How Much Must You Earn To Buy A Home In 2022? Plus, Prices Fell In These 10 Cities

A homebuyer must earn $93,684 to afford the $2,342 monthly mortgage payment on the typical U.S. home.

That's down 14.51% from one month ago, and up 21.37% from $73,668 a year ago.

This is owing to mortgage rates more than doubling in the last year, along with consistently high property prices.

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The median home sale price was $357,073 — up slightly from the week before and up 2.4% year over year.

Housing affordability has continued to decline in the fourth quarter of 2022 as a result of persistently high home prices and rising mortgage rates. However, affordability has improved in the last four weeks after the Bureau of Labor Statistics released data showing that the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes have been cooling inflation, which is still at 40-year highs.

With a 20% down payment, the typical existing single-family home's monthly mortgage payment was $2,342, versus the $2,682 needed just one month ago.

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“There have been a handful of pieces of relatively good news for the housing market lately, but we’re far from out of the woods,” said Redfin Corp RDFN Deputy Chief Economist Taylor Marr. “Key indicators of homebuying demand will likely be teetering on a knife’s edge with every data release that comes out related to the Fed’s path to eventually bringing rates down”

Among the 50 most populous U.S. metros, home-sale prices fell from a year earlier in 10 of them. Prices fell:

• 8.2% year over year in San Francisco
• 2.8% in San Jose, CA
• 2.7% in Pittsburgh
• 2.3% in Detroit
• 1.7% in Sacramento
• 1.3% in Austin
• and less than 1% in Chicago, San Diego, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

“We’re likely past peak inflation, past peak mortgage rates and past the bottom for mortgage purchase applications,” Marr said. “But there’s further cooling ahead for the housing market, as sales and prices have further to fall before buyers and sellers become comfortable with homebuying costs again.”

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