Prospective buyers needed nearly $117,000 in salary to purchase a home in San Diego during the second quarter of this year, according to a study released Wednesday by the mortgage information firm HSH.com.
That assumes 20 percent down on a median-priced house of $605,000. With a mortgage rate of 4.21 percent, the monthly payment would be more than $2,700.
If the buyer made a down payment of 10 percent, the required salary would rise to more than $138,000.
The monthly payment in San Diego was the third highest of 50 markets included in the study, following San Jose, at nearly $5,200, and San Francisco, at over $4,200. Similarly, the salary required to buy a median-priced house in San Diego was the third highest behind the Bay Area cities.
Nationally, the increase in salary needed to keep pace with rising housing costs over the past year was 9.3 percent.
RELATED: San Diego Home Prices Up 7.1 Percent From June Last Year
Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, said houses were selling in under one month on average in several parts of the country, with supply not coming close to meeting demand.
"The glaring need for more new home construction is creating an affordability crisis that needs to be addressed by policy officials and local governments," Yun said. "An increasing share of would-be buyers are being priced out of the market and are unable to experience the wealth building benefits of homeownership."
Nationally, purchasing a median priced home of $255,600 necessitated a salary of more than $56,000 — an increase of 8.5 percent over last year.
Cities where monthly payments came in at less than $1,000 included Birmingham, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Louisville, Memphis, Oklahoma City, Pittsburgh and St. Louis.
HSH.com took the National Association of Realtors' 2017 second-quarter data for median home prices, national mortgage rate data 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.
The data determined the annual salary it took to afford the base cost of owning a home — principal, interest, property tax and homeowner's insurance.
