DENVER – It’s no secret that Denver’s housing market is expensive and only getting worse and a new report paints a pretty ugly picture of what it takes to afford the typical home here.
Mortgage information site HSH.com looked at how much income it takes to afford the monthly payments on a mortgage for the median home price in the country’s biggest cities and found that in metro Denver, that number is $87,222.49 a year.
That puts Denver in eighth place among the most expensive cities, just behind New York City.
The Denver area’s median household income, according to the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation, is $73,271.
HSH assumed a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage and the standard 20-percent down payment for the sake of its calculations, along with a median home price of $441,500 for the Denver metro area.
For what it’s worth, the median home price HSH used for its analysis ($441,500) was the first-quarter median single-family home price released by the National Association of Realtors. That’s slightly lower than May’s median single-family home price of $451,000, as reported by the Denver Metro Association of Realtors but higher than the median price of all residential sales (including condos), which was $420,000 in May.
MORE: Denver-area home prices up nearly 10 percent in past year; inventory also rising
To determine the salary needed to afford such a home, HSH looked at mortgage data from Freddie Mac and the Mortgage Bankers Association of America as well as local property tax and homeowners’ insurance data.
Based on those figures, San Jose, California requires the highest income at more than $262,000. San Francisco isn’t far behind at $181,777.
Nationally, HSH found a homeowner would need to make at least $56,110 to afford the median home.
To read the full report, head over to hsh.com.