6 Cities Where You Can Own a Home for Under $1,000 a Month

Ty Wright/Bloomberg

You don’t have to make a ton of money to afford a decent home in some cities.

Pittsburgh is the most affordable metro area in America for those hoping to buy a home, according to data released Tuesday by the mortgage-data company HSH.com, which analyzed housing affordability in 27 cities across the nation. The HSH analysis looked at the cost—including principal, interest, taxes and insurance payments—of buying a median-priced home using a 30-year fixed-rate loan; the loan rates were based on people with credit scores of 740 or higher in each area and who put down 20%.

Using these measurements, a person hoping to buy the median home in Pittsburgh would spend about $756 per month on the home. That means they’d need a salary of $32,390 or more to afford the home (assuming they spend 28% or less of their pay on housing).

City	Monthly cost of homeownership	Minimum salary needed to afford a home
Pittsburgh	$756	$32,390
Cleveland	$803	$34,434
Cincinnati	$868	$37,179
St. Louis	$890	$38,131
Detroit	$899	$38,542
Atlanta	$935	$40,092
Source: HSH.com; assumes a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage

This data show that some markets are within reach of “first-time buyers and those with moderate incomes” (median home prices in each of these cities are well under $200,000), but “you may have to move away from the coasts” to find such affordable housing, says Keith Gumbinger, vice president of HSH.com.

Indeed, the median home in the San Francisco area would cost you more than $3,700 per month and in the San Diego area more than $2,500 a month.

It’s important to point out that these monthly costs are for those with high credit scores (borrowers with lower scores may pay substantially more for a mortgage) who put down 20% when buying the home, which may be difficult to manage on a limited salary. And putting down less will increase the cost of housing: In Pittsburgh, for example, putting down 10% instead of 20% would increase the housing payment by more than $100 per month. Plus, the job market in many of these cities isn’t as robust as it is in the rest of the country, which may make actually living in these cities more difficult.

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