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10 U.S. cities where it takes the biggest paycheck to buy a home

Affording a house now takes a far bigger salary than it used to. Redfin ranks the U.S. metros where buying a home demands the steepest earnings

Plenty of households with steady jobs, good credit, and down-payment savings are still renting, and not by choice. The arithmetic of a monthly mortgage payment no longer works on an ordinary salary. A buyer financing a purchase today needs to earn roughly $22,000 more than the typical American household brings home before a median-priced house fits inside the standard budgeting guideline of spending 30% of income on housing. That shortfall has kept a generation of would-be first-time owners renting longer than they planned, and while it has narrowed from $26,125 a year ago and $28,834 two years ago, it hasn't closed. Most of the improvement traces back to paychecks catching up rather than houses getting cheaper.

Nationally, the paycheck needed for a median-priced home now stands at $109,796, down 0.5% from $110,382 a year earlier. The typical household earns $87,599, up 4% over the same stretch, and that wage growth explains why the picture hasn't gotten worse. Home prices gained 2.2% from a year earlier as of June, while mortgage rates eased only slightly and held in the mid-6% range, adding hundreds of dollars a month to payments compared with what buyers faced before 2022. A household earning the median would hand over 37.6% of its income every month to buy the median home, well past the 30% guideline. Just 34.2% of listings sit within reach of that household, better than the 30.5% of a year ago but far short of the years before 2022, when a median earner could afford more than half of what was for sale in nearly every month tracked since 2013.

Redfin measured what buyers had to earn in June 2026 across the country's 50 largest metro areas and reported results for the 46 with enough data behind them. Analysts priced out a median home in each market using sale prices, June mortgage rates, and local property taxes, then assumed a 15% down payment and capped monthly housing costs at 30% of income. Affordability improved in 24 of those 46 markets over the past year, driven largely by West Coast metros where prices are sliding. Senior Economist Yingqi Xu said the earnings requirement has leveled off after years of getting worse, though steadier numbers haven't made homes affordable to the average American. These 10 metro areas demand the largest paychecks in the country.

Buyers in San Francisco need to earn $453,205 to afford the median-priced home, the steepest income requirement of any market Redfin measured and more than four times the $109,796 required nationally. Over the past year the requirement climbed 6.2%, the second-largest increase among the 46 metro areas in the analysis, since home prices in San Francisco rose faster in June than in nearly every other major metro. A household earning the local median of $162,118 pulls in what would count as a high salary almost anywhere else and still comes up roughly $291,000 short. Nationally the typical household falls $22,197 short of affording a median-priced home, so the shortfall facing a median San Francisco earner is more than 13 times as wide.

A median earner buying a median-priced San Francisco home would put 83.9% of gross earnings toward the monthly payment, nearly three times the 30% ceiling Redfin uses to define affordability and more than double the 37.6% a typical American would spend. Only 9.6% of homes for sale in the metro are affordable to a household earning the local median, against 34.2% nationwide, which leaves more than nine of every 10 listings beyond reach for the people who already live there.

Competition is tightening as workers and investment pour into the Bay Area during the AI boom, and San Francisco is one of just seven metro areas nationwide where sellers still hold the upper hand, at a time when buyers have negotiating power across most of the U.S. Redfin builds its income estimate from what homes actually sell for, current mortgage rates, and local property taxes, assuming a buyer puts 15% down. With rates sitting in the mid-6% range, each additional dollar of price growth in a market this expensive adds far more to the salary a buyer needs to clear.

Home prices across San Jose, Calif., fell over the past year, and the income needed to buy there dropped 6.5% along with them, the second-largest decline among the 46 metro areas Redfin measured, with only Seattle improving faster. Even after that drop, buying a typical home in San Jose takes an income of $423,840, a requirement surpassed only by San Francisco. Measured against the $109,796 needed nationally, San Jose asks nearly four times as much, and 12 months of softening prices barely narrowed the distance.

Workers in San Jose are paid better than in any other market in the analysis, with a median household income of $176,401, and that paycheck still lands about $250,000 short of what buying takes. A median earner purchasing a typical home would put 72.1% of income toward a monthly payment covering the mortgage, property taxes, and insurance, nearly double the 37.6% the average U.S. household spends and well past the 30% ceiling........

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