Philly Makes Forbes List Of The Most Overpriced Cities
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Is Philadelphia real estate overpriced?
According to Forbes, the answer is yes.
The finance site says it first identified the U.S. metropolitan areas with more than 60,000 people before examining housing affordability using the most recent Housing Opportunity Index from the National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo. Forbes says the Housing Opportunity Index compares the median prices for homes sold with median income levels to figure out what percentage of homes in a given area are affordable to residents making the median salary.
Philadelphia ranked 24th on the list of 25, with 69.4% of housing affordable to residents making the city's median salary of $75,807.
While Philadelphia is, apparently, overpriced, consider the most overpriced city on the list, Honolulu. In the Hawaiian enclave, the median home costs $509,000, but the median salary is just under $83,000. That means that only 35.3% of the available housing is actually affordable to the city's residents.
One problem with the list? Several cities – including Baton Rouge and Kansas City – were excluded from the round-up due to insufficient data.