Here's The Salary Needed To Buy A Home In Houston

HOUSTON, TX — It's not cheap to live in Houston. But considering the Bayou City is the fourth largest city in the nation with a sprawling metropolis, the cost of living is rather reasonable.

To purchase a $234,000 home with a 30-year mortgage, the annual salary would need to be just $56,600 — which comes out to a monthly payment of $1,320.67.

HSH.com, the nation's largest publisher of mortgage and consumer loan information, produced a list of the top 50 metropolitan areas in the country, and Houston checks in at No. 21 and third among Texas cities of Austin and Dallas.

HSH took the top 50 metro areas and the median home price. For Houston, the average home is $233,900, which is a 0.72 percent decrease from last year. Dallas comes in at No. 18 with a median home price of $249,000, meaning the household salary would need to be $59,517.58. Austin is the highest Texas city at No. 14 with an average home price of $296,400, meaning a salary of $67,440.63 would be par.

San Jose, California tops the list with a $1,165,000 median home price, which translates to a salary of $216,181.25. Payments for those homes are a cool $5,044 per month. Yikes.

For the calculations, HSH.com uses the National Association of Realtors’ 2017 third-quarter data for median-home prices, national mortgage rate data derived from weekly surveys by Freddie Mac and the Mortgage Bankers Association of America for 30-year fixed rate mortgages and available property tax and homeowners insurance costs to determine the annual salary it takes to afford the base cost of owning a home (principal, interest, property tax and homeowner's insurance, or PITI) in the nation's 50 largest metropolitan areas.

"Affordability pressures are frustratingly occurring in places where jobs are plentiful and incomes are rising,” added Yun. “Without a significant boost in new and existing inventory to alleviate price growth, job creation could slow in high cost areas in upcoming years if residents begin exiling to more affordable parts of the country," said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun.

"Unfortunately, the pace of new listings were unable to replace what was quickly sold. Home shoppers had little to choose from, and many had out outbid others in order to close on a home. The end result was a slowdown in sales from earlier in the year, steadfast price growth and weakening affordability conditions.”

Of the 50 metro area, Pittsburgh is the cheapest with a salary of $35,205.49 needed to buy a $146,000 home.

Image: This home listed on Braesmont Drive in Meyerland on realtor.com is going for $239,000, which is close to the median price for the Greater Houston area. (Photo via realtor.com)