According to new data from Zillow, only 45 percent of the homes for sale in the Bay Area are considered "affordable" to home buyers who make the median income of $77,000 per year. For someone in that income bracket, the only affordable homes are in the suburbs.
By Zillow's definition, an affordable home in San Francisco will cost a homebuyer about 37.7 percent of their income in mortgage payments — that is already way higher than the national historical average of 22 percent. By that figure, more than half of the homes for sale in the bay area were out of reach for most buyers.
In the map below (interactive version here), the red zones show what's out of reach for a median income home buyer, while the green notes the land of affordable homeownership. If you're looking to buy, now would be a good time to start thinking about the Bayview:
Other markets like Los Angeles, Denver, Portland and Miami are in similarly expensive situations, but San Francisco gets the dubious honor of being the least affordable.
