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Source? It would be surprising to me if lenders were regularly approving loans where the mortgage payment alone (not including insurance or taxes) was >=48% of monthly income. There are certainly lenders that will approve mortgages with high ratios relative to salary (due to the value of bonuses and equity comp), but the $125,000 figure is all-in income, so this isn't relevant.

A 40% ratio for the $125,000 household would give you a maximum purchase price of $830,000, which would be a conforming loan in the Bay Area, not a jumbo one.



You can check out the actual sale prices of recently-sold homes on Zillow:

https://www.zillow.com/homes/recently_sold/house_type/

In the South Bay near Mountain View, there's basically no single-family homes under $1.5M, and the majority of houses go for $2M up. Many are in the $4M+ range. You can get cheaper in San Jose ($800K-ish for a run-down 2BR from the 50s) or Daly City (low millions), but most of the Peninsula and SF has a floor at a million.

Most Bay Area residents just don't own homes. They rent permanently or maybe own a condo. But the context for this sub-thread is "people with a house", and basically all mortgages for single-family homes are jumbo if you're not paying in cash or putting >50% down.


Yeah my argument was that all the people who are buying those homes are significantly wealthier than the Bay Area median household.


The median Bay Area household cannot afford to buy a house, yes, but that does not mean that those buying houses are significantly wealthier. The Bay is far, far richer than you can imagine.

Buying a house for $1M is firmly middle class status. True lower class people simply cannot afford to live in the Bay at all.

To be in the top 1% in the Bay Area you have to make close $1M per year.


Top 1% in San Jose is $964,238 (with the average person in the top 1% making $2,732,379), so right on target.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/14/how-much-you-have-to-earn-to...




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