this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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That’s not what’s being said. The claim is that the median home price in 99% of regions is unaffordable with median income.
And? It's near enough the same to be no different.
It’s completely different.
Imagine you have 10 people. 1 has $100, 2 have $50, and 7 have $20. Now imagine you have 10 stores selling pants. 1 store has a few pants for $50, and a bunch for $10. 1 store has a few pants for $80 and a bunch for $25. 8 have pants for $30, $25, and $10.
In this scenario, the median wealth is $20, and in all but one store the median price is $25. So in 90% of stores, the median pants cost more than the median amount a person can spend. BUT, all but one still have plenty of pants that cost less than the median. Given this, you wouldn’t say “90% of people can’t afford pants”.
You don't take out a 30-year loan for pants.
You’re right. This is just an example to illustrate the statistics involved. At this point it doesn’t seem like you’re continuing this debate in good faith.
All I'm saying is it makes no sense. People keep buying houses which they couldn't do if they were unaffordable. And it's not just 1% that are using those houses. If those houses are bought by the 1% and rented to the 99% in order to pay the house off that means it is not unaffordable to the 99%.
You’re right, and that’s not what’s being claimed. It’s just saying that in 99% OF MARKETS, the median price exceeds the means of the median income. This isn’t really that surprising, actually. In a perfectly balanced market, you’d expect the median price to be exactly equal to the affordability of the median income, so about 50% of markets would be above this value, and 50% would be below it.
It’s probably also true that a far greater percentage of markets are affordable if you look at median income vs 45th percentile home cost, or 55th percentile income vs median home cost.
All this means is that if you make median income, you’ll probably need to buy a house that’s below median price.