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Here's The Salary You Have To Earn To Buy A Home In These 13 Major US Cities

Here's The Salary You Have To Earn To Buy A Home In These 13 Major US Cities

san francisco row houses

Flickr / annie

The homes shown here, like these San Francisco row houses, are not representative of available housing for the listed prices.

In May, we reported on the salary needed to buy a home in 12 major U.S. cities, based on first-quarter data analyzed by mortgage website HSH.com.

The site has updated its data according to 2014 second-quarter numbers, which we've listed here (with the addition of Washington, D.C.).

Spoiler alert: It's only gotten more expensive.

The site looked at median home prices from the National Association of Realtors, along with interest rates for common 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages and property taxes and insurance costs, to figure out how much money it would take to pay a median-priced home's mortgage principal, taxes, and insurance - and how much you would have to earn to afford it.

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HSH.com does caveat that of course, property taxes and insurance costs can skew the cost of an individual property. "Also, if other personal debts exceed 8% of a given monthly gross income," the site notes, "this will increase the salary needed to qualify." You can check out its website for the full methodology.

While HSH's full list includes 27 metro areas in the U.S., here we're presenting the data for 13 of the largest cities, ordered from lowest salary required to highest and rounded to the nearest $500. Note that they're calculating the salary needed to buy, which, if you're married or otherwise splitting the cost, may be your household income.

Can you afford to buy a median-priced home where you live?

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