Income to Own Home in San Jose Hits $461,000

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 14, 6:25AM EST

Income to Own Home in San Jose Hits $461,000 — © halbergman / E+ via Getty Images

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A recent analysis reveals that the price of a home in San Jose is the highest in the nation.
The annual income needed to own a home there is $461,000.
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The San Jose metropolitan area is located in Silicon Valley, the world’s tech capital. According to data from the third quarter, the price of a home there is the highest in the nation, at $1.89 million. One widely followed measure indicates that the income needed to own that home is $461,000 a year. That has doubled since the third quarter of 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic began. (The U.S. government put the U.S. median household income at $81,000 in 2023.)

Oxford Economics recently published its “Housing has become less affordable across all metros” report. Its study examined what it would take to own a home in 172 metros. Nationwide, the figure was $107,000, based on a national median home price of $408,900. The study defines the cost of home ownership based on “ the sum of monthly mortgage payments—after a 20% down payment—along with property taxes and homeowners’ insurance payments does not exceed 28% of the borrower’s income.” Using that measure, San Jose is the least affordable metro.

Some of the top five least affordable home ownership metros were in California, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Jose. One of the top five outside California was Honolulu.

According to the Census Bureau, San Jose has just over 1 million residents and 331,000 households. The median household income is $136,000. Based on Oxford Economics calculations, only 10% of the population in San Jose can own a home at the median home price using its metrics, so the figure from the Census Bureau makes some sense. That is why it is identified as the “least affordable” in the country.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.