For decades, the housing affordability discussion has been limited to workforce with lower income jobs. But, the issue has escalated so much that it is affecting the highly sought after tech jobs that mean a salary to make Midwesterners jealous. Now, the salary is the same, living conditions are not so much.
Silicon Valley's housing market is so bleak that even tech workers are struggling to buy homes.
A new report from Open Listings reveals that software engineers at five major Bay Area tech companies would need to spend over 28% of their salary to pay a monthly mortgage nearby.
Open Listings, an online home-buying startup, used its data to look at median home sale prices near the headquarters of some of the largest and most high-powered tech companies in Silicon Valley over the last 12 months. It then gathered public salary data from Paysa to get the average income of software engineers working for those companies in the South Bay.
From there, Open Listings calculated what percent of tech workers' monthly income would have to be put towards a mortgage for a home within a 20-minute commute from the office (based on mortgage payments for a 30-year fixed loan with a 4% interest rate).
The results were not pretty.
Apple's software engineers have to shell out the most. With a median home sale price of $1.16 million in Cupertino, Apple workers would have to pay an average of 33% of their monthly income. That comes out to a monthly payment of about $5,211 on mortgage and property taxes.
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