Rents are going up faster than wage growth in Sacramento. But researchers say it's still more affordable to rent a home than buy one.
If you're an average wage earner, you'll spend 35 percent of your weekly paycheck on rent for a median-priced three bedroom home. According to Daren Blomquist with research firm ATTOM Data Solutions, that's more affordable than buying.
"In Sacramento, if you're buying a median priced home, you're going to be spending 46 percent of your income, as an average wage earner, to buy a home," Blomquist said."So it's more affordable to rent than to buy there. But even the renting, at least compared to other markets in California, is fairly affordable."
Compared to other markets like Marin, County — where it's 80 percent of average wages to rent — the least affordable in the country.
"We looked at 33 counties in California and Sacramento, believe it or not, is the lowest on that list," Bloomquist said. "It's the most affordable market for renting homes among those 33 counties."
Blomquist said one thing that's helping to keep Sacramento's affordability relatively stable is that rent increases outpace wage growth by only one percent.
The median home price in Sacramento in the fourth-quarter of 2017 was $335,000, an annual increase of 8 percent.
ATTOM Data Solutions' analysis is based on: fair market rent data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics; and median home prices.
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