Home & Garden
Here’s What You Need To Earn To Buy A Home In Washington County
A new report looks at how affordable or unaffordable it is to buy a home. Turns out Washington County is even more expensive than Multnomah.
Median home prices in more than 300 counties, including in Washington County, are not affordable for average wage earners, according to a new report from ATTOM Data.
Over the past year, median home prices in Washington County grew and home affordability dropped.
The report, which looked at home affordability for the first quarter of 2018, analyzed 446 counties and found that median home prices were not affordable for average wage earners in 304 counties or in 68 percent of the counties.
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In Washington County, the median sales price for a home in the first quarter of 2018 was $375,000, according to ATTOM — $5,000 more than neighboring Multnomah County. Compared to a year ago, the median home price in Washington County grew 7 percent, according to the report.
According to ATTOM, the annual income needed to buy a median price home in Washington County is $105,599. An average wage earner was not qualified to buy a home in Washington County.
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According to the report, based on average weekly wages from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an average wage earner in Washington County has an annual income of $66,924 — a number likely inflated by the tech industry jobs that make up a sizable portion of the county's economy, though it certainly doesn't account for every resident.
Washington County had a home affordability index of 94 and was less affordable for average wage earners than its historic affordability average. Washington County’s affordability index also decreased 5 percent when compared to the previous year.
ATTOM collected data from publicly recorded sales deeds and from the bureau of labor statistics.
The affordability index is based on the percentage of average wages needed to make monthly house payments on a median-priced home with a 30-year fixed rate mortgage and a 3-percent down payment, including property taxes, home insurance and mortgage insurance.
(Read the full methodology here.)
Image via Travis Loose, Patch
Written by Feroze Dhanoa, Patch National Staff, with additional reporting from Travis Loose, Oregon Patch editor.
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