Monthly house payments by Capital Region place
A handful of places pulled from the list -- the highest (Bethlehem-Bethlehem Central), the lowest (Corinth town-Corinth Central), and a few in between.
Some follow-up on that post a few weeks back about comparing Capital Region property tax rates: Matt emailed us hoping we could send along the numbers because he was curious about the monthly payments -- mortgage + taxes -- for the median home in each municipality around the area. That sounded interesting to us, so we bounced a spreadsheet back and forth and came up with a different look at the topic.
The results aren't exactly surprising, but it does highlight some things differently.
For example: The city of Schenectady tops the chart for property tax rate (per $1k value). But looking at the monthly payment for the median house there, Schenectady is way, way at the bottom of the list at just about $919 (of which about 45 percent is property taxes).
Based on the monthly payment figure, we were also able to make a rough guess at about how much a household would have to make each year to afford the median house in each place. Example: Bethlehem, in the Bethlehem Central School District, topped the list at about $82k. (Caveats? You bet. They're explained inside.)
OK, let's have a look at the whole (new) list...
The list is above
It's in large format -- click or scroll all the way up.
A few important things
+ Numbers are based on the 2013 estimates in that original post, which had come from the Empire Center.
+ The estimated monthly mortgage payment was based on a 30-year loan at 3.78%.
+ We calculated the minimum annual household income to afford the median house in each place by figuring the minimum income for which the payment would be
(Thanks, Matt!)
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Comments
Considering that the median household income in the Capital Region is just under $43,000 it becomes obvious that many people in the Capital Region will probably never be able to own a home. Further, even more people will be priced out of the markets with the "best" (I know that this is somewhat subjective) school districts. Meaning that the families that would most benefit from sending their kids to Bethlehem or Niskayuna are also the least likely to be able to afford it. Our region suffers from some of the worst economic segregation I have seen, and I've lived in several different parts of the country.
... said Josh on Apr 21, 2015 at 10:52 AM | link