Potential home buyers here need to earn $48,752 a year to make the leap from renter to homeowner and if they put down 10 percent instead of 20 percent, the required salary increases to $55,888, according to data crunched by mortgage experts at HSH.com. The price of an average home here is $210,000 — nearly a 6 percent increase compared to 2015.
This is a significant increase since, in the first quarter, the change in required salary in San Antonio was an increase of just $18, while it made a huge second-quarter jump by $1,759.96, according to HSH.com. But it's too soon to tell if the second-quarter increase is an anomaly or the beginning of a new trend. National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a press release that improving job markets and mortgage rates teetering near all-time lows brought buyers out in force. "However, with homebuilding activity still failing to keep up with demand and not enough current homeowners putting their home up for sale, prices continued their strong ascent — and in many markets at a rate well above income growth," Yun says.
However, despite the increase in home prices, San Antonio managed to stay in HSH.com's top 10 most affordable metros, as the ninth most affordable large city to buy a home in. Of the three largest cities here, San Antonio residents need to make the least amount of money to buy a house. In Dallas, it takes a salary of $54,764 and in Houston, yearly earnings for potential homebuyers need to be $52,274.
To arrive at their conclusion, HSH.com's mortgage analysts used median-home price data compiled by the National Association of Realtors and average interests rates for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages to find out the necessary salary it would take to afford the base cost of owning a home, including the principal, interest, taxes and insurance for the 27 largest U.S. metro areas.
