To Buy Orange County Homes You'd Need an Income of $191,106

The Orange County Register reports:

Got a spare $191,106? That’s the household income required to buy the typical O.C. home (estimated price tag: $585,000) in 2007’s third quarter, according to the Center for Housing Policy. That ranked O.C. as No. 5 for biggest salary needed to buy a home among 201 major U.S. markets. (San Francisco was first, by the way!)

The good news — and this is a stretch at optimism — is that this required lofty paycheck is 10.88% less than the $214,447 required to buy a year earlier. (That ranked us #4 for ‘06.) You can thank a 7% price drop for much of that “improvement.”

The center used homebuilder home pricing and a proprietary salary database to arrive at that affordability measure. It assumes the buyer puts 10% down and pays his loan plus mortgage insurance, taxes and homeowners insurance. The assumption is that total house payments are no more than 28% of household income.

This is being a little generous because you are supposed to be putting 20% down.If you voted for Senators Boxer and Feinstein you were voting to keep prices artificially high because they don't like "traditional" methods of financing mortgages.You know there is a problem when a typical lawyer or doctor can't afford the median home price in an area.A large area.