How Much Income You Need To Afford the Average Home In Every State

This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

The housing market has not only recovered its pre-recession levels, but some observers are actually starting to worry about yet another housing bubble. Housing prices are on the rise, thanks in large part to extremely tight inventory, so it’s worth asking:  are potential home buyers getting priced out of the market? The answer depends on where they live and how much money they make.

HowMuch.net collected average home prices for every state from Zillow which we then plugged into a mortgage calculator to figure out monthly payments. Remember, mortgage payments consist of both the principal and the interest for the loan. The interest rate we used varied from 4 to 5% in each state, depending on the market. The lower the interest rate, the lower the monthly payment. To keep things simple, we assumed buyers could contribute a 10% down payment. Another thing to keep in mind is that financial advisors commonly recommend the total cost of housing take up no more than 30% of gross income (the amount before taxes, retirement savings, etc.). Using this rule as our benchmark, we calculated the minimum salary required to afford the average home in each state.

Source: HowMuch.net

Top Five Places Where You Need the Highest Salaries to Afford the Average Home

1. Hawaii: $153,520 for a house worth $610,000

2. Washington, DC: $138,440 for a house worth $549,000

3. California: $120,120 for a house worth $499,900

4. Massachusetts: $101,320 for a house worth $419,900

5. Colorado: $100,200 for a house worth $415,000

Top Five Places Where You Need the Lowest Salaries to Afford the Average Home

1. West Virginia: $38,320 for a house worth $149,500

2. Ohio: $38,400 for a house worth $149,900

3. Michigan: $40,800 for a house worth $160,000

4. Arkansas: $41,040 for a house worth $161,000

5. Missouri: $42,200 for a house worth $165,900

Our map creates a quick snapshot of housing affordability across the United States. There are several pockets in which only the upper middle class and above can afford to own even the average home, most notably across the West and in the Northeast. There are only two states west of the Mississippi River where a worker with an annual salary under $40,000 can afford a mid-level home:  Missouri and Oklahoma. Colorado stands out as the only landlocked state requiring a significant amount of income ($100,200), thanks in large part to the housing market around Denver.

Homes tend to be more affordable in the eastern half of the country, with a notable pocket of “green” (less expensive) states located in the upper Midwest. The North is generally more affordable than the South and the typical home is significantly easier to buy in places like Michigan or Ohio than in Louisiana or Arkansas.  Additionally, our map indicates that workers can more easily afford homes in the East than in the West, which is surprising given how much more land is available out West. It is important to note that there are certainly deep pockets of poverty in all of these places, which suggests that our map obscures the inequality behind averages.

The best takeaway from our map is that housing remains affordable in large swaths of the country, even though there will always be places like California and New York where there is simply too much demand for the available inventory. Thankfully, that doesn’t mean that buying a home is suddenly out of reach for average Americans in Ohio or Mississippi, for example.

Source: HowMuch.net

In Nearly 70% Of US Counties, The Average Worker Can’t Afford To Buy A Home

This article was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

Housing, as we’ve pointed out in the past, is perhaps the most reliable bellwether of widening economic inequality in the US. And in its latest quarterly report on housing affordability in the US, ATTOM discovered that median-priced homes aren’t affordable to average wage earners in an astounding 68% of US housing markets.

In its report, the company calculated affordability by incorporating the amount of income needed to make monthly home payments – including mortgage payments, property tax payments and insurance – on a median-priced home, assuming a 3% down payment and a 28% maximum “front-end” debt-to-income ratio.

That required income was then compared with the median home price.

The 304 counties where a median-priced home in the first quarter was not affordable for average wage earners included Los Angeles County, California; Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona; San Diego County, California; Orange County, California; and Miami-Dade County, Florida. Meanwhile, the 142 counties (32 percent of the 446 counties analyzed in the report) where a median-priced home in the first quarter was still affordable for average wage earners included Cook County (Chicago), Illinois; Harris County (Houston), Texas; Dallas County, Texas; Wayne County (Detroit), Michigan; and Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania.

Already, the “hottest” housing markets are seeing an exodus of working- and middle-class individuals who can no longer afford to pay the high rents – let along afford to set aside enough money for a down payment.

Eight of the top 10 counties with the highest median home prices in Q1 2018 posted negative net migration in 2017: Kings County (Brooklyn), New York (25,484 net migration decrease); Santa Clara County (San Jose), California (5,559 net migration decrease); New York County (Manhattan), New York (3,762 net migration decrease); Orange County, California (3,750 net migration decrease); and San Mateo, Marin, Napa and Santa Cruz counties in Northern California.

Furthermore, ATTOM’s data found that this problem is getting worse, not better, with 41% of housing markets less affordable than their historical average during the first quarter. That’s up from 35% the quarter before.

Meanwhile, a staggering 73% of markets posted worsening affordability compared with a year ago, including Los Angeles, Cook County (home to Chicago), Maricopa County (Phoenix) and Kings County (Brooklyn).

The counties where the average wage earner would need to spend the highest share of their income to buy a median-priced home are Baltimore, Bibb County (Macon, Georgia) and Wayne County (Detroit).

Continuing with the trend of home prices rising more than twice as quickly as wages, home-price appreciation outpaced wage growth in 83% of housing markets.

When Fed Chairman Jerome Powell warned last month that “valuations are still elevated across a range of asset classes” and that he fears “signs of rising non-financial leverage” it’s possible that he was still understating the problem.

“Brutality In Motion”: Each Year, 50,000 People Are Hospitalized From Police Injuries

This article was written by Lily Dane and originally published at The Daily Sheeple.

Editor’s Comment: The level that things have reached on every front is outrageous. It isn’t just police, the entire system is out of control. Hospitals kill at least 100,000 patients per year due; the monetary system is a spreading virus and a fraud. No transaction in society represents what it seems on face value; it is discounted, it is corruption.

How much farther can things deteriorate before they collapse? We have only history to guide us, and time to wait. Be ready for what is coming, and stay vigilant.

Study: Police-Inflicted Injuries Send More Than 50,000 To Emergency Rooms EVERY YEAR

by Lily Dane

A new study published by JAMA Surgery found that from 2006 to 2012, there were approximately 51,000 emergency department visits per year for patients injured by law enforcement in the United States, with this number stable over this time period.

From the press release:

During this time period, there were 355,677 ED visits for injuries by law enforcement, and frequencies did not increase over time. Of these visits, 0.3 percent (n = 1,202) resulted in death. More than 80 percent of patients were men, and the average age of patients was 32 years. Most lived in zip codes with median household income less than the national average, and 81 percent lived in urban areas. Injuries by law enforcement were more common in the South and West and less common in the Northeast and Midwest. Most injuries by law enforcement resulted from being struck, with gunshot and stab wounds accounting for fewer than seven percent. Most injuries were minor. Medically identified substance abuse was common in patients injured by police, as was mental illness.

The most common cause of injury was “being struck by or against” which accounted for approximately 77 percent of the ER visits.

Lead study author Dr. Elinore Kaufman, a surgical resident at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City, told Live Science that mental illness was common, affecting 20 percent of people injured. She added that the study’s estimate of 51,000 emergency room visits per year does not include deaths that occur at crime scenes or people who are injured but do not seek medical attention.

Of the findings, the study authors wrote,

While public attention has surged in recent years, we found these frequencies [approximately 51,000 ED visits per year] to be stable over 7 years, indicating that this has been a longer-term phenomenon.

While it is impossible to classify how many of these injuries are avoidable, these data can serve as a baseline to evaluate the outcomes of national and regional efforts to reduce law enforcement-related injury.

According to The Counted, a database maintained by The Guardian, 1,146 people were killed by police in the US in 2015, and 1,092 lost their lives to law enforcement in 2016.

The Washington Post maintains a database called Fatal Force that tracks police shootings. So far in 2017, according to the database, 295 people have been fatally shot by police in the US.

A website called Killed By Police lists people who have been killed by police by all means, including gunshot, taser, restraint/physical force, chemical, vehicle, and “other.” The site is updated regularly, and as of the time of this writing, 343 deaths by law enforcement are documented.

This article was written by Lily Dane and originally published at The Daily Sheeple.

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IRS In the “Civil Asset Forfeiture Game Too”: Seized $17 Million From Legal Business Owners

This article was written by Lily Dane and originally published at The Daily Sheeple.

Editor’s Comment: The IRS has never been concerned about the law – if they did, they wouldn’t exist under their current formation. With so many expenditures in government, though, it is working overtime to pull extra cash from the milk cow – and now even going after individuals and businesses on the thinness of pretexts.

That’s why it is so important that the Bill of Rights be defended, and rights be observed and protected. SWAT teams demanding cash with a bag at the door – literally or metaphorically – is not freedom.

IRS Seized $17 Million in Legally Earned Cash From Business Owners, Watchdog Reports

by Lily Dane

Police departments aren’t the only ones seizing money from citizens without charging them with a crime: the IRS is in the civil asset forfeiture game too.

In just two years – from 2012 to 2014 – the IRS stole more than $17 million from innocent business owners, deliberately targeting their earnings for an easy steal. Using obscure anti-money laundering rules and civil asset forfeiture, the agency compromised the rights of individuals and their businesses, a government watchdog has discovered.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) released a report on March 30 that details how IRS investigators seized hundreds of bank accounts from business owners based on nothing but a suspicious pattern of deposits.

In more than 90 percent of those cases, the money was completely legal. The audit also found that investigators violated internal policies when conducting interviews, failed to notify individuals of their rights, and improperly bargained to resolve civil cases.

From The Washington Post:

To combat criminal activity, individuals and businesses are required to report all bank deposits greater than $10,000 to federal authorities. Intentionally splitting up large sums of cash into sub-$10,000 amounts to avoid that reporting requirement is known as “structuring” and is illegal under the federal Bank Secrecy Act.

But many business owners engaged in perfectly legal activities may be unaware of the law. Others are covered by insurance policies that don’t cover cash losses greater than $10,000. Still others simply want to avoid extra paperwork, and keep their deposits less than $10,000 on the advice of bank employees or colleagues.

Under the Act, structuring IS technically a crime, but the reporting requirements were enacted to detect serious criminal activity – including terrorist activities, money laundering, and drug trafficking.

They “were not put in place just so that the Government could enforce the reporting requirements,” as the IG’s report explains.

But the IRS didn’t let that stop them. The agency pursued hundreds of cases from 2012 to 2015 on suspicion of structuring, but with no indications of connections to any criminal activity. Simply depositing cash in sums of less than $10,000 was all that it took to arouse agents’ suspicions, leading to the eventual seizure and forfeiture of millions of dollars in cash from people not otherwise suspected of criminal activity.

The inspector general found money seized and forfeited by the IRS was legally obtained in 91 percent of a sample of 278 structuring investigations it reviewed occurring between fiscal years 2012 and 2014. Altogether, those funds totaled $17.1 million and involved 231 cases.

The investigation was launched in 2014 after lawsuits and research by the Institute for Justice (IJ), including its report Seize First, Question Later, which is cited by TIGTA, helped bring the abuses to the public’s attention.

The investigation also found, reports IJ:

• Department of Justice attorneys working with the IRS encouraged “quick hits,” where property was easier to seize, “rather than pursuing cases with other criminal activity (such as drug trafficking and money laundering), which are more time-consuming”;


• “The Government appeared to bargain non-prosecution to resolve the civil forfeiture case[s]”;


• Investigators often ignored reasonable explanations for transactions that appeared to fit a pattern of structuring.

IJ Attorney Robert Everett Johnson issued a statement in response to the report, and some details he points out are particularly concerning:

The IRS gave no warning prior to these seizures, and the IRS did not speak to property owners to see if there might be some honest explanation for the pattern. Shockingly, even when property owners provided an innocent explanation for their banking practices following the seizures, the IRS watchdog found that the agency did not even consider whether it might be true. That disregard for the pursuit of justice is the unfortunate but unsurprising result of civil forfeiture’s profit incentive, which allows agencies like the IRS to use money that they seize to fund their budgets.

The IRS and the DOJ have returned some money to some victims, but until all of the ill-gotten assets are returned to their proper owners, justice will not be served, says IJ.

It is unclear whether structuring forfeiture cases make up a small or large percentage of all IRS forfeitures, because the IRS does not publish that information and denied requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act to make it public.

The findings of the TIGTA audit were released shortly after another government corruption bombshell was revealed: The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) seized $3.2 billion in cash over a 10-year period from people who were never under criminal investigation.