Suppose you spend 30% of your pre-tax income on housing. A 125k income then supports a $3125/month payment, which works out to about a ~660k house. That's enoug

Suppose you spend 30% of your pre-tax income on housing. A 125k income then supports a $3125/month payment, which works out to about a ~660k house. That's enough to buy the median house in every state in the country and all but 4.8% of zip codes[1]. Let's be a little more conservative. Suppose you spend 25% of your post-tax income on housing. A 125k income supports a $1750/month payment, which works out to a ~370k house. That gets you a median house in all but 3 states: Hawaii (556k), DC (550k), and California (462k) - the next state up is Massachusetts (343k). You could also buy the median house in all but 16% of zip codes. I couldn't find that much data on school districts, but just as a point of comparison, 370k is enough to buy the median single family home in 7 of the top 10 school districts in Michigan[2]: 1. 350k, Bloomfield Hills Schools 2. 411k, Birmingham Public Schools 3. 219k, Okemos Public Schools 4. 429k, Novi Community Schools 5. 343k, Ann Arbor Public Schools 6. 276k, Saline Area Schools 7. 370k, Troy School District 8. 285k, Grosse Pointe Public Schools 9. 335k, East Grand Rapids Public Schools 10. 429k, Northville Public Schools If you bumped up your payments to about $2023/month (~29% of post tax income in Michigan) you would be able to afford a median single family home in every top school district (~430k). Also, anecdotally, I grew up in Michigan and a 400k home was solidly upper-middle class even in nice areas like Ann Arbor and Bloomfield Hills. In Ann Arbor, a 600k home would be either a mansion or a family home in an extremely desirable area. [1] http://www.zillow.com/research/data/ http://www.zillow.com/research/data/ [2] https://k12.niche.com/rankings/public-school-districts/best-overall/s/michigan/ https://k12.niche.com/rankings/public-school-districts/best-...