Good thread. Just a couple of random thoughts regarding afforability:
I often see posts on this site regarding affordability issues that seem to focus (implicitly) only on folks who are first-time buyers with no $$ down. I think it’s important to take into account the number of move-up buyers with alot of equity to roll into the new purchase when considering affordability. I think SDR or sdr posted some North County stats many months ago that highlighted this fact. I’m not saying that there aren’t affordability issues, but I do think a fuller perspective is in order on this topic.
As to % of income applied to housing costs, it’s certainly plausible that higher-income households may be able to devote a higher % of take-home income toward housing costs than lesser earners due to economies of scale. This opens up the can of worms on lifestyle expense, etc, of course, but when looking at the raw numbers alone the higher earners are still going to have considerably more excess income to play with.
