Recently Forbes listed the 21 most expensive places to own a home according to income. Luckily Greensboro failed to make that list. But how does Greensboro compare to the rest of North Carolina?
To determine that I went to RealtyTrac and ATTOM Data Solutions, the source of the data used in the Forbes article. Here's what I learned.
Nationwide, home affordability is dropping. It's getting harder and harder to buy a home. Greensboro is no exception to that trend. But interestingly enough, while RealtyTrac and ATTOM Data Solutions attribute the nationwide drop in affordability to an increase in housing prices, they also report a drop in Greensboro housing prices.
In Greensboro, High Point, and Guilford County it requires 21.8% of average annual wages to pay down a home. The median price of a home in Greensboro is $125,000, wage growth is 3%, and house prices have fallen 0.08%.
Now when you add in Randolph County to Greensboro and High Point things are very different with 28.8% of annual wages required to buy a home, average home prices also at $125,000, and weekly wage growth up at 5.2%. Take into account the 15.2% rise in home prices over the same period and it is easy to see that anyone who can afford to leave Greensboro is buying in Randolph County.
In Forsyth County and Winston-Salem housing prices are growing at 1.6% while wages are growing at 2.9%. With housing prices currently averaging $128,000 and 20.9% of wages necessary to buy a home the market there is far more healthy than Greensboro or Randolph County.
Statewide, and without accounting for anything else like taxes, transportation, groceries, lower wages, etc, Greensboro, High Point and Guilford County appear to be more affordable than most other cities but while most of the state saw increasing home values, Greensboro saw losses.
