Brooklyn Housing Market Named Least Affordable in America

BROOKLYN, NY — Guys, we won! A new report released this week by RealtyTrac, a housing data and analytics company, has found that in the third quarter of 2016, Kings County (aka, Brooklyn) was the least affordable place in America to buy a house.

Santa Cruz County, a sleepy beach community in Central California, took a distant second; Marin County, the bougie suburb above San Francisco, took third; Manhattan took fourth; and San Luis Obispo County, another sleepy California beach town, took fifth.

To arrive at these rankings, RealtyTrac analysts took the average wages earned by residents of each county, then calculated what percentage of those wages it would take residents to buy a home within their county.

In Brooklyn, that figure is staggering: The average resident would have to spend 124 percent of their income to afford a median-priced home in their own borough, according to RealtyTrac.

Here are the top 10 least affordable counties in America, by this same standard:

1. Kings County (Brooklyn), New York (123.5 percent of average wages needed to buy a median priced home)
2. Santa Cruz County, California (111.1 percent)
3. Marin County, California (109.4 percent)
   
4. New York County (Manhattan), New York (96.6 percent)
5. San Luis Obispo County, California (91.2 percent)
6. San Francisco County, California (89.6 percent)
7. Maui County, Hawaii (89.3 percent)
8. Napa County, California (84.1 percent)
9. Queens County, New York (83.7 percent)
10. Monterey County, California (83.5 percent)

And on the flip side, here are America's Top 5 most affordable counties:

1. Clayton County (Atlanta), Georgia (10.1 percent of average wages needed to buy a median-priced home)
2. Rock Island County, Illinois (13.3 percent)
3. Trumbull County (Youngstown), Ohio (15.2 percent)
4. Saginaw County, Michigan (15.4 percent)
5. Bibb County (Macon), Georgia (15.6 percent)

In conclusion: What in the Lord's name are we all still doing here, let's move to Atlanta before the mortgage vultures suck our souls down to the marrow and turn on our firstborns when they're still not satisfied.

H/T Brokelyn. Pictured at top: 3 Pierrepont Place, priced at $40 million, is the most expensive home in Brooklyn. Image via Google Maps