Hacker News Reader

Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

The median household income in the Greater Seattle Area is $121k [0] and the median house sale price is $775k [1].

This means the median income to house ratio is roughly 1:5.5

This is fairly standard across the US, and was true even 20 years ago.

For example, in 2000 the median household income ($46k [2]) and house price (~$240k [3]) ratio was roughly 1:5.5. This ratio held true in 2024 as well with a median household income of $83k [2] and a median house price of ~430k [3].

As such, the cost of buying a house as a ratio of household income hasn't changed. The only thing that has changed is the perception.

[0] - https://data.census.gov/profile/Seattle_city,_Washington?g=1...

[1] - https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/seattle-top-cities-home-pr...

[2] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA646N

[3] - https://www.fedprimerate.com/new_home_sales_price_history.ht...

View on HN

I can't find too much direct historical data on this, but this article says the price to income ratio for Seattle in 1998 was 2.5, and their chart says the 50th percentile was around 3.0 in that year. https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/price-to-income-ratios-are...

Edit: This page has a historical slider that you can go back and see the price to income ratio of various metro areas over time. If you go back to the late 90s you will see overwhelming dark blue (dark blue is <3.0). https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/son-2025-price-to-income-map

I provided raw data that you can compute over.

Also note that the study you mentioned is comparing prices in 2018 with two recession recovery years (2011 and [edit: typo] 1988 - the year of the S&L crisis), which is an unfair comparison against 2018.

The text "1989" isn't in the article I linked. You may have meant "1988". But I'm not trying to assert that the headline of the article or the comparisons it makes are worthwhile. I'm just referencing some data points contained therein.

If we use FRED and HUD data for 2005 we find the median household income in Washington (cannot find a Seattle MSA specific dataset) and and median house sale price in the Seattle MSA to be $54k [0] and $309k [1] respectively which roughly becomes 1:5.5 again.

[0] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSWAA646N

[1] - https://www.huduser.gov/periodicals/ushmc/spring05/ushmc_05q...

Well I can't dispute Fred and Hud. I wonder if the discrepancy has to do with the harvard data only considering metro areas, and metro areas having significantly higher incomes but possibly not significantly higher median house price.

My hunch is they are using per capita income instead of median household income.

If two partners are buying a house together (a fairly common occurrence) per capita ratios would treat both partners as an individual, but a household would help fix for that discrepancy.

Median household incomes take into account households of all sizes (1 person households to n-person households), and if you compare against median price, you can help reduce the risks of outliers tainting any comparison.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com