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"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
How Much do you Need to Earn to Afford a Modest Apartment in Your State?
11–20 of 53 posts
Re: How Much do you Need to Earn to Afford a Modest Apartment in Your State?
#12The data for North Dakota might as well be divided into east and west. I believe the number for the eastern part of the state, but the western part requires a much higher wage. Witness how much McDonalds is paying in Wiliston, ND.
Re: How Much do you Need to Earn to Afford a Modest Apartment in Your State?
#13[deleted]
Is $20,000 a hard number. What if you make $20000 this year and would like a raise. That would automatically be detrimental, forcing you to either not take it until that raise is >20% over $20k.
Then since is rent money, and you would have to income taxes on this additional money over $20k you would actually need 20% + 15% over 20k just to break even on what you were saving in rent.
Re: How Much do you Need to Earn to Afford a Modest Apartment in Your State?
#14On the other hand, according to [Numbeo survey](http://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/gmaps_rankings.jsp) , US has one of the lowest income to property pricing ratio worldwide. Whereas in the third world and developing countries, people are also struggling to afford a place to live.
Re: How Much do you Need to Earn to Afford a Modest Apartment in Your State?
#15A two bedroom unit is for a family (a couple with a kid or two kids), not for a single person. Why would a minimum wage employee lives in a two bedroom unit?
Re: How Much do you Need to Earn to Afford a Modest Apartment in Your State?
#16Given the explosion of interest in real estate from investors, I think situation going to get much much worse. I'm seeing houses going for 20% prices above asking prices, aggressive bidding wars, all cash deals - mostly from buyers who have no intent to actually live in those houses. If you search Zillow you will find tons of houses getting sold in 1 week and then immediately put back in market as rental properties.…
But in what region? The whole point of the post is how much it varies depending on where you live.
Re: How Much do you Need to Earn to Afford a Modest Apartment in Your State?
#17[deleted]
Is $20,000 a hard number. What if you make $20000 this year and would like a raise. That would automatically be detrimental, forcing you to either not take it until that raise is >20% over $20k. Then since is rent money, and you would have to income taxes on this additional money over $20k you would actually need 20% + 15% over 20k just to break even on what you were saving in rent.
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Re: How Much do you Need to Earn to Afford a Modest Apartment in Your State?
#18So I live in one of the red states, and I live in one of the more expensive areas of that red state (but by no means the most expensive of those areas). But the vast majority of the state is pretty rural and correspondingly cheap. Maybe not Blue-state (on this map) cheap, but definitely tan -- since I know more than one person that gets by on $15-20 and has a two bedroom or better.
No surprise, extremely rural areas are cheaper and states with massive urban areas are more expensive. Wyoming is cheaper than Colorado despite being similar-ish states next to one another. In Wyoming, you're glad to see another human, in Colorado, a similar sized state with 10x the population, there's a lot more people around.
There's a similar pattern with Oregon and Washington.
So it's basically a population map [1] with a few outliers - Alaska, Hawaii, Pennsylvania and perhaps Michigan and Illinois.
It would probably just be better to focus in on those weird states and show why they're weird -- above or below their expected categories.
Re: How Much do you Need to Earn to Afford a Modest Apartment in Your State?
#19[deleted]
Is $20,000 a hard number. What if you make $20000 this year and would like a raise. That would automatically be detrimental, forcing you to either not take it until that raise is >20% over $20k. Then since is rent money, and you would have to income taxes on this additional money over $20k you would actually need 20% + 15% over 20k just to break even on what you were saving in rent.
Usually with caps like this the break is phased out. So if you make between e.g. $20k and $25k, maybe only x% of your rent is paid for, where x is between 0 and 20.
Re: How Much do you Need to Earn to Afford a Modest Apartment in Your State?
#20The data for North Dakota might as well be divided into east and west. I believe the number for the eastern part of the state, but the western part requires a much higher wage. Witness how much McDonalds is paying in Wiliston, ND.
Right, this would be much more meaningful if it was calculated on county or district or some other fine granular area. States are far too diverse for this to be interesting.