Sign In
Upcoming Event
Free Newsletter
Analysis finds home prices unaffordable for most average wage earners
Staff Report //April 4, 2018//
Analysis finds home prices unaffordable for most average wage earners
Staff Report //April 4, 2018//
Listen to this articleMedian home prices across the country in the first quarter of 2018 were not affordable for average wage earners, according to a report by property data company Attom Data Solutions.
The report, which surveyed 446 counties in the U.S., found median home prices unaffordable in 304 of them, including Charleston, Dorchester, Beaufort, Greenville and York counties. Median home prices in Berkeley, Sumter, Richland, Lexington, Aiken, Spartanburg, Anderson and Pickens counties were affordable, according to the report.
The median sales price for a home in the Charleston area in the first quarter was highest in Charleston County, at $318,000, followed by Dorchester County, at $201,500, and Berkeley County, at $184,900.
Attom determined affordability by calculating the amount of income needed to make monthly payments on a median-priced home — including mortgage, property taxes and insurance — assuming a 3% down payment and a 28% maximum front-end debt-to-income ratio. The calculation was then compared to average annual wages from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In Charleston County, a person would need an annual income of $81,910 to buy a median-priced home, which is $33,771 more than the average annual wages, and in Dorchester County, a homebuyer would need an annual income $53,780, which is $17,367 more than average annual wages. In Berkeley County, however, the cost and income totals were nearly identical, making it the only affordable county in the Charleston metro region: $49,579 needed to buy and an average annual income of $50,141.
Berkeley County was also the only one in the tri-county region to have year-over-year annual wage growth that was greater than median home price growth: wages grew by 3% and the median home price grew by 1%. In Charleston County, annualized wages grew by 2% year-over-year while the median home price grew by 13%, and in Dorchester County, annualized wages grew by 3% while the median home price grew while by 8%.
