The harsh reality of living in New York City is that for many people, homeownership is not likely a possibility. A 2016 report issued by NYU’s Furman Center took a look at the cost of buying a home—and TL;DR, you’d better be wealthy if owning here is a dream you hold dear.
Recent studies would appear to back that up: Brick Underground reports that mortgage and loan information publisher HSH.com came up with the most recent figures for what one needs to earn in order to buy a home in the city, and it still isn’t promising.
Per HSH’s findings, it would take an annual salary of at least $99,151 to buy a typical house or apartment in New York City. Of course, this is assuming you’ve already put down a 20 percent down payment, have a debt-to-income ratio of 28 percent, and a 30-year fixed mortgage rate with an APR of around four percent.
HSH calculations puts the median home price for the metro area at $419,000. But the firm also incorporates parts of Long Island, upstate, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania into their metric, so that figure is quite a bit off from the $680,000 median home price that Douglas Elliman’s Miller Samuel reported for New York City alone. The city's median household income is around $60,000, according to the American Community Survey.
If it makes you feel any better, New York is only the fifth most expensive city for home ownership in the country, falling behind San Jose, San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles.
