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Teachers Can Afford To Buy Just Seven Percent of Seattle Homes

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Teachers and firefighters should look elsewhere for homes but there's plenty in Seattle for doctors and computer programmers.

You probably don't need many more reminders of how out of wack the real estate market is around Seattle right now, but just in case, here's one more. Estately took six professions from across the board (Teacher, Firefighter, Doctor, Server, Computer Programmer, Astronaut) and tried to find out what percentage of homes available each one could purchase. They determined average annual salaries and then figured out what each profession could afford to spend on a home (monthly mortgage payments, down payment, property taxes, homeowner’s insurance, etc).

The results are...yeah...

Estately figured an average annual salary for a teacher to be $56,000 and compared to other major cities, the different between what's affordable in Seattle and, say, Philadelphia is stark.

The one profession in their experiment that can afford 90 percent of homes in almost all of these markets (except for San Francisco, of course) is doctor. Guess we all should have been doctors, huh...
· Which Occupations Are Priced Out of Homeownership? [Estately]