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- The San Francisco housing market has gone off the rails in recent years.
- Thanks to an influx of tech money and limited housing stock, average rents have soared to more than $1,700, and a one-bedroom will cost almost $3,700.
- For home buyers, San Francisco is the most expensive city in the US, with an average asking price of almost $1.3 million.
- Visit MarketsInsider.com for more stories.
San Francisco is less than 49 miles square and, with water on three sides, there’s no room to spread out.
Add an invasion of tech company headquarters plus the money from a spate of recent IPOs, and you have the recipe for the a real-estate market that can only be described as out of control.
San Francisco is a gorgeous city, with fabulous views of the bay from rolling hills. Increasingly, however, it’s also an unaffordable city for all but the super wealthy, where even middle class residents find it hard to hang on. The limited supply of homes and the river of money flowing in have created a historically overheated housing market.
Here are 11 unbelievable facts about the San Francisco real estate market that will make you glad you live somewhere else.
You’ll need to earn at least $172,000 a year to afford a home in San Francisco
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Curbed San Francisco reported that buyers need an annual salary of at least $172,153 to keep up with mortgage payments in San Francisco. This assumes that home expenses, including mortgage and insurance, will take up 36% of your monthly paycheck.
According to PayScale, the average salary in San Francisco is around $88,000, putting home ownership out of reach for most. Even a senior software engineer makes just $141,554 on average, according to the PayScale data — not enough to buy a house without a stock option windfall.
The San Francisco Chronicle found that just 18% of households in the Bay Area have enough take-home pay to afford to buy a median-priced home.
The median rent in San Francisco is more than $1,700
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According to 2017 Census data, the median rent in San Francisco is $1,709. About 65% of San Francisco residents are renting their housing units, the city’s planning department said in a report.
And the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco hit almost $3,700 in 2019
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The median rent for a new lease on a one-bedroom San Francisco apartment is around $3,690 a month. According to apartment rental platform Zumper, that’s the highest rent in the US, almost $1,000 more than that of famously pricey New York City.
And San Francisco isn’t the only high-rent California city. Half of the top 10 most expensive cities for renters in the Zumper report were in California. The list included two other cities in the Bay Area alone: San Jose and Oakland.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Laura McCamy)