College graduates earn a lot of money in San Jose but are still $100,000 short to afford a roof over their heads, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Soaring home prices, student loan burdens and slow wage growth are delaying many college-educated individuals from achieving the American dream. About a fifth in the decline in homeownership among young adults can be attributed to the increase in student loan debt alone, according to a recent report from Federal Reserve researchers.
Bloomberg used data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Zillow Group Inc. and Bankrate.com to quantify the annual income a college graduate would need to purchase a typical home in the largest U.S. cities.
The Unattainable West Coast
The top three most exorbitant neighborhoods on the list -- San Jose, San Francisco and Santa Cruz -- for college graduates, relative to their earning power, along with No.5-ranked Santa Rosa, are located in the San Francisco Bay area. Further, the vast majority of the 31 locations with an affordability gap are located west of the Mississippi river.
In San Jose, a typical college graduate would need to more than double his/her income of $83,430 in 2018 to comfortably cover the mortgage on a typical home, assuming the 20% down payment is not an issue.
Bloomberg inferred the area’s break-even home value, a mortgage level for someone whose pay is around $83,000, to be $560,000. This is 45 percent below the regions median priced $1.25 million home.
The Big Apple
Not all large cities are as uniformly pricey. The New York metropolitan area is made of 25 diverse counties and connected by extensive commuter systems, this leaves pockets of affordability in the outer boroughs and more remote suburbs.
All five boroughs are below the generally accepted affordability thresholds but variances are wide. The affordability gap for Manhattan, based on an estimated income of just above $80,000 and on a typical home priced at a cool $1.3 million, came out to be a whopping $107,000. But, in Staten Island, a median priced home can be affordable with the income of a typical college graduate.