Once a nice home goes up for sale, people often drive by and wonder what it would take to buy that house. Ballpark figures.
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We asked Paul Salazar at Sierra Pacific Mortgage to break down how much a family would need to make to afford a home just above the median price in the Fresno-Clovis area.
"Right now, you're probably looking at $450,000 and for the income that they needed to generate for that home and a payment, you're looking at about $125,000 a year," said Salazar.
Doable in some families with two incomes. Much harder to pull off though with a single wage earner.
The mortgage payment may raise some eyebrows.
"And that payment is going to be about $4,200 a month. Yeah, that's taxes, insurance, principal and interest and that's only putting 10% down. The more you put down, of course, the lower the payment, the lower the loan amount."
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For example, say you wanted to put down about 15.6%
A Fresno family would need to save for six years and ten months to be able to afford that down payment, according to RealtyHop.
It ranked 150 cities in a study.
"It would take about six years for a family to save up for around a little under a $70,000 down payment," said Alexandra Pena with RealtyHop.
"Fresno actually ranked number 72 out of 150."
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Glendale, California had the worst barrier to home ownership in the study.
Families there would need to save for about 15 years to afford a down payment on a home.
Salazar adds if you are thinking about buying a home, get pre-qualified before you look around.
That way, you can avoid heartbreak in the future.
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