Here Are the Best States to Buy a Home Depending on Your Profession

There’s no doubt about it: homeownership continues to be staggeringly out of reach for many Americans, as interest rates and home values alike rise precipitously. But as demographics across both major and secondary US cities continue to shift in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, regional differences still make it possible for professionals to snag the American dream.

A recent survey from StorageCafe found that Ohio, Pennsylvania and upstate New York provide the best shot at homeownership across all trending professions. Analysts examined 58 groups of professions across a variety of US markets and calculated which cities allow workers to buy homes there. It found that the metros offering the best chances of homeownership for the widest swath of professions are mostly in the Midwest and Northeast, with Toledo in Ohio, Scranton in nearby Pennsylvania and Syracuse in Upstate New York standing out.

Those cities are followed by Dayton, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Akron, Jackson (Miss.), McAllen-Edinburg-Mission (Tex.), Rochester, and Wichita.

StorageCafe analysts also found that the home affordability varies across metros and professions:  Chattanooga, TN, is tops for agricultural workers, Seattle stands above California for C-suite executives, Little Rock is great for foresters and Ogden, Utah is a good spot for life scientists looking toward homeownership.

Those in advertising, marketing, promotions, public relations and sales, with average nationwide salaries of $150,000 could afford to buy a home in 94 out of the 100 metros surveyed, lawyers and judges could buy in 93, top executives in 90 of the top 100, and healthcare practitioners in 87.

And “in line with their reputations, Californian metros are difficult places to buy in, due to increasing home prices outstripping salary raises, and Utah is also marching towards unaffordability, with home prices there experiencing a huge surge recently,” the report notes.

Specifically, San Francisco, San Diego and San Jose are the least affordable metros in California, “with no groups of professions able to easily buy an average home there,” according to StorageCafe. ” It would take no less 14.2 years to save for a deposit in San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward on the average salary across all professions, and in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara the figure is 13.8. The San Jose metro — which includes Silicon Valley — has the highest average income across all professions at around $113,000. However, this is not enough to enable residents to afford the nation’s highest-priced homes, which average out at over $1.5 million.”

And in Utah, Salt Lake City, Provo-Orem and Ogden-Clearfield are all only affordable for homebuyers from four groups of professions: lawyers and judges, air transport workers and managers in some sectors.

The housing market has continued its white-hot streak as of late, despite a series of recent rate hikes that have led mortgage rates to rise. While recent research from Moody’s notes that there is “little evidence of a housing bubble that is about to burst,” the lowest tier of the housing market appreciated by 17.2% in the past year alone.

Two years ago, households had to earn $73,400 to qualify for a mortgage on a median priced home, which meant 45% of US households could do so.  But by April, buyers needed more than $113,000 in income to qualify for the same home, and only 26% of households can qualify. As interest rates rise, that number will shrink, according to Marcus & Millichap’s John Chang — signaling good news for the burgeoning apartment market.

“Over the short term, until a lot more housing units are built, and housing supply and demand move back toward balance, apartment demand will remain very strong,” Chang predicts. “Apartment rents are much more affordable than homeownership right now.”