mapped out the salary you actually must have to buy a place in every US county
built a free tool that lets you set your own salary and see which counties you can afford. [https://movenumbers.com/explore?map=salary-needed&salary=75000](https://movenumbers.com/explore?map=salary-needed&salary=75000).
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So, for the most part, it looks like you need to be in a county that isn’t part of a major metro area and consequently jobs are not plentiful.
This was the great promise of remote work. Give people cheaper property and revitalise small towns but no we have to all go in to make the office landlords happy.
Housing cost is insane everywhere, not just Metro areas
Yep, and that’s why employers hate remote work. They want everyone living in high cost of living areas so that they’re so stressed out and desperate that they can’t look for better work or afford to do part time employment so they can work on other pursuits. The entire Ameri...
Great visualizer and extremely (depressingly) accurate for the counties I’ve done real estate research about in California.
thank you for checking it out! if you have any ideas on things i could add that would be useful to you (or anyone else), i'm definitely open to suggestions
The preview is messed up. It’s showing what it looks like when capped at 75k so a lot of it is grey. For any others looking, move the slider to the right to see much more.
Thank you for taking the time to write this out, haha.
lol good point. i just thought some sort of "middle ground starting point" was the better angle
I was wondering why some portions weren’t colored
Cool tool
thank you!
What’s gray
Gray means "no lol"
28% DTI is sort of silly. Average is 33 for “large banks” (check FRED) and 38-39 for fannie and Freddie. general advice is to stay below 36.
But also, as the salaries increase, DTI can go higher. housing costs may be 5x in HCOL areas, but healthcare and childcare is only 1.5-2x. So 33-36% when dealing in LCOL and low salary, but probably acceptably higher in HCOL and high salary locations.
My dumbass: “What do all the gray ones mean.”
Cool, I can’t afford where I live
I need at least 50% more than I'm currently making for my area and I make 6 figures.
Jokes on you, I can't even afford the down payment.
[With the $75k cap removed](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/670862061349371908/1481123951580283020/image0.jpg?ex=69b22bac&is=69b0da2c&hm=d46dd1b94d7bc9f091d9c166b121d35d969b3c98882498d3d9bbd49623bb4249&)
https://movenumbers.com/explore
I couldn't afford where I live now if I didn't get in before the spike. Insane.
Happy to say I purchased at 59% of the income noted for my county... admittedly 3% down on a 3bd condo at 31% of my gross income.
Why are all the red areas grey?
You’re missing like every midsize and up city’s county.
Slider is set to an income of 75k, and the colors don't appear until the hypothetical income can afford them.
I love this! Really neat tool.
Nice work!!!
really great work on this
I did a simple cost analysis. The price I paid for my house 25 years ago, invested in 1 stock (IBM) or 1 ETF (spdr) well outperformed my house value today minus maintenance over the 25 years (major like roof, heating, renovations and minor ongoing) plus insurance, plus propert...
Your missing a lot of metro areas here, just look at thr north coast , youre missing Milwaukee and greater Chicago,
Can we get a link to the full dynamic map? With a complete citation?
So most of the people on Reddit complaining about not being able to buy a home want to get a cheap and nice house in an amazing area with great schools in the most in demand cities in the country? You’ve gotta leave the coast if you want to own a home otherwise be rich. If eve...
No, I want to live forever in the city that my parents fucked in, and I deserve a house at 25 just like one they own at 70.
Damn I’m like $70k short Which wouldn’t be a problem if I had a second income
I'm colorblind and this map sucks.
Don't worry. You can't afford to live anywhere anyway.
What does grey mean?
Thank you for sharing. After carefully reviewing my budget and taking such considerations into account as desired lifestyle, sense of belonging, and general happiness, I’ve determined the best place for me to buy a home is a casket.
😭
This is really cool scummy employers (most of them) hate this kind of thing; I've been mapping out government workplace records so that anyone can look at which employers have the most issues. What you've done here was sort of on my roadmap but honestly, I wasn't sure where I ...
I live in a dark blue county in ky and actually own three homes myself this makes sense but everything is still stupid expensive and I rent out two of them just to be able to pay for the third I fucking hate it with a passion I hate having to extort people just so I can make m...
Scams based economy. Definitionally those people could afford to own the home they live in, (as apparently their rent covers taxes/mortgage/maintenance) but are not given the opportunity.
I make 55k as a licensed professional in an area where you need 240k to buy a house. I can barely afford rent. Lol like what am I even working towards? What's even the point?
Every?....it's mostly gray.
By default it’s set to 75k so the gray means if you make 75k or less you can’t afford a house there.
Iowa is large cities, Okoboji, Pella, Decorah and Sioux County. 100% accurate.
Interesting! I just moved back to Iowa after I realized I could not afford a house in western NC. The cost of living difference is night and day
No East or West coast?
It's pre-filtered at the 75K amount, so yeah... If you change the slider, you can see what it takes for those areas.
That is a very cool tool. Just playing with it for a few minutes. Nice work.
My job has two major locations that do the same work that I do, and that is Utah and Ohio. And the pay is the same for both. According to this map If I were to live in Ohio I could buy a home, but I don't live in Ohio, I live in a Utah county where I would need to make 4x that...
$215k minimum for [my county] is insane and definitely inaccurate, what is this based on?
There is nowhere in Idaho you are going to be able to buy a home with a $60k salary. That is extremely outdated information and hasnt been accurate in at least 7-8 years now.
I’m shocked how accurate that is. I moved to a county that is grayed on the 75k cap because it says one needs roughly 81k to live there. The DTI was insanely accurate for how we live. I guess technically I could have stayed in the city based on the map, but my DTI would be clo...
Well this made me sad.
I assume the slider is household gross income?
BuT iT sNoWs ThErE.
A good rule of thumb I've found is that if the biggest complaint about an area is that the winters are on the more brutal side, it's probably a good place to live.
I am so glad I was already depressed.
 Amazing work
I already knew that I had a high COL for Indiana but you didn't need to tell me Bloomington (Monroe County) has the least affordable homes in the state. 🥲
This is awesome!! Thank you!! do you plan to keep it updated with current stats over the next few years?
I mean I already knew that I can never afford to move back to the county where I grew up and where most of my family is, but it's "cool" in a depressing way to see it mapped out so succinctly. Moving the slider and just watching it stay dark and stay dark and stay dark is some...
Idk town of 100k actually live very frugally and this ain't possible here even at 45k wasn't until I got a high paying job it became a possibility.
I know nyc san Fransisco are expensive but what's in willamson county?
I thought you said, you mapped out slavery.
Those parts are the gray ones where the salaries needed is < 75000 and the median income is less than that
The problem is the developers making houses too big. Sorry but you don’t need 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a basement and a 2 car garage. If they’d build 900sqft homes with basic appliances like they used to, people could afford them. Expecting to be able to afford a 2,500sqft ho...
Developers could easily build twice as many houses in the same area that they're currently building on if we didn't have massive yards, driveways and 2000+ sq ft. There is a gap between townhomes and mcmansions that I want and no one seems to make. But townhomes are the new s...
My neighborhoods 850 sq ft 2 bed 1bath home for sale for $1.5m will counter that argument. But you're not completely wrong. A developer will demolish and build 4 townhomes, 2000 sq ft each and sell them for $1.5m each.
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