Sweet Orange

When I lived in the Silicon Valley area, sometimes I would meet someone who had been enticed by the big salaries of the area to accept a job in the San Francisco Bay Area. However, once they started to look around for housing, they often found that their salary from their previous location, although smaller, went farther in the city that they had moved from.

A similar situation exists in Southern California. Although some areas are known for having lower salaries than Southern California, buying a home in these areas is often easier than it is in Southern California. The home price to income ratio is the reason for this.

The following list from Forbes, ordered lowest to highest, shows how many times the median salary of some sample areas is needed to buy a median-priced home in the same area.

Median home/median salary ratio:

• Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, Ohio: 1.4
  (Unemployment: 12.8%)
• Flint, Michigan: 1.5
  (Unemployment: 15.2%)
• Detroit-Warren-Livonia, Mich.: 1.7
  (Unemployment: 13.4%)
• Modesto, CA: 2.8
  (Unemployment: 16.8)
• Bakersfield, CA: 2.9
  (Unemployment: 14.8%)
• Stockton, CA: 2.9
  (Unemployment: 15.6%)
• Fresno, CA: 3.4
  (Unemployment: 15.5)
• Salinas, CA: 3.8
  (Unemployment: 11.7)
• L.A-Anaheim-Santa Ana: 5.3
  (Unemployment: 10.1%)
• New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, N.Y.-N.J.-Pa,:7.2
  (Unemployment: 7.6%)

Photo of Historic Victorian Homes in San Francisco
COURTESY INETOURS.COM