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San Luis Obispo County makes the top 10 unaffordable list

August 16, 2014

affordable housing imageSan Luis Obispo County is in the top 10 least affordable places to live in the United States, according to a study conducted by the National Association of Home Builders.

Of the 277 metro housing markets evaluated in the study, all but one the top five small housing market and top five major housing markets were in California. San Francisco was the least affordable with only 11.1 percent of homes sold in the second quarter being affordable to families earning the area’s median income of $100,400.

The study focused on median incomes and median home prices.

According to the study, SLO County’s median home price during the second quarter of 2014 was $440,000. With an average county family income of $77,000, only 22.2 percent of the homes in the county were affordable during that time.

Cumberland, Md with a median income of $54,100 a year and a median home price of $91,000 was rated the most affordable place to live in the country.

The national median home price increased from $195,000 in the first quarter of 2014 to $214,000 in the second quarter. During the same time period, average mortgage interest rates decreased from 4.57 percent to 4.44 percent.

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San Luis Obispo County is unaffordable


DUH!


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Oops… CalCoastNews can’t count. SLO county is now the 11th least affordable housing market, which for clarification is NOT in the top 10. We are usually in the top 10, so being 11th is actually an improvement.


The affordability rankings and related data are at: http://www.nahb.org/reference_list.aspx?sectionID=135


I wonder how long this posting will last. Anyone care to bet?


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At least you included a more useful link than the original piece… thanks for that!


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At your service. :)


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These studies only tell part of the story. I have lived in New England and San Luis obispo. New England, despite lower initial cost for comparable housing, is more expensive over the long term due to cost of oil, food, maintenance- mostly due to the climate.


Makes sense to me that if you live near the ocean in America’s best climate it will cost a lot more money than in tornado alley in Oklahoma. Why is this even a story?


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I have a sibling who moved to San Antonio, she was offered the same pay as here. Huge house, yard, and no income tax. Gas is a buck cheaper too. But 100 degrees every day. She likes it. Just sayin.


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But with the Lone Star Brewery there, who CARES about the heat?


And long as y’all don’t drive into Austin, good conservative intelligent folks abound here.


Rick Perry is going to light his cigar with the political indictment he just received.


GO, Lone Star State!


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Take away most of California’s regulations on building requirements and you could make a significant reduction with the cost of housing. Locally one has to spend around $60,000 and more to process a building permit. Maybe we need another prison built in the county to house these thieves.


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Not unaffordable if you work in the public sector.


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Really? Well why don’t you ask the city of SLO about the results of their “compensation study” they just did. I wonder why none of the media are running the results of that?


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This focus on comparative studies is a mental game public employees like to play. I only need to look one place to get an idea of whether their compensation is excessive, sufficient, or too little, and that is the actual salary database.


http://publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/Cities/City.aspx?entityid=424&fiscalyear=2012


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You do know this study was done by the city and an advisory board made up of people in the community in the private sector?


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No amount of bureaucratic newspeak, groups with such and such legitimacy, or committee-approved findings is going to deter me from sticking with the basic facts in front of my face.


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Was this study done by the same people who came up with the definition of a “Capital Improvement” to justified how they spent Measure Y money and how they want to spend Measure G money? We all know this money did and will go to salaries, benefits and pensions.


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Get a copy of the results and see who is at the top. I’ll give you a guess….it starts with “manage” and ends with “ment”.


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And most of those in “manage” “ment” started out as non-“manage” “ment”, so as one of those they say high salaries for those in the top are wrong but once they get to “manage” “ment” all of a sudden high salaries are fine.


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Slojo: The City is not going to publicly touch this until after the Measure G tax is passed. They need that money for salaries, retirement packages, free medical for management.


mkaney: The public pay site you listed is interesting. Like any stats, numbers are a shell game. When you have management and public safety employees retiring with annual retirements paychecks of $100,000 to $160,000 that tells us that management and public safety are extremely well paid in our City. It also tells me that they are a lot of employees (streets, parks, clerical – the worker bees) that are really not compensated in parity to other branches of the City. The have and have nots are alive at the City!


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SLOBIRD: I think what is most interesting is the large number of public safety people dominating that list, in a city that is not particularly dangerous. Growing up here, in an era with a much much smaller public safety apparatus and nearly the same population, I know that in this case the egg definitely came before the chicken, it’s not some great achievement of the larger apparatus.


Which begs the question, what are they doing here? And since it’s our money they’re pocketing, whose interests are the here to serve? Clearly the prison industrial complex has become big business, despite a DRAMATIC decrease in crime over the last few decades. I think this should be concerning to everyone.


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Also, remember that many of those positions are part time or new hires so only a portion of their yearly pay is presented.


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slojo, post a link to your report. I’m fairly certain that it’s “excellent” but it’s just slightly possible that I could find flaws in your data set, methodology, assumptions, and structure. We’ll see. Just put it out there.


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So why don’t YOU work in the public sector?


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Doesn’t meet the MQs.


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Geez, we made it to the top of yet another list.Here are just a few….

Most unaffordable

Happiest

Care of the homeless

Best university ;-)

Respect for Vets (Especially on Pear Harbor Day)

Business friendly (DTBA only)


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Lamest imported college thug squad on the gridiron.

And I’m qualified to pronounce this title.


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