This Is The Salary Needed To Buy A Home In The Bay Area

LOS ANGELES, CA — It's no secret that the cost of living in California is exorbitant, but a new report that shows the salary needed to buy a home may bring more disheartening news.

The nation's most populous state is notoriously home to some of the world's richest people and also has the highest ceiling for salaries needed to live and purchase a home, according to a report from Visual Capitalist.

In the San Jose metro area, which took the no. 1 spot for the highest median home price, one would need to earn a yearly salary of around $337,000 to afford the median home price of $1.88 million. The monthly average mortgage payment for that price would be $7,718, the report said.

In the San Francisco area, the median home price was listed at a whopping $1,380,000. The salary needed to purchase a home of that price would be $249,685, according to the report. The metro area was ranked as the fourth most expensive region in the country.

The average annual pay for a person living in San Francisco is $75,722 per, according to an Aug. 6 report from ZipRecruiter.

Nationwide, the median home price was inching close to $370,000, making home ownership in 2022 a far off dream for many Americans and especially Californians.

The report, published Aug. 1, used data from Home Sweet Home to map out the salary needed to buy a home in the nation's 50 biggest cities. Of the cities analyzed, San Jose, San Diego, Los Angles and San Francisco were listed as the four most expensive housing markets in the nation.

In the Bay Area, home values have risen dramatically between March 2020 through June 2022: from 1.1 million to $1.49 million, a 32 percent increase, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Here are the salaries needed to buy a home in California's biggest cities.

1. San Jose

Median Home Price: $1.88M
Annual Income Needed: $330.76K

2. San Francisco

Median Home Price: $1.38M
Annual Income Needed: $249.69K

3. San Diego

Median Home Price: $905K
Annual Income Needed: $166.83K

4. Los Angeles

Median Home Price: $792.5K
Annual Income Needed: $149.13K

5. Riverside/San Bernardino

Median Home Price: $560K
Annual Income Needed: $106.19K

6. Sacramento

Median Home Price: $545K
Annual Income Needed: $105.93K

"Depending on where you live, owning a home may seem like a far off dream or it could be fairly realistic. In New York City, for example, a person needs to be making at least six figures to buy a home, but in Cleveland you could do it with just over $45,000 a year," researchers wrote in the report.

According to the report, the U.S. median household income is $67,500, meaning that the average family could afford to buy a home in just 15 of the 50 major cities ranked.

In California, the typical pay range for an "average" job is between $48,998 to $74,240, while top earners make an average of $98,986 annually, ZipRecruiter reported in August.

"At the end of the day, buying a home can be an important investment and may provide a sense of security, but it will be much easier to do in certain types of cities," researchers from the housing report wrote.