Utah is Stuck in the Middle

Realtytrac.com recently released a report listing the most and least affordable counties for home ownership in the United States. The affordability index was based on the percentage of average wages needed to make monthly house payments on a median-priced home with a 30-year fixed rate and a 3 percent down payment, including property taxes and insurance.

Not surprising, the top 20 least affordable counties were all located in New York, California, and Hawaii. What was perhaps surprising was that there were four counties in which home buyers would have to spend more than one hundred percent of their wages in order to make a mortgage payment.

Most of the the counties considered to be affordable were located in mid-western states like Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri.

On average, a typical home owner spends thirty percent of their wages on a mortgage payment. Utah ranked in the middle of the list, with mortgage payments accounting for approximately 34% to 48% or income. However, the western states were solely responsible for the increase in construction numbers in February - a good sign for the Beehive state.