How Many Years Of Income It Takes To Buy A House, Mapped

If you're saving up to buy a house, it's probably worth checking out this map by Reddit user kc2184 as it shows the number of years of income it takes to purchase a house around the United States.

kc2184's map is made by calculating the median house values and median incomes of each county using 2017 data from the US Census Bureau. It should be noted that the map is not accounting for factors such as interest rates or the fact that people do not spend their income solely on housing. Therefore, the map is better understood as a graph that shows the ratio between house prices and incomes in different counties.

As can be seen from the map, in some counties in the US, the median house price is nearly 20 times as much as a person's annual income, while in some counties, it's far less. According to kc2814, the county with the lowest ratio between housing prices and income is King County, Texas. With a median income of $29,918 and a median housing price of $38,800, you can pay for a house in King Country with 1.3 years of income. 

Conversely, in Kings County, New York, where the median income is $29,928 and the median housing price is $623,900 — at least, that's what the price was in 2017, it's even higher now — a house would cost 20.8 years of income, the highest among all US counties.

While kc2184's map is an interesting visualization, if you want to see the same information displayed in a more easily discernible fashion, you can also look at this re-colored image of the same map by Reddit user emcee117:

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[Via Reddit]