For many prospective homebuyers, the biggest barrier to homeownership isn’t the monthly mortgage payment, but rather the hefty down payment. For today’s median priced single-family home (around $455,000), the 20% required to qualify for a typical mortgage equates to roughly $91,000, a hefty sum blocking many Americans from becoming homeowners.
In one third of the 150 largest U.S. metro areas, however, saving for a down payment takes just under five years, thanks to a relatively high median household income. In Detroit, for example, a 20% down payment for a median priced home of $88,900 takes just 2.56 years—much faster than the 15.10 years required to save for a down payment in Glendale, Calif., The New York Times reports.
It’s not as simple as earning more, because the places where households earn the most also tend to have the highest home prices. Consider San Francisco, where the median household earning $126,187 a year would need 10.5 years to save the required $265,000 down payment for a median-price home costing $1.325 million. Three other California metros — Long Beach, Los Angeles and Glendale — require even more time to save.
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