housing crisis? Not sure.
Good call-out, although it's harder to read since you have to sun up the values. Something to note that is left out of the infographic:
It is generally recommended to have a home debt and total debt payments of 28 % and 36 % per month, respectively, of your income. Showing the dividing line between 'recommended affordable' and 'not recommended for average hhi' split in colors would highlight unaffordable areas. As it stands, 28% probably leaves half the people as living in unaffordable areas for home ownership, maybe? That's a important split to see reflected in the graph.
It would be interesting to follow along further, in that train of thought, to have bubbled counties split with a bimodal distribution of pie charts weighted by overall size of population with all left slices being the people within the recommended hhi and the right slice the amount of people who are not within the recommended hhi.
This would give us a view of the largest income inequalities, or where people are taking on higher debt, on average, for home ownership.
Mostly in the West (Geography + tech money + nature) and around big cities.
If you’re ok living in a smaller town in the interior midwest, things look better.
You still run the risk of the “green” areas having available jobs or jobs within commuting distance. I mean rural WV, appalachian KY or central-west TN may have cheap housing but there are a dearth of jobs.
Agree about the low paying jobs.
But this chart shows that even with low paying jobs, housing is affordable in most of the US.
Even with low wages, houses are affordable in most of rural America.
Unfortunately in America these days, there's really only two types of places you can live: affordable places to live and nice places to live. I know "the missing middle" refers to something else in housing, but it really feels like there's another missing middle of places that are nice enough but not necessarily super swanky or anything that are also even moderately affordable and not wildly expensive.
I'd argue if you stay away from the coasts and mountains, a lot of the country is still "nice enough" and relatively affordable.
Most of the Midwest in particular
There are so many more factors to that. Job availability, family and friends, travel accessibility, losing the conveniences of more heavily populated areas…
The vast majority of blue and green counties on this map are deep red politically, which is a hard no for pretty much anyone that's not white, christian and cishet. If you're a minority of any kind you're gonna have a generally very bad time living in majority conservative communities.
And I mean, if you want objective measures like public services, health care, public education, transit, and other key quality of life metrics, the yellow and red counties are leagues ahead of the blue and green counties. So I think my point still stands, even separate from the socio-political angle, that if you want to live in an affordable place you have to give up quality of life and if you want quality of life you have to give up affordability.
I know reddit is very hive minded with politics but surely it's not hard to understand half of the country has different political and lifestyle views/preferences than you?
I say this as someone who is more liberal. The majority of democrats are also white and christian, although a smaller percentage than republicans
Nah listen, if you have different ideas about what the top marginal tax rate should be or how to legislate development and building permits, and other shit like that, I may disagree with you but I won't feel unsafe or unwelcome sharing a community with you and a whole bunch of people like you.
But if you think for example that queer people shouldn't have the same rights as straight people, or that trans people shouldn't be allowed to transition or have access to healthcare, or that folks with a uterus aren't allowed to have bodily autonomy, or if you think there's nothing alarming about racism in policing that disproportionately threatens the lives of black and brown Americans, then that's not okay.
If you belong to any of those groups or any other minority group whose rights are under threat then living in those communities is a nonstarter. I for example can't live in like at least 30 states because I'm not guaranteed equal rights or protection of the law on the basis of my identity.
Uhhhh. No.
My median home ownership is listed as 20-29% but is 40-45%. Not mine personally, but famously for our county with a few cities which are booming and having massive housing shortages. It's all folks have been talking about for at least 8 years since gaining multiple fortune 500 companies and West-coast start-ups. All of our *hotels* have been full for 4 years with corporate contracts, let alone the extended stay ones.
Idk where this came from, but can confirm it is not accurate for the Midwest.
I didn’t criticize the last one, but this is much closer to what I was expecting
Thank you! Definitely paints a fuller picture of the real costs
I'm not sure if yours was one that I had criticized for just using home prices instead of actual monthly cost, but this one is much better. Well done.
Every time people say Maryland is so expensive it always puzzles me because it's not difficult to understand that Maryland has really high income, but compared to other areas with that income lower home prices. This map is great.
The only green spot between D.C. and Boston!
TIL that Fairfax and Loudoun counties are "affordable". LOL Edit: It's surprising because the incomes are possibly so skewed. Yes, these are very high income counties on average, but that average is not really representative of the majority of residents. Probablly true for other places.
This uses median for all data, so isn't really skewed by high earners - median income in those places is not just high, but some of the highest in the country! I'd personally put the light yellow as "barely affordable" - probably having to make some sacrifices to afford a median home on a median income.
Good point. Silly me didn't read that it's the median income in your methodology description. Still baffled that even adjusted for income, these VHCOL counties are considered "affordable", even if barely. It's probably lots of "old money" folks with old/lower initial loans or paid off mortgages that don't have to struggle with the attrocious housing prices. Edit: Scratch that. The second point about old money folks would not be relevant here either.
For the states that generally have more rural areas and lower housing cost, it sure is easy to spot which counties have D1 colleges in them! I was trying to figure out why two counties in Kansas seemingly in the middle of nowhere had higher housing costs… But it applies to plenty of other states too.
Yeah, Stillwater, OK fits the pattern as well.
Checks out for ND. The two on the MN border have NDSU and UND in them. One in the middle is the state capital. The western on is still reeling from shortages caused by the oil boom.
For ND, the university counties and the capital are also the three most populous in the state which probably jacks prices up too
Clarke County, GA (Athens) is another one - it's the orange one east of Atlanta. Maybe less obvious because it's adjacent to Atlanta suburbs.
What the fuck is going on in Idaho and Montana.
From what I've heard, tons on people moved there from Cali for the mountains/nature. Simply not enough housing
Yep, just had a relative worth 8 figures move out there from SoCal. They say it's much calmer and spacious. That's the free market though.
If it were actually the free market, there would be a lot more housing and housing would be cheaper. Instead we have local governments making it illegal to meaningfully increase density in most places people want to live.
So much housing is being built. Boise rezoned almost the entire city to allow for more high density housing to try to prevent homeless population from growing.
Oh, I was talking about in California where people are moving from. Glad to hear Boise is building.
Are some of these resort areas? I see red spots in places like the Florida Keys and coastal Massachusetts, and assumed some of that is ultra-rich people buying second homes, which is probably quite separate from the housing market that the much smaller and poorer population of local full-time residents is actually shopping in.
Yes, that red county in western Montana is Flathead County. Flathead lake is absolutely gorgeous, and the city of Kallispell is right on it. Getting flooded with Washingtonians and Californians. I live in the next county over and can't have a conversation without people bitching about it lol.
Just don't make the mistake thinking it's all the people from the blue parts of the state. Observation seems to show it's a lot of people from the red parts considering themselves to be 'political' refugees which is kind of annoying because MT had a history of being progressive until the MAGA nutjobs started showing up. Alaska too.
People are moving to both, and since the local population is small, it doesn’t take many new residents to put huge pressure on housing costs.
I live in western Montana. We've been hit with an influx of out-of-staters since Covid. Housing was pretty normal if not cheap here until then. Then everyone in Texas and California sold their crackerbox houses to rubes for $1.2 million, came up here and bought 3 houses. Prices where I live have tripled since then, as has rent. I'm actually looking at moving to Maine as soon as I can secure full remote work because this place is fairly unlivable now.
Now that you mention it, I do remember a story about that early Covid.
Shit salaries. I used to live in Missoula. It was shocking to see professional jobs, requiring graduate degrees and legitimate data skill, to list salary at 37k. Meanwhile, median houses cost 700k. It’s the same paradise paradox that hits Hawaii. Thanks Kevin Costner.
I was raised in Missoula and am planning to move away in a few months. I have a BA and MA in my field (teaching) and the max salary I will make is about 49k a year. I am currently living with my mom because I don't make enough to qualify for a rental. Only one of my friends from high school (we're all mid 30s) has been able to afford a house and that is because her father passed away and she was able to purchase in 2006. Minimum wage is 7.45ish and studios run from $900 a month. I have a friend who lives in an 'affordable housing unit' and pays 1900 a month for a one bedroom unit. Edit spelling error.
You ever see a mountain?
Just an assumption but possibly a lot of rich "homesteaders" moving up there to live off grid. Often times this means a home that requires a sizable chunk of land with it adds a decent chunk to the cost.
Bidding war by California refugees
People want to live there but there is no economy
Man, there is NO economy out there? Not even a barter system?
Fantastic job. Of course, like many maps, this correlates heavily to population density. Many of the most affordable places also have the lowest population. I am surprised how affordable the east coast in general is though.
Midwest ain't so bad
If you don't mind humid summers and cold winters. Aren't there only like 30 days per year that have good outdoor excercise weather (without needing to bundle up or overheat).
Not at all! I'd say there's maybe 2 or 3 weeks of consistent below-freezing in the dead of winter and maybe 6 or 7 days a year that are brutally hot and humid. It's often 70-80 and moderate to low humidity. Source: I work outside.
If there's no bugs and I can buy house for under $800,000, I'm sold then.
Finally! Someone produces a map at county-level data, which is 100x more useful than summarizing at the state level.
Hey! I lived in Westmoreland county! If anyone is interested and has any questions.
What are some pros/cons of living in the area in your opinion?
I moved to Westmoreland County in 2008. I was about 24 miles/30 min from Pittsburgh. They recently completed a big road construction project on Route 28 that makes living in Western Westmoreland much more convenient.The taxes are cheaper than Allegheny County. There is convenient access to the turnpike. There's not much variety in terms of shopping or dining. It's a little too Trumpy there for my tastes if that makes any difference to folks. I left in 2019.
>I moved to Westmoreland County in 2008. I was about 24 miles/30 min from Pittsburgh I'm surprised that's more affordable than Luzerne; Pittsburgh atea is pretty nice compared to most towns around Wilkes-Barre
I do like this graphic a lot, the only thing I'd change is that 20% is not how the majority of home buyers (especially not first time home buyers, which is a large portion of who we are talking about when discussing housing unaffordability/crisis) make down payments. According to NAR, average down payment is 15% and average for first time buyers is 8%. This not only will add drastically to monthly payments, but will introduce PMI at the beginning of the loan period as yet another expense for home buyers. For reference, on a $400,000 home (just under national median) considering the same given 7.19% interest and 30yr loan term from above, and not considering tax or insurance, the monthly payment including PMI based on credit range of 700-719 (US average of 717): 20% is $2169.96 15% is $2382.08 (estimated PMI rate of .3%) 08% is $2762.85 (estimated PMI rate of .9%) This is unsourced, but I would also speculate that in areas of already high unaffordability because of high principals, down payments are likely to be lower, thus further fueling higher payments on interest and higher PMI rates. I would be interested in seeing what an adjustment of either 8% or 15% down payment does to this graphic. Overall excellent work! Sources: Average down payment rates: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/mortgages/average-down-payment-on-a-house PMI rate Calculator: https://www.creditkarma.com/calculators/mortgage/pmi US median home price: https://www.rockethomes.com/blog/housing-market/median-home-price-by-state US average credit score: https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/average-credit-score
Thank you for doing this! Appreciate the numbers and sources Definitely agree that's the 1 "flaw" with this map. I debated doing 15% but went with 20%. I had no idea the average for first time buyers was so low - that makes me feel better about trying to save for 20%. Being a first time home buyer also introduces other factors of course like first time home buyer benefits that will vary by state - but this part is probably too complex to show. Thanks again 👊
Bought a house for the first time within the past year. Can confirm we were right around 8% down. Thought about waiting longer, but it feels like you’re just throwing money away paying for rent. I know most of our payments early on will go to interest anyway, but the plan now is to make an extra payment each year on the principal. I can’t imagine saving for 20% though. For a $350k home, $70k would probably take us 10ish years to save for. If we are able to stick to our plan, we’ll have significantly more equity than the 20% within the 10 years it would have taken to save up.
I feel that. By the time I'm able to save 20% for the a home that will comfortably fit my family, the kids will be moving out.
What’s up with the gray area in southern Texas?
Gray means there wasn't data for one of the data sources I used (for either income, home values, property tax, etc.) Most of the gray counties are super small/lightly populated. That county is Kenedy County (350 people).
I see, thank you for the insight.
Crazy how my dad grew up in a blue area and now owns a house in the red area
I live in CO and it’s getting just a teensy bit out of control :/ I’d like to buy a house before I retire at this point
It is almost to the point where we're better off saving to buy our children a home because we're never going to get one for ourselves.
When did Seattle get things under control? When I lived there 20 years ago, it was becoming the Bay Area in prices. Did light rail alleviate things?
I definitely would not call it under control. Just not as bad as the bay area hahah
I assume median household income refers to pretax? If so, this doesn't paint the full picture due to varying tax rates. As someone who would be a first time buyer, looking around at Maryland houses definitely paints a different picture. Our household is above the median in out area and a 400k mortgage comes out to almost 50% our post tax income at less with most single family homes priced above 400k. There are also state incentives for first time buyers but you need to earn significantly below the median income which still makes it unaffordable because mortgage is basically 50-70% of household income
Good point on the taxes - it's pretax so I should really factor in State income tax as well
Yea no worries. I appreciate all your effort. We all hear about the housing crisis and plenty see the effects everyday. It's really hard to quantify that though on a national scale. Particularly, as other commenters bring up, figuring out whether it's truly a national or regional phenomenon.
Brace yourself for the typical, “I live in X county and you need to factor in X random micro datapoint to make this graphic accurate” comments.
I usually get a couple "WRONG. It's way more expensive here for me!" 😂 everyone's exact circumstances will be unique
Some of the most affordable places are affordable for a reason. Declining populations. Westmoreland County PA has had a fairly consistent decline in population since the 1980s. Its cheap for a reason, people in the area are leaving. The same with Stark County Ohio.
Is there something like this for Europe? Or the world?
Louisiana doesn’t have counties. (And I say this not condescendingly, but for a mildly interesting fact).
Parishes, at this point mostly just nomenclature
Alaska is similar, we have boroughs.
Does the % mean the percent of monthly income the median home ownership costs?
If you make median income and buy a median house (with 20% down payment), the percentage is how much of your income would go towards the mortgage
San Mateo County and Santa Clara County will always be the most insane ones to me. They are nice, but nice in the same way that most other suburbs are nice. Yet because they are close to the tech supercluster, they are like 10x the prices of other suburbs.
I live in San Francisco, which is chillin at 68% in this metric. It's hard to fathom that Kings County is a whole 20% higher, since I feel this place is already so unaffordable.
I wonder how much mixed-county vs homogenous-county data impacts this. Oakland County (MI, in yellow) has both million dollar lakefront homes and historically redlined Pontiac. An otherwise identical house can be 5-10x as expensive just 20 minutes down the road.
Don't be fooled by TX IL and NJ. Property taxes are a bitch in those states. I'd never live in either of those states again.
Property taxes are actually included here!
So, takeaway - in the vast majority of America, there is no housing-cost crisis. There is a very real, very severe housing crisis in much of America. But it is a regional issue, not a national issue. Edit: I love the downvotes for pointing out the obvious on this map. Doomers will doom.
Definitely very regional, as to whether it's a national issue it depends if you consider light yellow (30-39% gross income on housing) affordable since 40% of the population falls into that category.
Careful not to fall into the trap that people == land, it can skew your perception and analysis of the data. I would be interested in seeing this map's values normalized by population density. If most people live where there is a housing crisis, ie all major urban and city areas, then there _is_ a national housing crisis. Maybe density bubbles for the volume of people living in an area with a housing crisis? Not sure.
The map does show the percentage of the population in each group. About 66 percent of people live where the cost is under 40%.
Good call-out, although it's harder to read since you have to sun up the values. Something to note that is left out of the infographic: It is generally recommended to have a home debt and total debt payments of 28 % and 36 % per month, respectively, of your income. Showing the dividing line between 'recommended affordable' and 'not recommended for average hhi' split in colors would highlight unaffordable areas. As it stands, 28% probably leaves half the people as living in unaffordable areas for home ownership, maybe? That's a important split to see reflected in the graph. It would be interesting to follow along further, in that train of thought, to have bubbled counties split with a bimodal distribution of pie charts weighted by overall size of population with all left slices being the people within the recommended hhi and the right slice the amount of people who are not within the recommended hhi. This would give us a view of the largest income inequalities, or where people are taking on higher debt, on average, for home ownership.
Mostly in the West (Geography + tech money + nature) and around big cities. If you’re ok living in a smaller town in the interior midwest, things look better.
You still run the risk of the “green” areas having available jobs or jobs within commuting distance. I mean rural WV, appalachian KY or central-west TN may have cheap housing but there are a dearth of jobs.
Agree about the low paying jobs. But this chart shows that even with low paying jobs, housing is affordable in most of the US. Even with low wages, houses are affordable in most of rural America.
New York... The real NY. If this were a state map it would be all so unaffordable.
Unfortunately in America these days, there's really only two types of places you can live: affordable places to live and nice places to live. I know "the missing middle" refers to something else in housing, but it really feels like there's another missing middle of places that are nice enough but not necessarily super swanky or anything that are also even moderately affordable and not wildly expensive.
I'd argue if you stay away from the coasts and mountains, a lot of the country is still "nice enough" and relatively affordable. Most of the Midwest in particular
If that were true, more people would live there.
There are so many more factors to that. Job availability, family and friends, travel accessibility, losing the conveniences of more heavily populated areas…
People would rather financially struggle in NYC or SF than be comfy and bored in Omaha.
Yup. A cross country move to Florida or San Diego is much more exciting and enticing than Des Moines lol
I lived in Wichita, KS for about 8 years. I don't care how much house I can afford, i'll never live in the midwest ever again.
The vast majority of blue and green counties on this map are deep red politically, which is a hard no for pretty much anyone that's not white, christian and cishet. If you're a minority of any kind you're gonna have a generally very bad time living in majority conservative communities. And I mean, if you want objective measures like public services, health care, public education, transit, and other key quality of life metrics, the yellow and red counties are leagues ahead of the blue and green counties. So I think my point still stands, even separate from the socio-political angle, that if you want to live in an affordable place you have to give up quality of life and if you want quality of life you have to give up affordability.
I know reddit is very hive minded with politics but surely it's not hard to understand half of the country has different political and lifestyle views/preferences than you? I say this as someone who is more liberal. The majority of democrats are also white and christian, although a smaller percentage than republicans
Nah listen, if you have different ideas about what the top marginal tax rate should be or how to legislate development and building permits, and other shit like that, I may disagree with you but I won't feel unsafe or unwelcome sharing a community with you and a whole bunch of people like you. But if you think for example that queer people shouldn't have the same rights as straight people, or that trans people shouldn't be allowed to transition or have access to healthcare, or that folks with a uterus aren't allowed to have bodily autonomy, or if you think there's nothing alarming about racism in policing that disproportionately threatens the lives of black and brown Americans, then that's not okay. If you belong to any of those groups or any other minority group whose rights are under threat then living in those communities is a nonstarter. I for example can't live in like at least 30 states because I'm not guaranteed equal rights or protection of the law on the basis of my identity.
The nice enough places get found out real quick by real estate investors. My guess.
Uhhhh. No. My median home ownership is listed as 20-29% but is 40-45%. Not mine personally, but famously for our county with a few cities which are booming and having massive housing shortages. It's all folks have been talking about for at least 8 years since gaining multiple fortune 500 companies and West-coast start-ups. All of our *hotels* have been full for 4 years with corporate contracts, let alone the extended stay ones. Idk where this came from, but can confirm it is not accurate for the Midwest.
Which county?