Joe Flacco
Elite Member
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2013
- Professional Status
- Certified Residential Appraiser
- State
- Maryland
I think there are many factors that are not being considered when considering affordability.
Look at Manhattan. Median income: $66,739 (2014). Median home price: $1.3 million.
How is that kind of income/price ratio possible? Trust me. California can get a lot more unaffordable than it is now.
You simply include the data that's available. You make observations about trends prices, incomes and affordability. Plus the lending requirements that have been loosened allowing the marginal buyer with marginal credit to enter the market.
And maybe it will. I've been talking about national and I already mentioned all RE is local. Manhattan is a geographically constrained district in NYC, the majority of whose workers commute, and there's a lot of imported money in their RE market. This is also the case for some of the other cities like DC, Seattle, San Francisco. and the like. But that isn't the case for even the surrounding suburbs to NYC itself, let alone the entire nation's housing stock.
If you want to deny that on a national basis there has always been a relationship between pricing and incomes then knock yourself out. But the numbers don't lie.