Report: Metro Atlantans must make about $50K to buy median-priced homes

Although it becomes pricier to live in metro Atlanta by the day, the region still sits on the “more affordable” side when compared to the country’s 49 other largest metropolitan areas.

That’s according to new research published by HSH.com, a mortgage-tracking site, which compared the income and home price stats of the nation’s 50 biggest metro areas.

Prospective homebuyers shopping around metro Atlanta need to make upwards of $50,000 a year to score a median-priced home (something in the neighborhood of $230,000), according to a recent HSH.com study.

That metric comes from analysis of metro buyers seeking to put down 20 percent of mortgage costs beforehand.

If house-hunters can put down only 10 percent of the price to start, however, the requisite salary jumps about $8,000, to $58,706.

To put that in perspective, a recent affordable housing study conducted by the Beltline marked metro Atlanta’s area median income—which includes stats from suburbs like Marietta and Sandy Springs—at $74,000 for a family of four.

Comparatively, Pittsburgh clocked in as one of the most affordable metro areas in the country. Homebuyers there need only make about $38,000 a year to afford the median-priced home at $152,000.

On the other hand, cities such as San Jose and San Francisco not surprisingly top the list of least affordable metropolitan ares.

In San Jose, you’d need to earn roughly $274,000 a year to score a run-of-the-mill $1.4 million home. In San Francisco, a $214,000 salary would land a home for the median price of just under $1.1 million.

Published this week, HSH’s research comes about two months after the National Low Income Housing Coalition released a report detailing how many hours minimum wage employees must work to buy a home in U.S. cities.

In Atlanta, minimum wage workers—making $7.25 an hour, per Georgia law—would need to log roughly 100 hours per week in order to afford a decent two-bedroom rental.

One of these days, given recent trends, Atlanta just might find itself on the “least affordable” side of that list.

• The salary you must earn to buy a home in the 50 largest metros [HSH.com]