Once a nice home goes up for sale, people often drive by and wonder what it would take to buy that house. Ballpark figures.
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."
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."
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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