By Grant Welker
It’s not just inflation, and it’s not just a matter of perception: the cost of buying a home in Boston has far surpassed the increase in wages in the past 50 years, according to a new analysis.
In Boston, a typical wage in 1970 was $9,133, according to a report this spring by the housing finance website RealtyHop. The median home value was a little more than double that, at $19,600.
Today, a household could expect to make $106,015. But home values are more than six times higher, or $684,900.
That means home costs have risen three times higher than wages, putting a home purchase out of reach for many.
The region’s single-family home price hit $900,000 in March, according to the Greater Boston Association of Realtors. RealtyHop’s numbers vary in part because they look at a more limited geography of Boston and other areas. Cambridge, for example, is measured separately.
- View the slideshow above to see how Boston compares to the rest of the 20 largest cities by metropolitan area.
Boston’s housing costs grew by the highest so-called “unaffordability multiple,” as RealtyHop calls it, of any city in New England.
Boston’s multiple was 3.01. Cambridge, measured separately, was 2.52.
Elsewhere, Manchester, New Hampshire, was 1.85 and Hartford was 1.73. Other New England cities with rising home prices, such as Providence and Portland, Maine, weren’t included in the analysis.
The five cities where housing grew the most compared to wages in the last 50 years were all in California.
RealtyHop’s half-century comparisons in income and housing also give a window into Boston’s economic strides over that time. In 1970, Boston was 15th out of what today is the 20 largest metro areas in household income. Today, it’s seventh.