Want To Buy An NYC House? Save For 35 Years, Study Says

NEW YORK — The American dream might be just a fantasy. New Yorkers could have to save for more than three decades to afford the home of their dreams, a recent analysis shows.

The average single-family home in the Big Apple cost so much that aspiring homeowners in 2017 would have to pinch pennies for 35 years to purchase it in full, says the PropertyClub report published last week.

That's if the buyer were making the "national median income" and saving 30 percent of their earnings each month, according to the Oct. 3 analysis of home prices in the 50 most populous U.S. cities.

"If you’re not tied down to a specific location or set on living in a popular and expensive place like New York City, where luxury living is the norm, then you might want to consider relocating," PropertyClub says in the report.

The city's one-bedroom apartments aren't so far out of reach — it would only take 10 years to for the same buyer to save enough to buy one in full, PropertyClub found.

While the figures have fluctuated over the years, the report shows it's easier for New Yorkers to snag a dwelling now than it was about a decade ago. The amount of time required to save for a single-family home peaked in 2006 at 42 years, while the length for a one-bedroom apartment spiked at 14 years in 2007, according to the analysis.

PropertyClub crunched the numbers based on income data from the Social Security Administration, which says the national average wage was about $50,321 in 2017, the most recent year for which figures are available. The analysis assessed housing costs with data from the listing website Zillow.

While PropertyClub's findings may depress some prospective home buyers in the five boroughs, some cities have it even harder. Pocketing enough cash for a single-family home in San Francisco, for example, would take a whopping 81 years, the report says.

Read PropertyClub's full report here.