How Much Do You Need To Make To Buy A New York-Area Home?

Everyone on Long Island knows that homes here are expensive. But it may surprise some residents to learn that the New York City metro area is not the most expensive place in the country to buy a home — it's only No. 5.

New York is the most expensive metro area on the East Coast. Out on the West Coast, San Jose, San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles all outpace New York's median home price and the salary needed to cover mortgage payments, property taxes and homeowner's insurance.

According to the website HSH.com, which tracks mortgage rates, buying a home in the New York Metro area is costly, but not the worst. According to the site, in order to afford a home at the median sale price of $419,000 — including mortgage payments, property taxes and homeowner's insurance — a New Yorker needs to be making $99,151 a year.

If that seems low, it's because it likely is. HSH included huge swaths of suburbs in what it considered to be the New York Metro area. It included all of Long Island and the city, as well as Putnam, Westchester, Rockland, Orange and Dutchess counties. It also included a huge chunk of northern New Jersey, as well as Pike County, Pennsylvania.

But it actually doesn't skew the numbers as much as one might think. According to a report from Douglas Elliman Realty, the median sale price for a Long Island home for the third quarter of 2017 was $410,000.

You can read the full report from HSH here.

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